This happened because Asimov had no idea how to continue the story after the fifth novel in the series. The first two were sequels, while the final two were prequels to the series. During the eighties, he was persuaded to pen more books in the series, and wound up writing and releasing four more books. He formed the Foundation in the first place to preserve the best parts of galactic civilization after the Galactic Empire’s collapse.Īfter “Second Foundation” was released, the series was a trilogy.

Hari Seldon is the leader of the Psychohistorical movement that creates the Foundation as well as the Seldon plan. The books, which were published between 1951 to 1953, and they went on to become some of Asimov’s most popular work.ĭuring his time working at the Naval Yard in West Philadelphia, he lived in an apartment and worked on these stories. He submitted his first “Foundation” story on September 8, and Campbell bought it the next week and it was published in May of 1942. The two developed psychohistory, the Galactic Empire’s collapse, and the civilization-preserving Foundations.Īt the end of John and Isaac’s two hour meeting, he planned to write a series of stories about the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the subsequent rise of the second. Asimov put a few ideas for these stories together while he was about to meet with an editor named John W. The books in the series were published Gnome Press.Ī few of the ideas used for these books were based off of the Roman Empire’s crumbling that he got from a book written by Edward Gibbons that documented the fall of the Roman Empire. The final four stories were published in pairs and make up the first two sequels of the series. The novel “Foundation” is made up of the first four of these short stories, with a fifth that precede all of them. The first three novels are made up of nine stories, eight of which were first published from 1942 until 1950 in Astounding Magazine. Author Isaac Asimov wrote the “Foundation” series of science fiction novels.

Asimov foundation and empire