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 something she thought she heard: the phrase "lemonade death". Venabili investigates, worrying that it may be a garbled version of "layman-aided death", targeting Hari Seldon. She discovers, almost too late, that it actually refers to the "Elar-Monay" device (unsuspecting technician Cinda Monay having designed it for Elar).

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

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. Seldon eventually sends them away to establish the Second Foundation in secret.