Foundation

Terminus City mayor Salvor Hardin, the secondary protagonist of the book, forestalls two invasions from a nearby kingdom of planets and becomes the first of the great mayors who protect the Foundation. His first name, “Salvor,” is a term for someone who saves worthwhile things, as Hardin helps save the Foundation from the encyclopedists’ devotion to tradition. He redirects the organization toward its intended path of preserving technology in the outlying galactic regions, resolves military threats from neighboring planets by pitting them against one another in tense but lasting stalemates, and his Foundation priests prevent a war by sabotaging planet Anacreon’s plans for invasion. Hardin’s patience and composure help set the tone for the Foundation’s future leaders and his nonviolent, friendly attitude epitomizes the author’s beliefs about the best way to resolve conflicts.

Events force guild trader Limmar Ponyets, the book’s third major protagonist, to alter course and try to save his good friend, Foundation diplomat Eskel Gorov. Ponyets uses negotiation and guile to lure Askonian nobleman Pherl into friendly trade with the Foundation. Ponyets repeats earlier protagonists’ preference for nonviolent, intelligently cooperative dealings between peoples and is another of the book’s examples of using brains rather than brawn to solve problems. Ponyets is also the only protagonist in the book who does not hold or seek political power within the Foundation. Ponyets marks the transition from scholastic, political, and religious power to economic power in intergalactic civilization. Ponyets is able to overcome Pherl’s religious and social objections to technology with the promise of wealth. Although Ponyets legitimately wishes to save Gorov, Ponyets is also the most self-interested protagonist, ensuring that he makes a tidy profit while saving his friend and protecting the Foundation’s interests. Ponyets’s more complicated moral standing separates financially preoccupied Ponyets and Hober Mallow apart from Seldon and Hardin, whose altruistic defense of the Foundation carries no self-interest.

Huge, smart, and attuned to the Foundation’s Plan, guild trader and Terminus Mayor Hober Mallow—the fourth and final protagonist of the story—is as patient and even-tempered as his predecessors. He bides his time through the threat of all-out war between Terminus and Korell, knowing the enemy cannot afford to bring the battle directly to the Foundation without sacrificing the lucrative trade between the two planets. This strategy echoes Seldon and Hardin’s strategies of taking early losses to ensure later success. Like previous Foundation leader-protagonists, Mallow also knows that the Foundation’s Plan binds other worlds to it in ways that make war a foolish option. He serves as the final example in the book of a growing line of Foundation leaders whose wisdom and comprehensive viewpoint permit them to make the right choice when a crisis arises. Native to the planet Smyrna, Mallow is also the first “offworld” mayor of Terminus, marking a shift toward greater cultural diversity at the Foundation and indicating the success of Seldon’s plan to preserve intergalactic civilization and the widespread use of advanced technology.

A young mathematician who moves to the galactic capital to work on Hari Seldon’s Foundation project, Gaal Dornick serves as a foil both for Seldon and for the Empire. His innocent outsider’s awe of the planet-spanning city of Trantor is matched only by his burgeoning respect for Seldon’s genius. Asimov uses Dornick primarily as an expositional strategy. His intelligent questions provide openings for Seldon to explain his theories and plans, and his introduction to Trantor allows Asimov to characterize the setting and given circumstances of the story for the reader.

Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, Lewis Pirenne is Salvor Hardin’s principal antagonist within the Foundation. He wants only to complete the Encyclopedia Galactica and has no taste for politics, which he leaves to Mayor Hardin, though without giving him real authority to deal with interplanetary crises. Devoted solely to scholarship, Pirenne ignores the brewing military crisis only to discover that the Foundation’s true purpose lies not in the encyclopedia but in the practical preservation of advanced technology. Pirenne’s authoritarian scholasticism represents the anti-scientific attitudes that plague the galaxy and that the Foundation is meant to counter; he finds himself out of power when Hardin solves the crisis without him. Through Pirenne, Asimov critiques scholastic attitudes that inhibit or deprioritize scientific advancement.

Foppish and dim-witted, Chancellor Lord Dorwin visits the Foundation to discuss local military threats. Dorwin takes a scholarly—though not scientific—interest in archeology and loves to theorize on the origins of the human species. He manages, during several discussions with Board chief Pirenne and Mayor Hardin, to appear to offer assurances of the Emperor’s support while actually saying no such thing. Politically clever and aesthetically dissipated, Lord Dorwin is the face of the galaxy’s crumbling high culture and the Empire’s increasingly effete style of political control, characteristics the Foundation must work around.

Like his constituents, Terminus City Councilman Sef Sermak believes Mayor Hardin has unwisely appeased nearby planetary kingdoms by giving them technology that they can use to conquer the Foundation planet. He and his political party want to take control of Terminus from Hardin, rearm the planet, and attack the Four Kingdoms. Sermak voices the militant side of diplomacy; alongside Pirenne and Lee, Sermak serves as a foil bested by Hardin’s more subtle use of statecraft.

The members of the royal house of Anacreon represent the underdeveloped worlds most threatened by the collapse of galactic civilization.

Prince Regent Wienis, brother to the late king, rules on behalf of the king’s son, Lepold, who is about to turn 16 and ascend the throne. Wienis has been a thorn in Hardin’s side for decades; his ambition is to conquer the Foundation and then the neighboring kingdoms. It is likely that he arranged the death of his brother and though he supports Lepold as the heir apparent, Wienis also has ambitions for his own sons who might ascend the throne if Lepold were suddenly to die. Wienis’s character—his name clearly a play on words like weasel and wiener—distills the avarice, conceit, and foolish bravado of the ruling elite of the Four Kingdoms and of power-hungry rulers everywhere. He is a dangerous antagonist whom Hardin finally defeats, not with weapons but with careful planning and superior brainpower.

An expert hunter of nyakbirds but of little use as a leader, young heir apparent King Lepold I remains under the control of his uncle Wienis. The teen must navigate between his youthful enthusiasms and his impending responsibilities as ruler. Lepold is a weak character: self-important, easily led, cowardly, and in over his head. His purpose within the story is to highlight Wienis’s heartless ambitions.