Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [1]
“The Foundation series is one of the masterpieces of science fiction. If you’ve never read these novels, then you’re in for a treat, and even if you’ve already read them, then you owe it to yourself to reread them, because they’re still great.”—Allen M. Steele
“Quite simply, Asimov got me started.”—Liz Williams
“Isaac was still in his teens when I met him, a fan of mine before I was a fan of his. Writing for John W. Campbell back in the famous ‘golden age of science fiction,’ he became one of the founders of our field. With the robot stories and the Foundation stories, he helped to shape science fiction as we know it.”—Jack Williamson
Bantam Spectra Books
by Isaac Asimov
THE FOUNDATION NOVELS
Prelude to Foundation
Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation’s Edge
Forward the Foundation
THE ROBOT NOVELS
I, Robot
The Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun
The Robots of Dawn
Nemesis
The Gods Themselves
Fantastic Voyage
With Robert Silverberg
Nightfall
The Positronic Man
FOUNDATION AND EARTH
A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday hardcover edition published 1986
Bantam mass market edition / September 2004
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1986 by Nightfall, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-2130
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.
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eISBN: 978-0-553-90094-1
v3.1
To the memory of Judy-Lynn del Rey
[1943–1986]
a giant in mind and spirit.
THE STORY BEHIND THE FOUNDATION
ON AUGUST 1, 1941, WHEN I WAS A LAD OF TWENTY-ONE, I was a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University and had been writing science fiction professionally for three years. I was hastening to see John Campbell, editor of Astounding, to whom I had sold five stories by then. I was anxious to tell him a new idea I had for a science fiction story.
It was to write a historical novel of the future; to tell the story of the fall of the Galactic Empire. My enthusiasm must have been catching, for Campbell grew as excited as I was. He didn’t want me to write a single story. He wanted a series of stories, in which the full history of the thousand years of turmoil between the fall of the First Galactic Empire and the rise of the Second Galactic Empire was to be outlined. It would all be illuminated by the science of “psychohistory” that Campbell and I thrashed out between us.
The first story appeared in the May 1942 Astounding and the second story appeared in the June 1942 issue. They were at once popular and Campbell saw to it that I wrote six more stories before the end of the decade. The stories grew longer, too. The first one was only twelve thousand words long. Two of the last three stories were fifty thousand words apiece.
By the time the decade was over, I had grown tired of the series, dropped it, and went on to other things. By then, however, various publishing houses were beginning to put out hardcover science fiction books. One such house was a small semiprofessional firm, Gnome Press. They published my Foundation series in three volumes: Foundation (1951); Foundation and Empire (1952); and Second Foundation (1953). The three books together came to be known as The Foundation Trilogy.
The books did not do very well, for Gnome Press did not have the capital with which to advertise and promote them. I got neither statements nor royalties from them.
In early 1961, my then-editor at Doubleday, Timothy Seldes, told me he had received a request from a foreign publisher to reprint the Foundation