Foundation

by Isaac Asimov

Hari Seldon has developed psychohistory — a mathematical science predicting the future of large populations. His calculations show the Galactic Empire will collapse into thirty thousand years of barbarism. His solution: a Foundation of scholars at the galaxy's edge, preserving knowledge to shorten the dark age to a single millennium. But the plan has variables even Seldon can't control.

62 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Hari Seldon — The father of psychohistory — a mathematician who proved the Galactic Empire would fall and devised a thousand-year Plan to shorten the coming dark ag
• Salvor Hardin — The first Mayor of Terminus and the Foundation's earliest political genius — a man who turned weakness into strength by weaponizing religion and provi
• Hober Mallow — Master Trader and later Mayor of Terminus — the man who proved that commerce is a more powerful weapon than religion, and that you can conquer worlds
• The Mule — A mentalic mutant who broke the Seldon Plan — an outcast clown who could adjust human emotions at will, conquering the Foundation and half the galaxy
• Bayta Darell — The woman who saved the Second Foundation through pure intuition — the only person in the galaxy who saw through the Mule's disguise and had the coura
• Arkady Darell — Bayta's fourteen-year-old granddaughter who helped unmask the Second Foundation — or thought she did. Clever, dramatic, and convinced she's the heroin
• Gaal Dornick — A young mathematician from Synnax who witnessed the birth of the Foundation — Seldon's last recruit and first witness, the outsider's eyes through whi
• Golan Trevize — A Foundation councilman with an uncanny instinct for correct decisions — the man who chose Gaia over both Foundation and Empire, then spent years sear
• R. Daneel Olivaw — A twenty-thousand-year-old humaniform robot who has secretly guided humanity since the dawn of space travel — the true architect behind Seldon, the Pl
• Bel Riose — The last great general of the Galactic Empire — a brilliant young commander who nearly conquered the Foundation and was destroyed not by his enemies b
• Dors Venabili — Seldon's wife, protector, and secret robot — assigned by Daneel to keep the father of psychohistory alive, she developed something indistinguishable f
• Raych Seldon — Hari Seldon's adopted son — a street-smart Dahlite kid who grew into a capable man, carrying his father's legacy with a knife-fighter's pragmatism rat
• Wanda Seldon — Hari Seldon's granddaughter and the galaxy's first confirmed mentalic — her latent telepathic abilities became the living seed from which the entire S
• Bliss — A woman who is also a planet — Bliss speaks for Gaia, the collective consciousness, bringing an alien serenity and an unsettling certainty to her comp
• Janov Pelorat — An elderly, gentle professor of ancient history obsessed with finding Earth — Trevize's unlikely companion, whose bookish curiosity and quiet kindness
• Han Pritcher — A Foundation intelligence officer emotionally converted by the Mule — he serves his conqueror with genuine loyalty he knows was implanted, unable to r
• Emperor Cleon I — The last strong Emperor of the Galactic Empire — a capable ruler presiding over an institution already hollowed out, whose clone dynasty (in the TV sh
• Stor Gendibal — A young, ambitious Speaker of the Second Foundation — brilliant, arrogant, and certain he understands the Plan better than his elders, which may actua
• Preem Palver — The First Speaker of the Second Foundation, disguised as a harmless farmer — the quiet mastermind who orchestrated the Mule's final containment and ke
• Magnifico Giganticus — A pathetic, thin, big-nosed jester claiming to have escaped the Mule's court — in reality, the Mule himself, hiding in plain sight as the last person
• Harla Branno — Mayor of Terminus and a tough, suspicious leader who exiled Trevize for asking dangerous questions about the Second Foundation — a woman who trusts po
• Limmar Ponyets — A Foundation trader who used a transmutation trick — turning iron into gold — to open a closed world to trade, proving that commerce finds a way even
• Wienis — Regent of Anacreon who plotted to conquer Terminus by force — a blustering militarist who proved Hardin's point about violence being the last refuge o
• Linge Chen — Chief Commissioner of Public Safety who presided over Seldon's trial — the Empire's political enforcer, who sentenced the Foundation into existence wi
• Lewis Pirenne — Chairman of the Encyclopedia Foundation's Board of Trustees — a brilliant academic who could not see past his encyclopedia to the political crisis eng
• Ebling Mis — A brilliant Foundation psychologist who nearly located the Second Foundation — driven to superhuman effort by the Mule's mentalic prodding, he died se
• Ducem Barr — A patrician of Siwenna who aided General Riose's campaign against the Foundation — providing intelligence while quietly understanding that the Empire'
• Brother Dawn — The youngest clone of the Genetic Dynasty — a boy raised to become Emperor who begins to suspect that being a copy doesn't mean being the same, and th
• Brother Day — The ruling Emperor — the middle clone of the Genetic Dynasty at the height of his power, embodying imperial authority with a charisma that makes you f
• Brother Dusk — The eldest clone — an aging Emperor watching his relevance fade as his younger self takes power, carrying the Dynasty's institutional memory and the g

