"Asimov, Isaac - 3. Second Foundation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs,
Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater
the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that
Seldon worked with was no less than the population of the Galaxy which in his
time was numbered in the quintillions.
It was Seldon, then, who foresaw, against all common sense and popular belief,
that the brilliant Empire which seemed so strong was in a state of irremediable
decay and decline. He foresaw (or he solved his equations and interpreted its
symbols, which amounts to the same thing) that left to itself, the Galaxy would
pass through a thirty thousand year period of misery and anarchy before a
unified government would rise once more.
He set about to remedy the situation, to bring about a state of affairs that
would restore peace and civilization in a single thousand of years. Carefully,
he set up two colonies of scientists that he called "Foundations." With
deliberate intention, he set them up "at opposite ends of the Galaxy." One
Foundation was set up in the full daylight of publicity. The existence of the
other, the Second Foundation, was drowned in silence.
In Foundation (Gnome, 1951) and Foundation and Empire (Gnome, 1952) are told the
first three centuries of the history of the First Foundation. It began as a
small community of Encyclopedists lost in the emptiness of the outer periphery
of the Galaxy. Periodically, it faced a crisis in which the variables of human
intercourse, of the social and economic currents of the time constricted about
it. Its freedom to move lay along only one certain line and when it moved in
that direction, a new horizon of development opened before it. All had been
planned by Hari Seldon, long dead now.
The First Foundation, with its superior science, took over the barbarized
planets that surrounded it. It faced the anarchic Warlords that broke away from
the dying Empire and beat them. It faced the remnant of the Empire itself under
its last strong Emperor and its last strong General and beat it.
Then it faced something which Hari Seldon could not foresee, the overwhelming
power of a single human being, a Mutant. The creature known as the Mule was born
with the ability to mold men's emotions and to shape their minds. His bitterest
opponents were made into his devoted servants. Armies could not, would not fight
him. Before him, the First Foundation fell and Seldon's schemes lay partly in
ruins.
There was left the mysterious Second Foundation, the goal of all searches. The
Mule must find it to make his conquest of the Galaxy complete. The faithful of
what was left of the First Foundation must find it for quite another reason. But
where was it? That no one knew.
This, then, is the story of the search for the Second Foundation!




PART I
SEARCH BY THE MULE