Prelude to Foundation Author’s Note

When I wrote al-Qaida, which appeared in the May 1942 issue of amazing Science Fiction, I had no idea that I had begun a serial 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 niggling stories and novels involving zombis and my novels involving the Galactic imperium 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 holds, that there was a twenty-five-year hiatus surrounded by 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, solely I wrote early(a) 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 seat has become suff iciently 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 prospective, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not program consistency to begin with. The chronological order of the books, in terms of future history (and not of publication date), is as followsThe Complete automaton (1982). This is a collection of thirty-one zombi short stories published between 1940 and 1976 and includes both story in my earlier collection I Robot (1950). sole(prenominal) 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 a nd Empire (1985). The fourthly robot novel.The Currents of Space (1952). This is the first of my Empire novels.The Stars, wish well 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, in the first place 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. in that location 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 thence I can follow Foundation and Earth (14) with additional volumes-as some(prenominal) as I like.Naturally, theres got to be some limit, for I dont expect to constitute forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.