Wanda Seldon

Wanda Seldon is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's science fiction Foundation series. The daughter of Raych Seldon and Manella Dubanqua, Wanda played a key role in creating the two Foundations.

Wanda Seldon was born when Hari Seldon was 52. Right before Seldon's sixtieth birthday party, a sleeping Wanda overheard Tamwile Elar talking to the military junta that served as a government. She told Dors Venabili, Hari Seldon's wife and bodyguard, that in her dream she heard the phrase "lemonade death", which Venabili investigated and discovered was a garbled version of "Elar-Monay death", with reference to the would-be assassin Tamwile Elar and his unknowing assistant.

When Wanda Seldon was 14, she asked Yugo Amaryl about how psychohistory was going, and Yugo showed her the Prime Radiant, a device that displayed all the psychohistoric equations. Wanda pointed to a certain set of equations and said it did not look right. Yugo examined it and found it was indeed wrong. Yugo told Hari Seldon about the incident, and Hari Seldon deduced that Wanda had somehow read Yugo's mind and sensed his uneasiness about those equations. At that moment, Hari Seldon conceived of a Second Foundation whose power would lie in its telepathic power and clandestine invisibility.

Wanda Seldon continued to develop her "mentalic" abilities during her life. When Seldon was 76, Raych had gone to Santanni and he needed a new bodyguard, so he hired someone named Stettin Palver. When Seldon was put on trial for attacking someone "without provocation" (according to a lying witness), Wanda used her powers to persuade the witness to tell the truth. What she did not find out for another few years was that Palver was also using his mind there. When they happened to meet, they discovered that Palver was "mentalic" as well, and Seldon sent them to find others with those abilities. They would eventually form the Second Foundation.