Recommendations
Books Like Foundation
A mathematician predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and plans for the dark age that follows
Isaac Asimov's Foundation begins with a premise that is among the most ambitious in science fiction: Hari Seldon has developed a mathematical science called psychohistory that can predict the behavior of large populations over long periods of time, and he has used it to determine that the Galactic Empire will fall within 500 years, plunging humanity into 30,000 years of barbarism. His plan — the Foundation — is designed to reduce that dark age to 1,000 years by preserving human knowledge. The three original novels follow the Foundation across several centuries as it faces the crises Seldon predicted — and one crisis, the Mule, that he didn't. If the large-scale political vision, the premise of history as a predictable science, and the sweep across centuries gripped you, these eight picks go to the same place.
- 1Buy
Dune
by Frank Herbert
The other great empire-spanning science fiction series, built around the control of a single irreplaceable resource — Herbert and Asimov are in direct conversation with each other about what drives the rise and fall of civilizations, and which forces are predictable. Dune is more mystical and more political; Foundation is more rationalist and more historical.
- 2Buy
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
Epic science fiction set at the collapse of an interstellar civilization — Simmons' Hyperion Cantos has Foundation's same sense of a galactic scale story and the same interest in the institutions that maintain civilization under pressure. The Canterbury Tales structure of the first novel makes it one of the most formally unusual SF books ever written.
- 3Buy
A Memory Called Empire
by Arkady Martine
An ambassador to a galactic empire navigating a court whose internal politics mirror the mechanisms of imperial expansion — Martine has Asimov's same interest in how empires maintain themselves and what happens to the people at their edges, with a literary density that makes it the most direct Foundation successor in recent SF.
- 4Buy
The Expanse
by James S.A. Corey
The most realistic recent depiction of interplanetary civilization — Corey's solar system has Foundation's same sense of political economy as the engine of history, and the same investment in how different societies develop different cultures over generations. Much more focused on individual characters than Foundation's civilizational sweep.
- 5Buy
Red Rising
by Pierce Brown
A rigidly stratified interplanetary society with a protagonist who embeds himself in the institution that maintains it — Brown has Asimov's same sense of a civilization ripe for collapse, and the same interest in whether the historical arc of that collapse can be redirected by one sufficiently motivated individual.
- 6Buy
Prelude to Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
Asimov's own prequel, written as an entry point for new readers — follows Hari Seldon in the years before he developed psychohistory and before the events of the original trilogy. A good choice for readers who want more Seldon before or after the trilogy.
- 7Buy
Revelation Space
by Alastair Reynolds
Hard science fiction on the scale of Foundation, set in a future where humanity has not yet found evidence of other intelligent life — and discovering why that absence is the most frightening fact in the universe. Reynolds has Asimov's same interest in the shape of civilizational history, told with a hard-SF rigor Asimov did not pursue.
- 8Buy
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A human envoy sent to a planet where no one is male or female, trying to bring a world into a galactic confederation — Le Guin has Asimov's same interest in how civilizations organize themselves and how they encounter others, told in prose that is one of the great achievements of literary science fiction.
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