List of Foundation series characters

This is a list of characters in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

Through the centuries-spanning nature of the Foundation series, the lives of its various characters are limited to one or two of its nine episodes.^: 2, 5 In spite of the great success of the series, its characters have been described as "undifferentiated and one-dimensional" speaking with an "impoverished vocabulary". Their consciousness "shows absolutely no historical development and hence fails to evoke in the reader any feeling for the future universe they inhabit". Characterization in general is subordinated to the overall conception of Asimov's project.

Through the eyes of the characters the inevitability of the forces of history, made manifest in the Seldon Plan, is demonstrated to the reader repeatedly. Charles Elkins sees the characters in Foundation not as "tragic heroes. They are nondescript pawns, unable to take their destiny into their own hands." Only those elite few characters who understand the Plan can be considered free, with the Mule through his non-human psychic powers as the only exception. But while Elkins attributes the Foundation series a sense of "pervading fatalism", Nicolas David Gevers and James Gunn point out that the obstacles presented in Asimov's galactic history are overcome by active individual characters "through the initiative and competence which the Foundations nurture in their citizens".^{: 56 : 44} Donald E. Palumbo asserts that it is exactly the "flatness of character and setting" which permit the series "to be a masterpiece".^: 3 The heroism and depth of individual characters is consciously taken back by Asimov for the true hero of the series to stand out: "the sublime history of humankind itself".^: 46