Asimov's Foundation Series Trivia
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59 free Asimov's Foundation Series trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Asimov's Foundation series trivia quiz covers the science fiction saga that began as short stories in Astounding in 1942 and grew into seven novels, a radio serial and an Apple TV+ series. The easy questions handle the basics: who wrote it, what psychohistory is, the name of the mathematician who invented it, the planet at the edge of the galaxy where the Foundation is exiled, and the mutant who breaks the Seldon Plan. From there it moves through the original trilogy story by story: Salvor Hardin and Anacreon, the traders, Hober Mallow, Bel Riose, Bayta Darell and the clown Magnifico, and the two searches for the Second Foundation. The harder half is for readers who have gone beyond the trilogy: Golan Trevize's choice on Gaia, the fifty Spacer worlds, the radioactive Earth and the robot waiting on the Moon, Cleon I and Eto Demerzel in the prequels, the posthumous novels by Benford, Bear and Brin, the Gibbon and Thucydides influences, and the odd afterlives of the series in Futurama, Deep Purple and Paul Krugman's economics. If you enjoyed our Dune or classic science fiction quizzes, this is the deep dive on Asimov's galaxy. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the Foundation series, each novel, its major characters and the television adaptation before publishing.
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Q 01In 2018 a copy of the Foundation trilogy was launched into orbit around the Sun by which company?
SpaceX
SpaceX sent it up on the first Falcon Heavy, stored on a quartz disc inside the Tesla Roadster that rode as the test payload; the disc was meant as the first volume of a library in space.
Q 02Seldon's psychohistory can forecast the behaviour of what?
Large populations
Large populations are all it can handle: the mathematics treats people in the mass, by statistics, so one unforeseeable individual, the Mule, later throws the whole Plan off course.
Q 03A Foundation mayor keeps a motto on his office wall that calls violence the last refuge of whom?
The incompetent
The incompetent: the mayor lives by it, outwitting armed neighbours rather than fighting them, and decades later a young rival sneers at the line as 'an old man's doctrine'.
Q 04According to Seldon's calculations, how long would the dark age after the Empire's fall last if nothing were done?
30,000 years
30,000 years of barbarism is what his mathematics foresees; he cannot stop the Empire falling, only shorten the dark age, and for saying so he is tried and exiled to the galaxy's edge.
Q 05In which magazine were the original Foundation stories published between 1942 and 1950?
Astounding Science-Fiction
Astounding Science-Fiction ran the saga as eight separate stories from 1942; when the first four became a book in 1951, Asimov had to write a new opening section to set them up.
Q 06Which historical work did Asimov say inspired the premise of the Foundation series?
Gibbon's Decline and Fall
Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Asimov had read it twice and, by his own account, set off to pitch a story with no plot in mind, then free-associated from a picture of a soldier to Rome's fall and on to a galaxy's.
Q 07Gnome Press, the small firm that first issued the Foundation trilogy as books, had a year earlier published which other Asimov classic?
I, Robot
I, Robot. Gnome sold so few copies, and paid so rarely, that Asimov said the trilogy earned him almost nothing until a horrified Doubleday editor pried the rights away.
Q 08What special one-off Hugo Award did the Foundation trilogy win in 1966?
Best All-Time Series
Best All-Time Series. Asimov, the toastmaster at that year's ceremony, was so sure another nominee would win that he had decided the nomination would have to be glory enough.
Q 09Which writer of Batman's Dark Knight trilogy went on to create the Foundation television series?
David S. Goyer
David S. Goyer. He sold the series in one line, as a thousand-year chess game between Hari Seldon and the Empire in which a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen.
Q 10On which remote planet is the Encyclopedia Foundation established after Seldon's exile?
Terminus
Terminus. Seldon had steered his own trial towards this sentence: he wanted his scholars sent to the empty edge of the galaxy, and let the court believe the idea was its own.
Q 11In the Foundation series, what is the Galactic Empire's capital world, an entire planet covered in city?
Trantor
Trantor. After the Great Sack the planet-wide city is stripped for scrap metal and its survivors turn to farming, while the Second Foundation hides among the ruins all along.
Q 12Which body puts Seldon on trial in 'The Psychohistorians' and offers him exile rather than martyrdom?
The Commission of Public Safety
The Commission of Public Safety. This clique of aristocrats, not the emperor, really runs the Empire, which is why its chief, Linge Chen, judges in person the man predicting its fall.
Q 13Who, as the Foundation's first Mayor, seizes power from the Encyclopedia's Board and plays the neighbouring kingdoms against each other?
Q 21For most of Foundation and Empire, the Mule travels unrecognised with the heroes in what disguise?
A runaway court clown
A runaway court clown. As the timid Magnifico he claims to be fleeing the Mule's own service, so the heroes spend the whole journey protecting the very man they are running from.
