The Foundation Trilogy

First issued as three novels between 1951 and 1953, this sequence follows the fall of a Galactic Empire and the plan of the mathematician Hari Seldon, who uses psychohistory to shorten the coming dark age. His Foundation, planted on the remote world Terminus under cover of an encyclopedia project, meets successive crises through religion, trade, and political maneuver. A later volume brings a warlord known as the Mule, whose unpredictable power threatens the plan, and a hidden Second Foundation of mental scientists. The work is a future-history of institutions and prediction, not a single-hero space adventure.

Bound in three-quarter silver buckram, each volume a lighter tone than the previous, with colour pictorial paper front. Silver endpapers, each volume lightening in tone to match the binding. Dark grey slipcase printed and blocked on the front with a three colour planetary image.