The Foundation Series

Over the span of forty two years Isaac Asimov created an epic of Galactic proportions: he showed us the rise and fall of the largest human Empire ever. It consists of seven volumes (about 800,000 words), which although they can be read separately, are closely linked to one another.

At some unknown date Asimov decided to merge the Foundation series with his Robot books (making 15 novels of 1,500,000 words). After Asimov's death, the Asimov Estate[?] at the request of Janet Asimov approached Gregory Benford and asked him to write another Foundation story which he agreed to do, and at that same time suggested that it should form part of a trilogy with Greg Bear and David Brin writing the other two books, which they agreed to do.

Prelude To Foundation[?] contains Asimov's suggested reading order/chronology for his science fiction books in the introduction. The recommended reading order of the books is:

Robot short stories

• The Complete Robot[?] (1982), Collection of Asimov Robot stories[?] written between 1940 and 1976.
• Robot Dreams[?], Unanthologized short story

The Robot novels

• The Caves of Steel (1954)
• The Naked Sun[?] (1957)
• The Robots of Dawn[?] (1983)
• Robots and Empire[?] (1985)

The Empire novels

• The Stars, Like Dust[?] (1951)
• The Currents of Space[?] (1952)
• Pebble in the Sky (1950)

The Foundation novels

• Prelude to Foundation (1988)

The Second Foundation Trilogy

1. Foundation's Fear[?] (1997) by Gregory Benford
2. Foundation and Chaos[?] (1998) by Greg Bear.
3. Foundation's Triumph[?] (1999) by David Brin.

• Forward the Foundation[?] (1991)

The Foundation Trilogy

1. Foundation (1951)
2. Foundation and Empire[?] (1952)
3. Second Foundation[?] (1953)

• Foundation's Edge (1982)
• Foundation and Earth (1986)

Note that this list corrects several mistakes found in the list in Asimov's Prelude to Foundation

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• Trantor

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see Foundation Trilogy