Foundation

Both imagine scientifically engineered societies — but Huxley is horrified by control while Asimov is cautiously optimistic. Read together, they define the spectrum of 20th-century techno-utopianism.

Both written in the same postwar decade, both concerned with the mechanisms by which civilizations sustain or destroy themselves. Orwell sees knowledge as a target of oppression; Asimov sees it as the only salvation.

Herbert wrote Dune explicitly in conversation with Foundation — the Bene Gesserit breeding program and the Spacing Guild's monopoly on navigation are responses to Asimov's psychohistory. Both are concerned with how elites shape civilization across centuries.

Adams's Deep Thought and the answer to life, the universe, and everything is a direct parody of Seldon's mathematical approach to civilizational questions. The joke only lands if you know Foundation.

Another novel about a child selected by a system larger than himself to serve a civilizational purpose. Like Foundation, it raises questions about manipulation in service of survival.

Le Guin is Asimov's complement: where Foundation has almost no interiority, Le Guin is all interiority. Reading both defines the full range of what science fiction can do philosophically.