Locations

• Trantor — Ecumenopolis — the entire planet is one city. Forty billion people, twenty-five million square miles of metal. Capital of the Galactic Empire for twel
• Terminus — Small planet at the galaxy's edge — Foundation's homeworld. Originally a backwater assigned for encyclopedia compilation, it became the seed of a new
• Kalgan — Pleasure world turned imperial capital — a planet of resorts and entertainments that became the Mule's seat of power, proving that even paradise can b
• Gaia — A living planet — every organism, rock, ocean, and air molecule participates in one collective consciousness. The third path between Foundation's tech
• Anacreon — Nearby kingdom and the first military threat to Terminus — a breakaway province that regressed to barbarism and thought it could bully the Foundation
• Smyrno — Neighboring kingdom competing with Anacreon for regional dominance — another former Imperial province that regressed and schemed while the Foundation
• Korell — A trading world economically conquered by Foundation Traders — proof that commerce is a weapon sharper than any warship when wielded with institutiona
• Haven — Refuge world during the Mule's conquests — where the remnants of the Foundation regrouped and where Bayta Darell unmasked the Mule, saving the Seldon
• Imperial Palace — Vast complex on Trantor — seat of the Galactic Emperor for millennia, later the hollow shell around which the Second Foundation quietly built its invi
• Encyclopedia Foundation HQ — The original Foundation building on Terminus — where the Encyclopedists worked on their doomed reference book, unaware they were pawns in Seldon's pla
• The Galaxy — The Milky Way — twenty-five million inhabited worlds, a trillion-year-old civilization in decline, and the stage on which Hari Seldon played the longe
• Streeling University — University on Trantor where Hari Seldon developed psychohistory — the academic institution that inadvertently housed the most dangerous idea in galact
• Second Foundation Headquarters — Hidden on Trantor itself — 'at Star's End' meant the other end of the galaxy from Terminus, which is where you started. Among the librarians of the Im
• Mycogen — Isolationist sector of Trantor — a religious community that preserved ancient Earth memories while the rest of the galaxy forgot humanity's origin wor
• Dahl — Working-class sector of Trantor — heat sinks, knife-fighters, and the rough edge of the world-city where Raych grew up and Seldon learned that Trantor
• Wye — Powerful Trantorian sector whose Mayor attempted a coup against the Emperor — a reminder that Trantor's internal politics could be as dangerous as any
• Helicon — Seldon's homeworld — a small, unremarkable planet whose only claim to galactic significance is that it produced the man who predicted the Empire's fal
• Aurora — Ancient Spacer world — the first and greatest of the fifty Spacer planets, now ruins by the Foundation era. The bridge between the Robot novels and th
• Solaria — Spacer world where humans lived alone with only robots for company — still inhabited in the Foundation era, but its residents have evolved into someth
• Earth — Lost, radioactive, forgotten origin of all humanity — the great mystery Trevize seeks across the galaxy, whose location was deliberately erased from e
• Star's End — A term, not a place — 'the far edge of the galaxy,' except Seldon meant the other end from Terminus. A deliberate misdirection that hid the Second Fou
• Sayshell — Border world near Gaia — distrustful of the Foundation, proud of its independence, and unknowingly sitting next to the most important planet in the ga

Items

• Psychohistory — Mathematical science predicting large-scale human behavior — only works on populations, never individuals. Hari Seldon's creation and the conceptual e
• The Seldon Vault — A chamber on Terminus where a holographic Hari Seldon appears at each predicted crisis point. He cannot answer questions — he recorded his messages ce
• The Prime Radiant — Handheld device containing the complete equations of the Seldon Plan — only Second Foundationers can read or modify it. A glowing mathematical display
• Mentalic Abilities — Mental powers of the Second Foundation — adjusting emotions, reading minds, conditioning behavior. Psychohistory evolved from prediction into a practi
• Personal Shield — Energy field that blocks fast-moving projectiles but allows slow objects through — standard protection in the Empire era, its physics shaping combat d
• Encyclopedia Galactica — The Foundation's original stated purpose — compiling all human knowledge into one reference work. Actually a cover story for the Seldon Plan. The grea
• Seldon Crisis — Predetermined crisis points in the Seldon Plan — moments when the Foundation faces existential threats with only one viable solution, the one Seldon p
• Galaxia / Gaia Consciousness — The collective consciousness of Gaia — every living thing, every rock, every molecule sharing one mind. Trevize chose to extend this to the entire gal
• Nuclear Blaster — Standard sidearm of the Foundation era — compact nuclear-powered energy weapon that gave the Foundation decisive military superiority over neighboring
• Gravitics — Gravity-manipulating technology — a Foundation innovation that enabled advanced starships, weapons, and engineering. The technological achievement tha

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