The Foundation universe describes a future history of humanity's colonization of the galaxy, spanning nearly 25,000 years, created through the gradual fusion of the Robot, Galactic Empire, and Foundation book series written by American author Isaac Asimov.
Works set in the universe
Asimov's Greater Foundation series
Merging the Robot, the Empire and the Foundation series The Foundation series is set in the same universe as Asimov's first published novel, Pebble in the Sky, although Foundation takes place about 10,000 years later. Pebble in the Sky became the basis for the Galactic Empire series. Then, at some unknown date (prior to writing Foundation's Edge) Asimov decided to merge the Foundation/Galactic Empire series with his Robot series. Thus, all three series are set in the same universe, giving them a combined length of 18 novels, and a total of about 1,500,000 words. The merger also created a time-span of the series of around 20,000 years. The Stars, Like Dust states explicitly that the Earth is radioactive because of a nuclear war. Asimov later explained that the in-universe reason for this perception was that it was formulated by Earthmen many centuries after the event, and which had become distorted, due to the loss of much of their planetary history. This work is regarded by Asimov as part of the Empire series, but does not directly mention either Trantor or the other Spacer worlds. One character is said to have a Visi-Sonor, the same musical instrument that is played by the clown Magnifico in Foundation and Empire. Asimov integrated the Robot series into his all-encompassing Foundation series, making the robot R. Daneel Olivaw appear again twenty thousand years later in the age of the Galactic Empire, in sequels and prequels to the original Foundation trilogy; and in the final book of the Robots series, Robots and Empire, Asimov describes how the worlds that later formed the Empire were settled, and how Earth became radioactive (which was first mentioned in Pebble in the Sky).
Standalone novels set in the universe While not mentioned in the "Author's Note" of Prelude to Foundation, the novels The End of Eternity (1955), Nemesis (1989), and The Positronic Man (1992) (written by Robert Silverberg) are related to the greater Foundation series. The End of Eternity is vaguely referenced in Foundation's Edge, where a Gaian character in Foundation and Earth mentions the Eternals, whose "task it was to choose a reality that would be most suitable to Humanity." (The End of Eternity also refers to a "Galactic Empire" within its story.) Asimov himself did not mention The End of Eternity in the series listing from Prelude to Foundation. As for Nemesis, it was written after Prelude to Foundation, but in the author's note Asimov explicitly states that the book is not part of the Foundation or Empire series, but that someday he might tie it to the others. In Forward the Foundation, Hari Seldon refers to a 20-thousand-year-old story of "a young woman that could communicate with an entire planet that circled a sun named Nemesis", a reference to Nemesis. Commentators noted that Nemesis contains barely disguised references to the Spacers and their calendar system, the Galactic Empire, and even to Hari Seldon which seem to have been deliberately placed for the purpose of later integration into the Foundation universe. According to Alasdair Wilkins, in a discussion posted on Gizmodo, "Asimov absolutely loves weird, elliptical structures. All three of his non-robot/Foundation science fiction novels — The End of Eternity, The Gods Themselves, and Nemesis — leaned heavily on non-chronological narratives, and he does it with gusto in The Gods Themselves." In The Robots of Dawn, Dr. Han Fastolfe briefly summarizes the story from "The Bicentennial Man" (1976), which was later expanded by Robert Silverberg into the novel The Positronic Man (1992).
Works set in universe The foreword to Prelude to Foundation contains the chronological ordering of Asimov's science fiction books. Asimov stated that the books of his Robot, Galactic Empire, and Foundation series "offer a kind of history of the future, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not plan consistency to begin with." Asimov also noted that the books in his list "were not written in the order in which (perhaps) they should be read." Forward the Foundation, does not appear in Asimov's list, as it was not yet published at the time, and the order of the Empire novels in Asimov's list is not entirely consistent with other lists. For example, the 1983 Ballantine Books printing of The Robots of Dawn lists the Empire novels as: The Stars, Like Dust, The Currents of Space, and Pebble in the Sky. The following works are listed in chronological order by narrative:
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