The basic link is mentioned in Foundation's Edge: an obscure myth about a first wave of space settlements with robots and then a second without. During the two-year lapse between writing the sequels and prequels, Asimov had tied in his Foundation series with his various other series, creating a single unified universe. In 1981, Asimov was persuaded by his publishers to write a fourth book, which became Foundation's Edge (1982).įour years later, Asimov followed up with yet another sequel, Foundation and Earth (1986), which was followed by the prequels Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993), published after his 1992 death. The later stories were published in pairs by Gnome as Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953), resulting in the 'Foundation Trilogy', as the series is still known. The first four stories were collected, along with a new introductory story, and published by Gnome Press in 1951 as Foundation.

Asimov wrote these early stories in his West Philadelphia apartment when he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Campbell, with whom he developed the concepts of the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the civilization-preserving Foundations, and psychohistory. According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. The original trilogy of novels collected a series of eight short stories and novelas published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. Although the momentum of the Empire's fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which 'the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little' to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. The premise of the stories is that, in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Asimov later added new volumes, with two sequels: Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, and two prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. It won the one-time Hugo Award for 'Best All-Time Series' in 1966. First published as a series of short stories and novellas in 1942–50, and subsequently in three collections in 1951–53, for nearly thirty years the series was a trilogy: Foundation Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. Astounding Science Fiction ( Street & Smith), Gnome Press, Spectra, Doubleday

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