Foundation and Chaos

The deal, if deal it was, has astonished all Foundation scholars. It has the air of a miracle. There must have been prior arrangements, unknown deals behind the deal, yet our texts and depositions and even the trial records give us no clue. It is thought that this period of Hari Seldon’s life will forever remain dark.

How could the trial have gone so well? How could Seldon have focused the tools of psychohistory so precisely, even during ag, the first “Seldon crisis”? The forces arrayed against Hari Seldon were formidable; Gaal Dornick records that Linge Chen felt genuinely threatened by him. Dornick may have been influenced by Seldon’s view of Chen, perhaps not entirely accurate: what we know of Chen from Imperial sources suggests that the Chief Commissioner was a coldly calculating and highly efficient political mind, frightened by no man. Seldon, of course, thought otherwise.

Students of this period…

117th Edition, 1054 F.E.

—Encyclopedia Galactica,