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Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
The Foundation Series

Author: Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Genre: Science fiction-future history
Type of Work: Novels
Time of Plot: 12,020-14,000
Location: The Galactic Empire

First Published: The Foundation Trilogy (1963; as trilogy); previously published as Foundation (1951; serial form, Astounding Science-Fiction, 1942-1944), Foundation and Empire (1952; serial form, Astounding Science-Fiction, 1945), and Second Foundation (1953; serial form, Astounding Science-Fiction, 1948-1950); additions to the series include Foundation's Edge (1982), Foundation and Earth (1986), Prelude to Foundation (1988), and Forward the Foundation (1993)

The Story
The vast Galactic Empire, composed of 25 million worlds and quadrillions of human beings, is in decline. Mathematician Hari Seldon, a provincial scholar from the distant planet Helicon, presents his learned hypothesis about the mathematical possibilities of what he calls "psychohistory" to a conference held on Trantor, the imperial capital. Seldon understands that his hypothesis is incomplete and untested. Nevertheless, it offers the prospect of mathematically predicting the empire's future and, with this knowledge, influencing events so as to lay the groundwork for a Second Galactic Empire.

Seldon's psychohistorical predictions do not apply to specific events or personalities; rather, they deal with the aggregate of the empire's myriad worlds and peoples in sweeping ways. Psychohistory is a science of masses, of mobs in their billions. Intelligent people suspect that the empire is declining, and Seldon himself believes that the empire will soon confront thirty thousand millennia of wars and barbarism.

The potential of psychohistory to shorten this period draws the attention of Emperor Cleon I; his most influential aide, Demerzel; and female historian Dors Venabili. Prelude to Foundation chronicles Seldon's trials and adventures, as the emperor, Demerzel (a robot in various human guises), and Dors (another humanized robot) alternately menace Seldon and encourage him to refine his thesis and to make it practical enough to allow prediction, manipulation, and control of social and economic change that will lead to a new empire.

The fall of the empire is inevitable, but to abbreviate the ensuing period of chaos to less than a millennium, Seldon establishes two Foundations at opposite ends of the Galaxy. The First Foundation, on Terminus, far from Trantor, is begun as a settlement of physical scientists who labor to compile the Encyclopedia Galactica, a compendium of universal knowledge. During the empire's long decline, the First Foundation becomes a center of advanced science. The Second Foundation, a mysterious body devoted to the expansion of the powers of the intellect, is established simultaneously at a secret location.

Forward the Foundation recounts the events of Seldon's later life, a time focused on elaboration of his predictive plan, on his preparations to reappear in a special vault as a holograph during future crises in order to dispense additional counsel, and on his symbolically significant death. Soon afterward, as recorded in Foundation, the Empire shatters into independent kingdoms that quickly threaten the First Foundation's existence.

Because of the political skill of Salvor Hardin, the First Foundation's mayor, the Foundation maintains its independence. Because the First Foundation is the sole remaining possessor of atomic power and a repository of superior science, it also gains ascendancy over much of the galaxy. As centuries pass, the First Foundation evolves a trading economy based on the sale of compact atomic devices. Its traders penetrate the periphery of the galaxy, defeat the Foundation's rivals, and prepare for clashes with the dying empire's remaining forces-a story told in Foundation and Empire.

Because Seldon's psychohistory cannot account for the actions of individuals, the First Foundation is ruined eventually by the mind-shaping powers of the Mule, a mutant. Thus begins the search by the Mule, as well as by the survivors of the First Foundation, for the secret location of the Second Foundation, whose leaders are recognized as "mentalists," masters of mind control. A remarkable woman, Batya Darell, defeats the Mule, leaving the First Foundation technologically ascendant but eager to discover the location of the Second Foundation.

In Foundation's Edge, which is set 498 years after the founding of the First Foundation, this search is pressed by a young Terminus councilman, Golan Trevize, who is joined by historian Janov Pelorat. Traversing the galaxy searching for the Second Foundation as well as for Earth and the origins of life, Trevize and Pelorat arrive at Gaia, a peaceful, ecologically harmonious world that has evolved as a collective mind. Because of the "objective rightness" of Trevize's intuitions, during a critical confrontation between representatives of the First and Second Foundations, the Gaians allow Trevize to decide the future of the galaxy; that is, to determine whether creation of the Second Galactic Empire should be directed by either of the Foundations. Trevize chooses a third way, the Gaian way: creation of a harmonious, collectivist Gaian-style "Galaxia" instead of an Empire. Believing that he has made the right choice, Trevize nevertheless harbors doubts. Gaia is a collective mind, and Trevize is an individualist; he wants hard facts to undergird his intuitive decision.

Trevize, Pelorat, and Pelorat's Gaian love, Bliss, continue the search for Earth and the origins of life in Foundation and Earth. The trio's quest ensnarls them in adventures on three variously hostile planets. They backtrack their way through evidence of galactic colonization only to discover that Earth is radioactive and lifeless. They find the Moon, however, inhabited underground by the twenty-thousand-year-old robot Daneel, who gives them information about the origins and galactic spread of humans and their robots. Meanwhile, the searchers acquire a precocious hermaphrodite child, Fallom, whose evolved transducer lobes give it awesome and sinister powers.

Analysis
At his death in 1992, Isaac Asimov had published at least 475 books, ranking him as one of the world's most prolific authors. The Foundation Trilogy rapidly earned status as a science-fiction classic, while two other novels in the series became long-term best-sellers. A learned student of science-he held a Ph.D. in chemistry and was a professor of biochemistry-and a devotee of history, Asimov virtually founded the science-fiction subgenre of future history. He earned many major awards, including numerous Hugos and Nebulas, and was named a Nebula Grand Master in 1987. Throughout the Foundation series novels, Asimov's scientifically or technically trained leading characters are aided or guided by historians. In the Foundation series as elsewhere in his writings, Asimov acknowledges drawing heavily on themes embodied in widely influential historical and metahistorical studies, notably Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History (1934-1954), and Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1926-1928). Although differing in their subject matter and their perspectives, each of these works is concerned, as was Asimov, both with identifying recurrent patterns in history and with tackling the venerable historical question of whether such patterns are determined primarily by profound social forces or instead by individual actions or chance. The mutant genius the Mule, for example, temporarily upsets the Seldon Plan.

The unfolding of Seldon's psychohistorical plan, around which the plotting of the entire Foundation series occurs, suggests that Asimov at one time believed in the existence of mathematically quantifiable, predetermined collective forces that drive historical processes. By 1955, however, he held an opposing view, which he expounded in The End of Eternity. In fact, over time, Asimov led his readers to wonder if he had resolved these great questions himself. In the Foundation series, after all, it is Seldon, an individualist, rather than a collective mind who develops the "law" of psychohistory.

A few writers of future histories, such as Mark Twain and H. G. Wells, anticipated Asimov's grappling with the causes of historical development. Others such as Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, and Frank Herbert began publishing their writings as Asimov's Foundation series evolved, and others have followed. For intellectual breadth, imaginative interplay of science and history, and sheer engaging volume of work, however, the Foundation series remains unsurpassed.

--Mary E. Virginia