I have mixed feelings about this book.

It’s about the search for the hidden and secretive Second Foundation. First the Mule tries to find it, then after his death the restored First Foundation tries to find it.

It’s understandable that the First Foundation should be curious, but in fact the First Foundation seeks the Second in order to destroy it. Both Foundations were established by Hari Seldon and are essential elements of his Plan. Shouldn’t the First Foundation be willing to accept that?

Apparently not. It expects and receives help from the Second Foundation, but then ungratefully tries to destroy it. Perhaps this is indeed the way humans behave, but I don’t like it.

So I don’t really enjoy the search for the Second Foundation. Furthermore, in this book Asimov started a habit that he continued in other books, of presenting and justifying a series of wrong answers to a mystery, until eventually we get the right answer. I suppose there’s a sort of cleverness to it, but as a reader I find it rather tedious and irritating.

However, there are two things I do enjoy about the book: the parts of the story told from the Second Foundation’s point of view, and the creation of Arkady Darell: one of Asimov’s more memorable characters, and a teenage heroine from a time when teenage heroines were unusual (and most of his characters were male). I suspect that Asimov based Arkady on a girl he met in the real world; at the time of writing he was about 29 and married, but had no children yet.

I’m impressed by the user interface of the Prime Radiant, as described in Chapter 8. It’s a remarkable feat of imagination, considering that it was written in the late 1940s, at which time there were only a few very primitive computers in the world. We still couldn’t implement all features of the Prime Radiant today, but I suppose that with effort and expense we could make an inferior imitation. It’s much easier to imagine now than it was then. ( )

Después de mucho tiempo me he decidido a terminar esta saga. Este último ha sido mi favorito, aunque en general el mayor pecado de esta saga es partir de una idea increíble, pero desarrollarla a través de personajes (la mayoría) poco memorables. Además de la omisión de todas las batallas y guerras.

Pero en general la idea del plan Seldon es de las cosas más geniales que he leído. ( )

Well, I liked the first half immensely and then it just got....blah. That's the only word I can really find to describe it. It is almost like Asimov lost his ability to communicate through characters and had to have these cheesy expositions instead.

A good book, but definitely not better than the first two of the "trilogy". ( )

Rereading one of the most influential book series on young me after 20 years:

I wish I could say that this just more of what Foundation and Foundation and Empire was, but I feel like Asimov's obsession with reveals really takes over here. I don't think this aspect works on a first read either because dramatic irony can be much cooler and there are a lot of things that would be much more interesting to be shown in detail but it certainly doesn't work when you remember where the Second Foundation is. One of the characters even admits it's not very well hidden. Still a pretty cool book continuing to expand on the ideas of the previous books and has some cool moments though.
The strange contradiction of this book is that while it's all about going back to the status quo, it's also the first book to talk about how all this is not just about restarting the same empire, it's about making a better society. It's just a few sentences but I really appreciated that. ( )

Really good, as per usual for Asimov. I enjoy the way he can build a whole universe while barely giving descriptions of planets or ecosystems. ( )