But if you were to read the original Foundation trilogy, you’d never see that name, since the connection wasn’t made until the later books. In fact, in Foundation and Earth, it was revealed that the robot Eto Demerzel was actually partially responsible for helping Hari Seldon develop the theory of “psychohistory.” In the new TV series, Demerzel is played by Laura Birn and has a similar role. In these four books, Asimov connected the continuity of his Empire series and various robot books into one giant canon. These were followed by two prequel novels, Prelude to Foundation (1988), and Forward the Foundation (1993, published posthumously). “I do have some secret knowledge of what he was planning on doing.”īy the 1980s, after decades of not touching this franchise, Asimov wrote two more sequels, Foundation’s Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). It wasn’t until Doubleday republished the books in 1961 that they blew up in popularity.
On top of that, the original book versions of Foundation, published by Gnome Press, were not very successful. The point being, Asimov did not have a plan - at all. In fact, all three novels in the original trilogy - Foundation, Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953) - were originally published as serialized, interconnected short stories. Subsequently, when the “novel” version of Foundation was published in 1951, it was comprised of these short stories, adapted to be made into a cohesive book. Campbell pressured Asimov to expand the idea into a series of short stories, sometimes called “novelettes.” The figure of Prince Willis “made him think of soldiers and Empires” and caused him to pitch a short story about huge future history that would be about the “the collapse of the Galactic Empire.” This was 1941, Asimov was only 21 years old, and the editor he pitched was John Campbell, who ran the famous science fiction magazine Astounding.
According to Alec Nevala-Lee’s history book, Astounding, Isaac Asimov was inspired to write Foundation by an illustration from the opera Iolanthe contained in a book of Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics he was reading while riding a train.
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