The fourth volume in the Foundation saga, Foundation's Edge takes place about 120 years after the previous story. The Foundation Federation is at peace and quietly expanding through its commercial network. Arkady Darrell has passed to posterity for the biography of her grandmother Bayta, the one who defeated the Mule. Terminus is preparing the 500th anniversary of its Foundation, so the Seldon plan has gone through half its way.
Throughout the Federation, a question has risen, as to the pertinence of the location of the capital of such a large federation, at its edge, and Harla Branno, Mayor of Terminus, does not want any change. This question being of much importance in its millennium plan (a Seldon crisis), long-dead Hari Seldon appears and backs up the idea that Terminus must stay the capital city of the federation. Branno, in her fifties, used for years to the power forces of politics, knows she's been a good manager, but she also knows she will not leave a trace in history books: this backup and recognition will give her some leeway.
Golan Trevize is a young, loud and promising Councilman of Terminus, but one who believes that the Seldon plan is a joke; in fact, the more it is accurate, as it has just revealed to be, the more it is a joke, since he doesn't believe that even a genius as Hari Seldon could have predicted the future that precisely, all the more so since the Mule disrupted the Plan so much: to him, the Second Foundation is still here, and the First Foundation is still a puppet in their hands (or minds...). He confides his thoughts to his fellow Councilman Munn Li Compor, who betrays him to the Mayor. When Trevize becomes too loud, Branno, in a powerful position since the backup of Seldon, gets him arrested. She confides to him that she believes, but a lot less loudly, that the Second Foundation is alive, and she sends (or, more accurately, threateningly exiles) him in its hunt. That way, she hopes that Trevize may trigger something and reveal them.
He is sent with Janov Pelorat, an historian, who is sent to look for Earth, a cover for their hunt of the Second Foundation; Earth is a world said to be the original planet of the human race. Its location and even its existence are unknown, and Pelorat has searched for it, accumulating, stories, myths, beliefs from around the Galaxy.
They are to go to Trantor, to the Galactic Library, to find out Earth's location; Branno provides them with the best of ships and obliges Munn Li Compor to follow them so she can keep track of them. But Trevize, refusing to be dictated his actions, leads them to Sayshell instead, where they might learn about Earth.
On Trantor, Quindor Shandess is First Speaker of the Second Foundation since 18 years; it has not been too hard in his time and he feels that, although he will not be remembered as Preem Palver is, he could still keep the job for some years. But there is a new Speaker, the youngest one at the table, Stor Gendibal. Gendibal's ambition is to be first speaker before he turns forty and he has a very strong opinion about the plan lately: it is a joke. It does not show as many alternatives as it used to show before the times of Preem Palver, and this pushes him to think that the Second Foundation is outplayed in the keeping of the plan by another force, maybe superior in mentalics. Moreover, he is persuaded that a First Foundationer named Trevize is the key to unlocking this mystery.
This theory he manages to convince the First Speaker of, but the remaining members of the table do not like him and his ambition. Going to a crucial meeting, he runs into several Hamishers (native farmers of Trantor) who try to beat him up; he refuses to dispose of them with his mentalics, since the rules prevent him to and is saved in extremis by a young girl named Sura Novi, a simple Hamisher. He arrives too late for his meeting, and a political battle ensues, at the End of which it is decided that 1- he will follow Trevize to Sayshell 2- he will take the Novi girl with him, since her simple beautiful mind will prevent him before his own complicated one that a mental force field is around 3- when (and if) he returns, he will be appointed First Speaker by a resigning Shandess.
Trevize and Pelorat share a great liking for each other, each one teaching something to the other; Trevize learn temperance and about Earth from Pelorat, and Pelorat is opening new eyes on a world he has not really been living in. They both easily reach Sayshell, although its neutral status keeps it is out of the Foundation Federation, as it has been neutral during the period of the Mule.
Munn Li Compor follows his former friend and makes sure he will remain in Sayshell: as an Observer for the Second Foundation, he has his own agenda from Stor Gendibal.
On Sayshell, Trevize and Pelorat learn about Gaia, a planet in the vicinity, that could be Earth, about its secrecy and independence from the province of Sayshell since as far as it can be remembered, and about how some say that's where the Mule was born. That is enough to decide Trevize to go to Gaia.
Tired of the political battles in Terminus, and knowing that the action is taking place in the Sayshell district, around the Gaia planet, Harla Branno also decides to converge on the spot, with a fleet.
Stor Gendibal, arrives on the spot too, after having exchanged his old Second Foundation ship with that, much more modern, of Compor.
The First and Second Foundation leaders encounter and Gendibal discovers with horror that the First Foundation has developed a mentalic shield capable of protecting them from the Speaker's attacks.
Approaching Gaia, Trevize and Pelorat loose control of their ship and are escorted on the surface by a young girl named Bliss, with whom the old Pelorat cannot prevent from flirting. Once they are on the ground, the girl says she is Gaia, as are the trees, rabbits and the whole planet; Gaia is a group consciousness of which each component has a share. Bliss speaks of her as I/we/Gaia. History, or myths, says that, a veeeeeery long time ago, man created robots obeying to the famous three laws of robotics (see I, robot); robots eventually took over mankind for their own sake and devised a long term plan of which Gaia is a central piece before disappearing. But currently, Trevize learns there that a crisis involving the whole universe is brooding and that he has been led here for a purpose, which he does not know yet.
The final scene involves the First Foundation through Harla Branno, the Second Foundation through Stor Gendibal and Golan Trevize: Bliss/Gaia keeps them under control (it controls mind and computers) and allows them to mind-speak at distance and explains that:
- Gaia has labored for decades to bring everyone here, not by tampering minds, which is not its way, but by taking advantage of personal ambitions; Sura Novi for instance is also Gaia.
- The First Foundation has developed a mentalic shield, that will be complete in a generation, and that Harla Branno intends to put it to use to destroy the Second Foundation (which she has located on Trantor) and create immediately the Second Empire, after the fashion of Terminus; Gaia believes this will create a military empire no better than the first one and that will last no longer.
- The Second Foundation has had quietist First Speakers and has grown soft; when he becomes First Speaker, Stor Gendibal will turn the Second Foundation more toward physics, and, if he anticipates the shield of the First Foundation, it will realize the Seldon Plan. Gaia believes this paternalistic empire, maintained by calculation will die by it.
- Gaia offers a third path: a whole universe alive, Galaxia, just as the planet Gaia itself is alive.
- Trevize has been brought here for his unique ability to be able to take the right decision even given only pieces of the data; the status quo is only to be broken when Trevize has reached a decision, and Gaia will follow the decision he makes, whichever it is.
"You know what Bliss has told me? The Mayor is going back to Terminus with a commercial treaty with Sayshell. The Speaker from the Second Foundation is going back to Trantor convinced that he has arranged it - and that woman, Novi, is going with him to see to it that the changes that will bring about Galaxia are initiated. And neither Foundation is in the least aware that Gaia exists. It's absolutely amazing."
The book does not end that easily, it keeps two questions for its ending:
First, Trevize confronts Bliss, and thinks she is a robot, which she does not confirm nor deny
Second, Trevize has learned that all references to Earth have been cleared from the Great Trantorian Library, but not to the initiative of Gaia or the Second Foundation... Trevize now needs to find Earth.
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