Prelude to Foundation Author’s Note
When I wrote “Foundation,” which appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, I had no idea that I had begun a series of stories that would eventually grow into six volumes and a total of 650,000 words (so far). Nor did I have any idea that it would be unified with my series of short stories and novels involving robots and my novels involving the Galactic Empire for a grand total (so far) of fourteen volumes and a total of about 1,450,000 words. You will see, if you study the publication dates of these books, that there was a twenty-five-year hiatus between 1957 and 1982, during which I did not add to this series. This was not because I had stopped writing. Indeed, I wrote full-speed throughout the quarter century, but I wrote other things. That I returned to the series in 1982 was not my own notion but was the result of a combination of pressures from readers and publishers that eventually became overwhelming.
In any case, the situation has become sufficiently complicated for me to feel that the readers might welcome a kind of guide to the series, since they were not written in the order in which (perhaps) they should be read. The fourteen books, all published by Doubleday, offer a kind of history of the future, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not plan consistency to begin with. The chronological order of the books, in terms of future history (and not of publication date), is as follows:
The Complete Robot (1982). This is a collection of thirty-one robot short stories published between 1940 and 1976 and includes every story in my earlier collection I Robot (1950). Only one robot short story has been written since this collection appeared. That is “Robot Dreams,” which has not yet appeared in any Doubleday collection.
- The Caves of Steel (1954). This is the first of my robot novels.
- The Naked Sun (1957). The second robot novel.
- The Robots of Dawn (1983). The third robot novel.
- Robots and Empire (1985). The fourth robot novel.
- The Currents of Space (1952). This is the first of my Empire novels.
- The Stars, Like Dust (1951). The second Empire novel.
- Pebble in the Sky (1950). The third Empire novel.
- Prelude to Foundation (1988). This is the first Foundation novel (although it is the latest written, so far).
- Foundation (1951).
The second Foundation novel. Actually, it is a collection of four stories, originally published between 1942 and 1944, plus an introductory section written for the book in 1949.
- Foundation and Empire (1952). The third Foundation novel, made up of two stories, originally published in 1945.
- Second Foundation (1953). The fourth Foundation novel, made up of two stories, originally published in 1948 and 1949.
- Foundations Edge (1982). The fifth Foundation novel.
- Foundation and Earth (1983). The sixth Foundation novel.
Will I add additional books to the series? I might. There is room for a book between Robots and Empire (5) and The Currents of Space (6) and between Prelude to Foundation (9) and Foundation (10) and of course between others as well. And then I can follow Foundation and Earth (14) with additional volumes-as many as I like.
Naturally, there’s got to be some limit, for I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.