Gennaro Mummery is a character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
About Mummery[]
Gennaro Mummery is a high-ranking librarian and a influential, antagonistic member of the Library Council. A short, stout man with a perpetual, unfriendly smile and yellowish teeth, Mummery was the leader of a faction within the Galactic Library Council that sought to drastically restrict public access to its vast resources. Citing ever-decreasing Imperial funding, his platform advocated for a system where librarians would retrieve information for the public, rather than allowing citizens to use the library's computer systems freely, thereby ending the millennia-old tradition of open access.
His animosity toward Hari Seldon and his Psychohistory Project was personal and intense. Years earlier, he had a vehement confrontation with Yugo Amaryl, whom he accused of losing library materials. Amaryl, a native of Dahl, responded with a torrent of culturally specific profanity and declared that Mummery would be remembered by history as a villain for interfering with psychohistory. This incident cemented Mummery's lifelong opposition to Seldon's work.
When Seldon requested dedicated space and resources within the Library to begin work on his Encyclopedia Galactica project—intended to preserve all essential human knowledge against the impending Galactic collapse—Mummery became his primary obstacle. He vociferously opposed granting Seldon and his colleagues access, arguing it would be an unsustainable financial burden and a violation of the new restrictive policies he championed. He confidently assured Seldon that even a personal appeal to the Emperor would fail to secure the necessary funding, believing the Library's budgetary woes were insurmountable.
His obstructionism continued even after the death of Chief Librarian Las Zenow, who had been sympathetic to Seldon. However, Mummery's influence was ultimately circumvented when the new Chief Librarian, Tryma Acarnio, was persuaded by Wanda Seldon and Stettin Palver to support the Encyclopedia project, seeing it as a way to increase the Library's prestige and secure funding.
Appearances[]