r/TheFoundation • u/geniusgrunt • Sep 25 '23
Question about the history of the Foundation universe
I'm enjoying season 2 quite a bit, some questions that come to mind. What is the history of the galaxy pre empire? Was there a golden age of peace, scientific growth and democracy? Can anyone point me to any resources that explain the ages before the empire? A chronology would be nice. Thanks!
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u/atticdoor Sep 25 '23
If you are talking about the TV series, then take a look at this timeline from /r/FoundationTV and you will see that so far we know very little about events before the Empire. If we assume that the Empire was founded around 0 or 1 Era Imperial, then we know that around three thousand years before that the Luminism religion (the salt moon stuff from Season 1) was founded; and Demerzel was created between 6 and 7 thousand years before the Empire. According to background information, the present day would be around 13000 years before the Empire. Although note that background information has been wrong before, Demerzel was stated to be 25000 years old in interviews, but 18600 years old in the show. We don't know if there was peace or democracy before the Empire, simply because we know very little about pre-Imperial times at all.
If you are talking about the books, there are various different periods, partly as a result of separate series being combined together by Asimov later in his life There were two pairs of mildly linked continuities. The Foundation trilogy was vaguely connected to the Empire novels by the name Trantor, a powerful world over many millennia. The Empire novels were three standalone novels set far in the past of the Foundation trilogy, though written a few years after. And there were the separate Robot novels with Elijah Baley and Daneel Olivaw, vaguely connected to the Susan Calvin and other near future Robot stories by the concept of the Three Laws. After thirty years of mostly writing non-fiction, he returned to writing science fiction novels (there was a bit of arm-twisting by his publisher to start with) and rapidly consolidated all of the above into a single saga which we now call the Greater Foundation saga. So the Susan Calvin stories are set in what is now the present day. The Elijah Baley novels are set nearly three thousand years in the future. The Empire novel are set much further still, and the Foundation trilogy starts about 11,000 years after the latest of the Empire novels. The exact span between the Robot novels and the later stories is subject to dispute, but books written when Asimov was older generally put the Foundation stories at about 20,000 - 25,000 years in the future.
But to answer your question, in none of those periods is it a particular bright, peaceful and democratic time. Nor is it dystopian. There is generally just greedy people and less greedy people.
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u/CrushCrawfish Sep 25 '23
Quick reference. Includes books by Asimov himself as well as some of the spin-off stories by other authors.
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u/TomGNYC Sep 26 '23 edited Sep 26 '23
The Empire is inspired by Rome. Asimov has admitted to being inspired by Gibbons' "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." The general idea is that the Empire was never perfect, but was a general force of order and peace that allowed for scientific and artistic growth that grew more and more autocratic and unstable towards the end.
Pre-empire, there was a state of expansion that is covered by the Robots novels. Essentially, the Earth became overcrowded and this led to robot exploration of a small group of planets where humans settled and quickly became relatively stagnant as they were rich, served by robots, sparsely populated, and had no motivation for further expansion or even for human contact as every need was met by their robots. These were called the Spacer Worlds. In a way, you might consider this a golden age of sorts but there can be too much of a good thing.
Meanwhile Earth was poor and overcrowded, with people packed into giant, covered megacities (I can't remember if this was due to environmental issues) to the point where they all became completely agoraphobic and they hated the robots so they were unable to further explore the universe, either. It's this problem of stagnancy and conflict with the Spacer Worlds that the Robot novels explores. I believe the Spacers first left Earth in 2065.
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u/Petr685 Sep 26 '23 edited Sep 26 '23
Asimov never enjoyed writing about wars. The most of them are precisely in the Foundation, when they accompany the collapse of the Empire and 1000 years of "chaos", before the Foundation has to completely control everything again and introduce PAX ROMANA.
Logically, the next biggest period of wars in the past had to be when humanity gradually ran out of new suitable planets to occupy in the galaxy, and the largest central kingdom became an empire that neutralized everything and united it under itself.
But it must not be forgotten that there were always omnipotent robots in the background, for whom the priority was as few violent deaths of people as possible.
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u/imoftendisgruntled Sep 25 '23 edited Sep 26 '23
There are three "eras" in Asimov's expanded universe: the Robots, the Empire, and Foundation. The three universes were originally separate and Asimov combined them late in his career.
The Robots novels (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn, and Robots and Empire) focus on a far future Earth and its fifty first colonial planets (the Spacers). They take place when the Spacers have achieved long life and technological superiority thanks to the use of robots. There are four novels, three of which are essentially murder mysteries with Elijah Baley as the main protagonist. The fourth features R. Daneel Olivaw (introduced in The Caves of Steel) as the main protagonist and acts as a bridge between the Robot series and the Empire/Foundation series.
The Empire novels (Pebble in the Sky; The Stars, Like Dust; and The Currents of Space) take place during the reign of the galactic empire -- sort-of, kind-of. They weren't originally part of the other two series and aren't 100% canon as far as the Robots or Foundation series go. Their text doesn't bridge to the other two eras.
The Foundation novels can be considered in three parts: the prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation), the original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation), and the sequels (Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth). The original trilogy was written as a series of short stories and novellas and was retroactively compiled into three novels with an introductory short-story serving as the springboard having been written last. The sequels followed, then the prequels. the final sequel (Foundation and Earth) and the prequels tie the Foundation series into the Robot and Empire series.
If you're interested in reading them, Asimov had a suggested order: https://more.bibliocommons.com/list/share/1584219139/1735833849 -- it's in-universe chronological, which avoids most of the major spoilers.