Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire was published by Gnome Press in 1952 and is the middle volume of the Foundation trilogy, which collected stories Isaac Asimov had published in Astounding Science Fiction between 1942 and 1950. The trilogy won a one-time Hugo Award for best all-time series in 1966, an award created for the purpose after the series had been voted the strongest in the field. Asimov later wrote two sequels and two prequels, and other writers have added authorised novels to the sequence.

The book is built from two long stories. The first concerns the Imperial general Bel Riose, whose campaign against the Foundation is written as a study of why individual genius cannot outrun a historical process, and it ends with the Foundation's leadership working out what the plan requires. The second introduces the Mule, an unpredictable mutant whose power is emotional rather than mechanical, and whose career in the second half of the volume is the point at which Asimov's galaxy stops obeying the rules that had been set for it.

Asimov's psychohistory is the series' central conceit: a mathematics that can predict the behaviour of very large populations while being useless for individuals, which is why the books' drama comes from people who are exceptions. The Foundation series was adapted for television from 2021, with substantial changes to the chronology. The trilogy's three volumes remain the standard starting point, and this middle one is where the premise is tested.

The three volumes were written out of order and reissued many times, and the sequence now runs to more than a dozen books by several hands, but the first three remain the compact version of the idea.