Actually, The Originist is Orson Scott Cards attempt to write a story into another authors series. The story took place on the planet Trantor. The genius scientist in the story was a friend and co-worker of Hari Seldon, the star of Asimov's Foundation series. The story takes place as the Foundation is being established on Terminus, before the Galactic Empire fell. My first impression of Everything2 was that it reminded me of those indexers, and I was about to attempt to search the web for the story when I stumbled on this node.