BTW, for those who haven't read his extensions of the trilogy, the Mule turns out to have been merely a renegade Gaian (pls pardon any misspelling here).
Not satisfied with this, Asimov wrote the fifth novel in the series, 'Foundation and Earth', wherein he portrayed every single instance of individuality (except, of course, his protagonist) as corrosive, destructive, and/or innately evil. He ends this work with the (putative) implied ultimate salvation of the universe left to the kind wishes of his earlier creation in the 'Robot' tales, R. Daneel Olivaw. Curiously, the robot is going senile and can only (putatively...presumably Asimov intended to continue the series, but died in the interim) continue preserving things (a theme throughout is that mankind is utterly incapable of doing so) by absorbing the mental faculties of a child of an UTTERLY xenophobic race -- which, of course, being deus ex machina, said robot had assisted in creating some long time before.
Asimov could certainly tell a tale, but when his sociopolitical views began to obtrude SO intensely upon his writings, the writings became worthless.
I postulate that this is why this entire thread still refers to the Foundation 'trilogy'.