Plot summary
Foundation’s Triumph starts with Hari Seldon who reviews his life and has to accept the fact that his “purpose” is completed. One day he meets a bureaucrat, Horis Antic, who explains his theory about the correlation of certain soils on planets and psychohistory. Seldon agrees to take a trip to some of the planets which fit Antic's theory. Hari and Horis travel to Demarchia, where they rent a yacht.
Parallel to Seldon's story, Dors Venabili starts out on the planet Panucopia to meet Lodovik Trema, a robot whose Three Laws of Robotics have been erased. Lodovic gives her the head of R. Giskard Reventlov, an important robot who founded the Zeroth Law with R. Daneel Olivaw. She finds out that Giskard and Daneel never consulted a human while founding the Zeroth Law. Later Trema meets a faction of cyborgs and joins them. After Dors has become a rebel, she fights for the cyborgs as well.
The third plot of the novel takes place on the planet Eos. Daneel talks to his possible successor Zun Lurrin. All chapters with Olivaw as the main character are printed in a different typeface.
In Seldon's story, during the flight to the first planet the yacht is taken over by rebels, who are from the renaissance or chaos planet Ktlina. They show Seldon ancient spaceships with many data capsules from the human past. Robots take over the yacht and destroy the data capsules and the ancient ships with the permission of Seldon. During the flight back to Trantor, a rebel, Gornon Vlimt, turns out to be another robot from a faction of Calvinians, who want to send Hari into the future.
At last all factions meet on Earth. The Calvinians are stopped by Daneel and Wanda Seldon. Old friends Seldon and Daneel meet one final time, to discuss philosophy. Despite the apparent eventual dominance of Galaxia, Seldon confides his belief that the second Galactic Empire will include both the two Foundations, following the Seldon Plan, and Galaxia. "Will there be an Encyclopedia Galactica a thousand years from now," asks Seldon, betting that if his belief is correct, there will be regularly updated editions of it. Since most Foundation novels use the Encyclopedia as a framing device for its chapters, this implies that Seldon correctly predicted the successful synthesis of the two Foundations and Galaxia.
The Caves of Steel is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is a detective story and illustrates an idea Asimov advocated, that science fiction can be applied to any literary genre, rather than just being a limited genre in itself.
Prelude to Foundation is a novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1988. It is one of two prequels to the Foundation series. For the first time, Asimov chronicles the fictional life of Hari Seldon, the man who invented psychohistory and the intellectual hero of the series. The novel was nominated for the Locus Award.
Foundation and Earth is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in the series. It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, which is titled Foundation's Edge.
The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories in 1942–50, and subsequently in three collections in 1951–53, for thirty years the series was a trilogy: Foundation; Foundation and Empire; and Second Foundation. It won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Asimov began adding new volumes in 1981, with two sequels: Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, and two prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. The additions made reference to events in Asimov's Robot and Empire series, indicating that they also were set in the same fictional universe.
The Robot series is a series of 37 science fiction short stories and six novels by American writer Isaac Asimov, featuring positronic robots.
The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they had been foreshadowed in some earlier stories. The Three Laws, quoted from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:
Nemesis is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. One of his later science fiction novels, it was published in 1989, three years before his death. The novel is loosely related to the future history of his Robot Series, Empire Series, and Foundation Series, into which Asimov attempted to integrate his science fiction output. This novel is connected to Asimov's other works by several ideas from earlier and later novels, including non-human intelligence, sentient astronomical bodies ("Hallucination"), and rotor engines.
Hari Seldon is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor, Seldon develops psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms. On the basis of his psychohistory he is able to predict the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire and to develop a means to shorten the millennia of chaos to follow. The significance of his discoveries lies behind his nickname "Raven" Seldon.
Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1950. This work is his first novel — parts of the Foundation series had appeared from 1942 onwards in magazines, but Foundation was not published in book form until 1951. The original Foundation books are also a string of linked episodes, whereas this is a complete story involving a single group of characters.
R. Daneel Olivaw is a fictional robot created by Isaac Asimov. The "R" initial in his name stands for "Robot," a naming convention in Asimov's future society during Earth's early period of space colonization. Daneel is introduced in The Caves of Steel, a serialized story published in Galaxy magazine vol. 7 #1-3 from October to December 1953. The full story was published by Doubleday as a hardcover book in 1954.
Robots and Empire is a science fiction novel by the American author Isaac Asimov, published by Doubleday Books in 1985. It is part of Asimov's Robot series, which consists of many short stories and five novels.
Forward the Foundation is a novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published posthumously in 1993. It is the second of two prequels to the Foundation Series. It is written in a format similar to that of the original book, Foundation, composed of chapters with long intervals in between, although Forward takes place within only one lifetime. Both books were first published as independent short stories in science fiction magazines.
The Naked Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the second in his Robot series. Like its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, this is a whodunit story. It was first published in book form in 1957 after being serialized in Astounding Science Fiction between October and December 1956.
Elijah "Lije" Baley is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Robot series. He is the main character of the novels The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn, and of the short story "Mirror Image." He is seen in flashbacks several times and talked about frequently in Robots and Empire, which is set roughly 160 years after his death. He is further mentioned in passing in "Foundation and Earth" as a "Culture Hero". Besides Asimov's works he appears in the Foundation's Friends story "Strip-Runner" by Pamela Sargent, and "Isaac Asimov's 'The Caves of Steel'" poem by Randall Garrett.
Foundation's Fear (1997) is a science fiction novel by American writer Gregory Benford, set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe. It is the first book of the Second Foundation trilogy, which was written after Asimov's death by three authors, authorized by the Asimov estate.
Foundation and Chaos (1998) is a science fiction novel by Greg Bear, set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe. It is the second book of the Second Foundation trilogy, which was written after Asimov's death by three authors, authorized by the Asimov estate.
Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the four short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel Foundation.
The Galactic Empire is an interstellar empire featured in Isaac Asimov's Robot, Galactic Empire, and Foundation series. The Empire is spread across the Milky Way galaxy and consists of almost 25 million planets settled exclusively by humans. For over 12 millennia the seat of imperial authority was located on the ecumenopolis of Trantor, whose population exceeded 40 billion, until it was sacked in the year 12,328. The official symbol of the empire is the Spaceship-and-Sun. Cleon II was the last Emperor to hold significant authority. The fall of the empire, modelled on the fall of the Roman Empire, is the subject of many of Asimov's novels.
The Foundation universe is the future history of humanity's colonisation of the galaxy, spanning nearly 25,000 years, created through the gradual fusion of the Robot, Galactic Empire, Foundation book series written by American author Isaac Asimov.
