The Originist
Encyclopedia
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
. It appears in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror
Maps in a Mirror
Maps in a Mirror is a collection of short stories by Orson Scott Card. Like Card's novels, most of the stories have a science fiction or fantasy theme...
. This story is set in Isaac Asimov’s
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
Foundation universe and was first published in the short story collection Foundation's Friends
Foundation's Friends
Foundation's Friends, Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov is a 1989 festschrift honoring science fiction author Isaac Asimov, in the form of an anthology of short stories set in Asimov's universes, particularly the Robot/Empire/Foundation universe. The anthology was edited by Martin H...
(1989).
Plot summary
The events in "The Originist" take place just after the first part of FoundationFoundation (novel)
Foundation is the first book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy . Foundation is a collection of five short stories, which were first published together as a book by Gnome Press in 1951...
and deal with Hari Seldon
Hari Seldon
Hari Seldon, a fictional character, is the intellectual hero of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on Trantor, he developed psychohistory, allowing him to predict the future in probabilistic terms...
's establishment of the Second Foundation
Second Foundation
Second Foundation is the third novel published of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and the fifth in the in-universe chronology. It was first published in 1953 by Gnome Press....
.