Asimov shows that the
puppeteer has strings, too. “Foundation and empire”, the second book of the Foundation trilogy, may
seem just an interregnum between the charming first and third books, but actually the second one holds the essence of the trilogy, and raises the questions that Asimov tried to answer his whole life. The Foundation is no more a city of enciclopedists, but the seed of a society that will shorten the chaos to come after the empire’s fall. In this book, the Foundation is flourishing and its growing relevance attracts the attention of the mighty galactic empire, which flexes some of its muscles against the tiny Terminus, menacing to end the book quite early. Some of the main characters also think that way and travel to Trantor, the capital city of the empire, to denounce the imperial ambitions of the general that battles the good boys. The characters’ folly journey attempts to denounce to the
emperor, as chief
puppeteer, that one of his puppets (in this case, the battling general) is rebelling against him. All in the benefit of the Foundation, of course.The characters slowly advance through the red tape of a city that encompasses a whole world and when they are nowhere closer to the emperor a newspaper stand tells them that the puppeteer is also a marionette, even if we can’t see the strings. The emperor, scared by the military triumphs of the general, quickly decides to remove him, removing the menace to his throne. The Foundation’s panic was as effective as a feather against a storm, for any weak emperor will quickly remove a strong, triumphing subordinate. Be it an empire or a corporation. May it be, then, that everyone is a puppet and the real freedom of action is quite limited? The book raises that question and almost asserts that the dead mark your way. In the following years Asimov will write some other books, as Foundation’s sequels and prequels, trying to answer us or, better, trying to convince himself that even if no empire is free, a single human being can do better.