Foundation universe


The Foundation universe describes a future history of humanity's colonization of the galaxy, spanning nearly 25,000 years, created through the gradual fusion of the Robot, Galactic Empire, and Foundation book series written by American author Isaac Asimov.

Works set in the universe

Asimov's ''Greater Foundation'' series

Merging the ''Robot'', the ''Empire'' and the ''Foundation'' series

The Foundation series is set in the same universe as Asimov's first published novel, Pebble in the Sky, although Foundation takes place about 10,000 years later. Pebble in the Sky became the basis for the Galactic Empire series. Then, at some unknown date Asimov decided to merge the Foundation/''Galactic Empire series with his Robot series. Thus, all three series are set in the same universe, giving them a combined length of 18 novels, and a total of about 1,500,000 words. The merger also created a time-span of the series of around 20,000 years.
The Stars, Like Dust states explicitly that the Earth is radioactive because of a nuclear war. Asimov later explained that the in-universe reason for this perception was that it was formulated by Earthmen many centuries after the event, and which had become distorted, due to the loss of much of their planetary history. This work is generally regarded as part of the Empire series, but does not directly mention either Trantor or the other Spacer worlds. One character is said to have a Visi-Sonor, the same musical instrument that is played by the clown Magnifico in Foundation and Empire.
Asimov integrated the Robot series into his all-encompassing Foundation series, making the robot R. Daneel Olivaw appear again twenty thousand years later in the age of the Galactic Empire, in sequels and prequels to the original Foundation trilogy; and in the final book of the Robots series, Robots and Empire, Asimov describes how the worlds that later formed the Empire were settled, and how Earth became radioactive.
The stand-alone novel Nemesis is also in the same continuity; being referenced in Forward the Foundation, where Hari Seldon refers to a twenty-thousand-year-old story of "a young woman that could communicate with an entire planet that circled a sun named Nemesis". Commentators noted that Nemesis contains barely disguised references to the Spacers and their calendar system, the Galactic Empire, and even to Hari Seldon which seem to have been deliberately placed for the purpose of later integration into the Foundation'' universe.

Asimov's "Author's Note" in ''Prelude to Foundation''

The foreword to Prelude to Foundation contains the chronological ordering of Asimov's science fiction books. Asimov stated that the books of his Robot, Empire, and Foundation series "offer a kind of history of the future, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not plan consistency, to begin with." Asimov also noted that the books in his list "were not written in the order in which they should be read". In the Author's Note, Asimov noted that there is room for a book between Robots and Empire and The Currents of Space, and that he could follow Foundation and Earth with additional volumes.
Forward the Foundation, Nemesis, and The Positronic Man do not appear in Asimov's list, as they were not yet published at the time, and the order of the Empire novels in Asimov's list is not entirely consistent with other lists. For example, the 1983 Ballantine Books printing of The Robots of Dawn lists the Empire novels as: The Stars, Like Dust, The Currents of Space, and Pebble in the Sky. Given that The Currents of Space includes Trantor and that The Stars, Like Dust does not, these two books possibly were accidentally reversed in Asimov's list.

Standalone novels set in the universe

While not mentioned in the "Author's Note" of Prelude to Foundation, the novels The End of Eternity, Nemesis, and The Positronic Man are related to the greater Foundation series.
The End of Eternity is vaguely referenced in Foundation's Edge, where a Gaian character in Foundation and Earth mentions the Eternals, whose "task it was to choose a reality that would be most suitable to Humanity." Asimov himself did not mention The End of Eternity in the series listing from Prelude to Foundation. As for Nemesis, it was written after Prelude to Foundation, but in the author's note Asimov explicitly states that the book is not part of the Foundation or Empire series, but that someday he might tie it to the others.
In Forward the Foundation, Hari Seldon refers to a 20-thousand-year-old story of "a young woman that could communicate with an entire planet that circled a sun named Nemesis", a reference to Nemesis. In Nemesis, the main colony is one of the Fifty Settlements, a collection of orbital colonies that form a state. The Fifty Settlements possibly were the basis for the fifty Spacer worlds in the Robot stories. The implication at the end of Nemesis that the inhabitants of the off-Earth colonies are splitting off from Earthbound humans could also be connected to a similar implication about the Spacers in Mark W. Tiedemann's Robot books. According to Alasdair Wilkins, in a discussion posted on Gizmodo, "Asimov absolutely loves weird, elliptical structures. All three of his non-robot/Foundation science fiction novels — The End of Eternity, The Gods Themselves, and Nemesis — leaned heavily on non-chronological narratives, and he does it with gusto in The Gods Themselves."
In The Robots of Dawn, Dr. Han Fastolfe briefly summarizes the story from "The Bicentennial Man", which was later expanded by Robert Silverberg into the novel The Positronic Man.

Works set in universe

The foreword to Prelude to Foundation contains the chronological ordering of Asimov's science fiction books. Asimov stated that the books of his Robot, Galactic Empire, and Foundation series "offer a kind of history of the future, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not plan consistency to begin with." Asimov also noted that the books in his list "were not written in the order in which they should be read."
The following works are listed in chronological order by narrative:
  1. Robot series :
  2. # Short stories about robots, set from the 20th to 22nd centuries, collected in The Rest of the Robots, The Complete Robot, Robot Dreams, Robot Visions and Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection
  3. # I, Robot — a fixup novel composed of 9 short stories about robots, set in the 21st century on Earth
  4. The Positronic Man — a standalone robot novel, written by Robert Silverberg, based on Asimov's 1976 novelette "The Bicentennial Man", set from the 22nd to 24th centuries
  5. Nemesis — a standalone novel, set in the 23rd century in a star system about 2 light years from Earth, when interstellar travel was new
  6. Robot series :
  7. # "Mother Earth" — short story, set in the 25th century
  8. # The Caves of Steel — first novel, set in the 35th century on Earth
  9. # The Naked Sun — second novel, set in the 35th century on the Spacer planet Solaria
  10. # "Mirror Image" — short story, set in the 35th century
  11. # The Robots of Dawn — third novel, set in the 35th century on the Spacer planet Aurora
  12. # Robots and Empire — fourth novel, set in the 37th century on Earth, Solaria, Aurora, and Baleyworld
  13. Galactic Empire series
  14. # The Stars, Like Dust — first novel, set in the 49th century, thousands of years in the future before the founding of a Galactic Empire
  15. # The Currents of Space — second novel, set in the 112th century, set thousands of years in the future during Trantor's unification of the galaxy into a Galactic Empire
  16. # Pebble in the Sky — third novel, set in the 125th century, primarily set thousands of years in the future on Earth, when the galaxy is unified into a Galactic Empire
  17. # "Blind Alley" — short story, set in the 126th century
  18. Foundation series
  19. # Prelude to Foundation — first novel, set in the 237th century
  20. # Forward the Foundation — second novel, set in the 237th century
  21. # Foundation — third novel, set from the 237th to 239th centuries
  22. # Foundation and Empire — fourth novel, set from the 239th to 240th centuries
  23. # Second Foundation — fifth novel, set from the 240th to 241st centuries
  24. # Foundation's Edge — sixth novel, set in the 242nd century
  25. # Foundation and Earth — seventh novel, set in the 242nd century
  26. The End of Eternity — a standalone novel, about Eternity, an organization "outside time" which aims to improve human happiness by altering history

    Timeline


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