HARI SELDON—…born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as —79 to the year 1 F.E. Born to middle-class parents on Helicon, Arcturus sector (where his father, in a legend of doubtful authenticity, was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet), he early showed amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are innumerable, and some are contradictory. At the age of two, he is said to have...
While not nearly as entertaining to read as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Encyclopedia Galactica is its famous inspirational precursor, a fact which is actually referenced in that other fictional encyclopedic overview of everything one needs to know to survive in the galaxy. While it may seem just a whimsical gimmick, invented historical texts like both the Galactica and the Hitchhiker’s Guide are actually especially useful in science fiction and fantasy novels because they provide an incredibly efficient to convey information the reader can use without having two add another fifty pages worth of exposition. Encyclopedic texts prove exceptionally useful for giving readers robust amounts of information in small chunks of text because they provide a just-the-facts mechanism from which readers naturally have a limited set of expectations. These are also the opening words of book and immediately introduce the reader to the protagonist.
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
You know how there are some lines in movies that get repeated often enough to become something more than just another line of dialogue? Like Butch and Sundance continually asking “who are those guys?” Or the repetition of the first rule of fight club? Well, in Foundation this quote is the equivalent of those kinds of lines. It actually makes the leap from quote to imagery to philosophical foundation, if you will. It is initially coined by the Mayor Hardin of Terminus City in almost a completely offhand manner. Before too long, however, the reader discovers that the assertion hangs as a framed quote on the wall at City Hall. And before too long it becomes clear that such is Hardin’s enthusiasm to repeat himself that he gets interrupted between “refuge” and “of” with a dismissive “bah!” Over the course of the narrative, the statement manages to make a short trip of the long distance between quotable quote and overused bromide. At least for some people.
A. “The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed. Do you understand?”
The “A” stands for the answer part of a Q&A. Seldon is being tried by the Committee of Public Safety for espousing ideas deemed treasonous. These ideas are based upon the peculiarities of a field of statistical analysis called psychohistory. Central to psychohistory are elements known as Seldon’s First Theorem and the Seldon Functions. Psychohistory essentially is a field which calculates predictive outcomes of excessively large groups of people using not just mathematics, but information from other fields such as sociology and history. The “Q” which precedes Seldon’s answer begins with “Can the overall history of the human race be changed?” to which Seldon answers to the affirmative which, in turn, stimulates the follow-up question of whether this change would be easy. Seldon assures his interrogator that it would actually be quite difficult and when asked why, the above quote is his response. It is simple enough to understand, of course, but the answer is also the motivating force behind the entire trilogy of the Foundation series.
