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 plays a key role in creating the two Foundations.

As Seldon's sixtieth birthday is being celebrated by his colleagues, Wanda overhears mathematician Tamwile Elar talking to the military junta that serves as a government. She tells Dors Venabili what she heard - the phrase "lemonade death". Venabili investigates and discovers that it is a garbled version of "layman-aided death", with reference to the would-be assassin Tamwile Elar and technician Cinda Monay.

When Wanda is 14, she asks Yugo Amaryl about how psychohistory is developing. Yugo shows her the Prime Radiant, a device that displays all the psychohistoric equations. Wanda points to a certain set of equations and says it doesn't look right. Yugo finds it was indeed wrong, and Hari Seldon deduces that Wanda had somehow read Yugo's mind. He conceives the idea of a Second Foundation, whose power would lie in its telepathic power and clandestine invisibility.

Wanda Seldon continues to develop her "mentalic" abilities during her life. She is able to influence a witness when Seldon was put on trial for attacking someone "without provocation". Seldon persuades her to find other people with similar mental powers; the first is Stettin Palver and the second is psychologist Bor Alurin. They would eventually form the Second Foundation.