Q 22Who kills the psychologist Ebling Mis moments before he can reveal the Second Foundation's location to the Mule?
Bayta Darell
Bayta Darell. She has just realised that their timid travelling companion is the Mule himself, so shooting the dying Mis is the only way left to keep the secret from him.
Q 23In the early Foundation stories, where does a recording of Seldon appear at each crisis to explain what has just happened?
Salvor Hardin
Salvor Hardin. He strikes on the day Seldon's recording appears and proves him right: the great Encyclopedia, it admits, was a fraud, a task to keep the scholars busy until they could not turn back.
Q 14Which is the strongest of the four kingdoms neighbouring the Foundation in the early stories?
Anacreon
Anacreon. Its regent Wienis sends a salvaged Imperial battlecruiser against the Foundation, not knowing that the engineers who repaired it for him had built in a remote off switch.
Q 15In 'The Mayors', how does the early Foundation keep the four neighbouring kingdoms in line?
With a religion of science
With a religion of science. Priests trained by the Foundation tend the kingdoms' nuclear plants as holy mysteries, so a curse from the pulpit can black out a planet or stop a warship dead.
Q 16In 'The Traders', Limmar Ponyets frees a colleague on Askone by selling a crude device that does what?
Turns iron into gold
Turns iron into gold. Ponyets hides a recorder inside the machine, catches the buyer using a device that is a capital crime on his own planet, and blackmails him with the pictures.
Q 17Which Master Trader investigates the Republic of Korell, is tried for handing a 'missionary' to a mob, and ends up as Mayor?
Hober Mallow
Hober Mallow. He proves the 'missionary' was a Korellian secret policeman, then wins the war without a battle, simply by cutting off the Foundation gadgets Korell has come to depend on.
Q 18Which Imperial general in Foundation and Empire declares war on the Foundation, only to be recalled and executed by his own emperor?
Bel Riose
Bel Riose. Asimov modelled him on Belisarius, the Byzantine general, and gave him the same trap: he is winning his war when that very success makes his emperor pull him home.
Q 19In Prelude to Foundation, which historian is recruited to protect the fugitive Seldon and later becomes his wife?
Dors Venabili
Dors Venabili. Sent to keep him alive on the run, she stays for decades as his wife and protector, and only at the very end is she revealed to be a robot.
Q 20What is the Mule, the conqueror who overthrows the Foundation in Foundation and Empire?
An emotion-bending mutant
An emotion-bending mutant. He takes whole worlds without a fight by turning their defenders' loyalty to himself, and his fiercest opponents end up as his most devoted officers.
The Time Vault
The Time Vault. Its record is perfect until the Mule invades: that day the recording calmly describes a civil war that never came, and its listeners realise the plan has gone wrong.
Q 24In Second Foundation, which planet does the Mule's fleet lay waste, wrongly believing it the Second Foundation's home?
Tazenda
Tazenda. His agent is drawn there because the name sounds like 'Star's End', Seldon's clue to the hiding place, which is exactly the mistake the real Second Foundation wanted him to make.
Q 25What title is held by the leader of the Second Foundation's ruling council of mentalics?
First Speaker
First Speaker. The Second Foundation counts itself a society of equals, so the title promises nothing grand: its holder's one official privilege is that, at council, he speaks first.
Q 26Which teenage girl follows Homir Munn to Kalgan and later escapes with the trader Preem Palver in Second Foundation?
Arcadia Darell
Arcadia Darell. She believes she has outwitted everyone, but the Second Foundation had adjusted her mind when she was a baby, and the kindly trader who rescues her is its leader.
Q 27Which 1982 novel, written after a 30-year gap under pressure from fans and publishers, became Asimov's first New York Times bestseller?
Foundation's Edge
Foundation's Edge. Asimov had dodged a sequel for decades, until a Doubleday editor simply told him he was signing a contract, with an advance so far beyond his usual that he protested.
Q 28Which Foundation councilman is sent out by Mayor Harla Branno to search for the Second Foundation in Foundation's Edge?
Golan Trevize
Golan Trevize. Branno arrests him for treason for voicing a belief she secretly shares, then sends him out as her 'lightning rod', bait to draw the hidden enemy's fire away from her.
Q 29What is Gaia, the world discovered in the Sayshell Sector in Foundation's Edge?
A planet-wide group consciousness
A planet-wide group consciousness. Every person, animal and even rock on Gaia shares one mind, and it means to keep growing until the whole galaxy thinks together as 'Galaxia'.
Q 30At the end of Foundation's Edge, why does its hero say he chose Gaia over both Foundations?
It alone could later be reversed
It alone could later be reversed. Galaxia would take centuries to build, while either Foundation's victory would be final at once; still unsure, he sets off to find Earth and test his choice.