Foundation Series - Other Authors

Other Authors

Asimov's novels covered only 500 of the expected 1,000 years it would take for the Foundation to become a galactic empire. The Foundation universe was once again revisited in 1989's Foundation's Friends, a collection of short stories written by many prominent science fiction authors of that time. Orson Scott Card's "The Originist" clarifies the founding of the Second Foundation shortly after Seldon's death; Harry Turtledove's "Trantor Falls" tells of the efforts by the Second Foundation to survive during the sacking of Trantor, the imperial capital and Second Foundation's home; and George Zebrowski's "Foundation's Conscience" is about the efforts of a historian to document Seldon's work following the rise of the Second Galactic Empire.

Also, shortly before his death in 1992, Asimov approved an outline for three novels, known as the Caliban Trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen, set between Robots and Empire and the Empire Series. The Caliban Trilogy describes the terraforming of the Spacer world Inferno, a planet where an ecological crisis forces the Spacers to abandon many long-cherished parts of their culture. Allen's novels echo the uncertainties that Asimov's later books express about the Three Laws of Robotics, and in particular the way that a thoroughly roboticized culture can degrade human initiative.

After Asimov's death and at the request of Janet Asimov and the Asimov estate's representative, Ralph Vicinanza approached Gregory Benford, and asked him to write another Foundation story. He eventually agreed, and with Vicinanza and after speaking "to several authors about project", formed a plan for a trilogy with "two hard SF writers broadly influenced by Asimov and of unchallenged technical ability: Greg Bear and David Brin." Foundation's Fear takes place chronologically between part one and part two of Asimov's second prequel novel, Forward the Foundation; Foundation and Chaos is set at the same time as the first chapter of Foundation, filling in background; Foundation's Triumph covers ground following the recording of the holographic messages to the Foundation, and ties together a number of loose ends. These three books are now known collectively as the Second Foundation Trilogy.

In an epilogue to Foundation's Triumph, Brin noted that he could imagine himself or a different author to write a sequel to Foundation's Triumph, feeling that Hari Seldon's story was not yet necessarily finished. He later published a possible start of such a book on his website.

Most recently, the Asimov Estate authorized publication of another trilogy of robot mysteries by Mark W. Tiedemann. These novels, which take place several years before Asimov's Robots and Empire, are Mirage (2000), Chimera (2001), and Aurora (2002). These were followed by yet another robot mystery, Alexander C. Irvine's Have Robot, Will Travel (2004), set five years after the Tiedemann trilogy.

There are novels by various authors (Isaac Asimov's Robot City, Robots and Aliens and Robots in Time series) loosely connected to the Robot series, but containing many inconsistencies with Asimov's books, and are not generally considered part of the Foundation Series.