1953 classic SF, collection of shorter works. The Mule is still
building his empire. Obviously that has to be stopped. Spoilers for a
73-year-old book.
Though nobody seems to consider any way in which the Mule's
present empire is better than the Foundation's future empire, except
that the smug men of the Foundation aren't in charge of it. But
apparently that's enough. So (in "Search By the Mule") the Mule's men,
searching for the semi-mythical Second Foundation since he's already
conquered the First (I'll just call them F1 and F2 hereafter), make
discoveries, and… turn out to have been led down the garden path by
operatives of F2, who it turns out also have mind-whammy powers like
the Mule's, and indeed are the destined future rulers of the Second
Empire (according to them; nobody told F1 who were going to be doing
all the work of building it).
The recurrent theme is is: aha, I have trapped you! No, I predicted
that move, I have trapped you first! Go to previous sentence.
This continues in "Search By Foundation" when the F1 notices the
mental manipulation of the F2 in their own society, and sets out to
find the F2, because there's only room for one set of smug men in this
Galaxy! There are shenanigans, and another female character with some
agency (though this one's much more in the Asimov stereotype than
Bayta from Foundation and Empire). There's adventure and
shenanigans, and someone is clearly an F2 agent, and there's a war,
and in the climax F2 is obviously located on… no it isn't, it's
obviously there…
I thought I saw a little self-awareness in Foundation and Empire,
but the story here comes down to the smug men of F1 versus the smugger
men of F2, with a bit part from a stereotype of a Borscht-belt farm
produce salesman (also smug). Because it turns out that if the people
of F1 know that F2 is out there and might save them, they won't be
smug (and self-reliant) enough and so will fail; so the entire
proceedings of the story (including everyone's illusions of agency,
not just the female character's) turn out to have been set up by F2,
who are going to sweep in and rule everybody for their own good
forever, and everyone will think that's a good thing. An optimistic
future! And it's very clear that Asimov himself can see no possible
downside to this: of course the smartest people should be in charge!
No other qualification or knowledge, or approval by anyone else, is
necessary or desirable.
Thirty years later Asimov wrote more books in this universe,
eventually connecting it with his "Robots" setting for no obvious
reason. Two sequels, two prequels, and then the Killer Bs (Bear,
Benford, Brin) apparently contributed a trilogy too after he was
safely dead. I shall not be along for the ride.
I'm glad, I suppose, to have read these. Now I can say from a place of
knowledge that the emperor really does have no clothes, that what
Asimov didn't take from Gibbon and Thucydides he simply universalised
from his own life in the 1940s.