Foundation and Empire

The second Foundation book is more of a novel than the first. The story centers around The Mule, a "mutant" who is able to break the plans for the Foundation as predicted by "psycho-history". The futuristic predictions predict the actions of "mobs". However, it was not very accurate at predicting the actions of a single person. Enter the Mule. His mutant ability allows him to control the emotions of people, and thus to take over the whole empire himself.

In the first book, non-comformist actions by individual were merely "inevitable" actions needed to continue the group actions. In this book, the actions of the Mule are truly 'original', and thus can change the course of history.

It would be interesting to explore the importance of other historical characters. Which historical figures truly changed history, versus simply moved forward the plans already in process?

The first part of this book is a little confusing, but it eventually starts to become coherent. The final part seems an odd monologue by the Mule, seeming to only explain things. (The character of the Mule was, however, set up to provide these monologues - however, we don't actually see him do it until the end.)