49. Second Foundation

by Isaac Asimov (304 pgs)

Rating: 4

After the empire of the Mule, the people of the foundation begin to suspect that Seldon's plan has gone horribly awry and some believe that the Second Foundation (if it exists) will cruise in and save them no matter what. However, the Second Foundation are fabled to have super human mental abilities much as the Mule did and this cause a fair bit of paranoid speculation.

Picking up only a few years after the end of the previous book,Second Foundation is perhaps the best of the first three. Unlike the first two, the same plot line persists through the entire book. While the shorter plots were not bad, they were a bit jarring. Second Foundation, in contrast, had very smooth transitions and very interesting plot twists. The end was reminiscent of the movie Clue...in a good way. I really enjoyed the convoluted plot; it was complex without being difficult to follow. In some ways it was more like a psychological thriller than a science fiction novel.

While it's not a light read, I would recommend this to anyone who even had a passing interest in science fiction.