The "Golden Age of Science Fiction" properly applies to the period from about 1937 to 1946, but I tend to think of it as also including the period from about 1946 to 1960. During that time the genre of science fiction was dominated by a small number of writers who could produce short stories and novels with equal skill -- writers like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, AE van Vogt. SF magazines were plentiful, and all of them needed stories, so many second-rank writers mixed with the first-rankers to produce a mix of material that often remains as strong today as it did when it was first published, even though the science of this "science fiction" is in many cases grievously outdated.
Isaac Asimov is one of the truly great names from the Golden Age. He wrote a lot of SF in his career, novels and short stories both. He's best known for his Foundation series, a classic of SF. It tells the centuries-long story of the Fall of the Galactic Empire, and of the Foundation Project that is intended to ease the effects of that Fall and eventually lead to a Second Galactic Empire. It began as a series of short stories in the 1940s, which were eventually collected into three paperback books:
- FOUNDATION
c.1951, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-33627-5
This first volume in the series contains five short stories. Together, these tell about the founding of the Foundation and its first hundred years of existence, as it rises to power among the disintegrating fragments of the former Empire. - FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE
c.1952, Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0-345-33628-3
The remaining four stories in the Foundation saga are much longer, so only two appear in each of the second and third books. The first story in this book, "Dead Hand," tells of a direct conflict between the Foundation and the dying Empire, and how forces foreseen by Hari Seldon centuries earlier ensure the Empire's ultimate defeat. The second story, "The Mule," describes a catastrophic breakdown in the Seldon Plan itself, brought on by the actions of a mysterious mutant named the Mule. - SECOND FOUNDATION
c.1953, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-33629-1
The two stories in this book finish the original Foundation series. The first story tells of the Mule's search for the Second Foundation, allegedly founded at the same time as the First Foundation. The Second Foundation is the only thing that can stop the Mule, because it's based on science of the mind and its members have the same power the Mule does. The second story tells of the First Foundation's own search for the Second Foundation, and how the Second Foundation arranges to protect its secrecy.
The Foundation Trilogy became a classic of SF, but it had one problem: the story was far from complete, so everyone wanted to know what happened next! In the early 1980s, Asimov finally agreed to return to the world of the Foundation. He started by writing the first full-length Foundation novel:
c.1982, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-30898-0
Golan Trevize, a brilliant rogue scientist from the First Foundation has deduced that whatever the history books say, the Second Foundation must still exist, and he wants to find it. The Mayor of the Foundation knows he's right but decides his ideas must be suppressed, so she exiles and silences him by sending him on a search for the mythical 'homeworld' of the human race. At the same time, Stor Gendibal, one of the younger leaders of the hidden Second Foundation, has discovered that the Second Foundation has been tricked and fooled into complacency by an unsuspected third player in the Seldon Plan. Gendibal believes that Trevize holds the key to this mysterious third player, and so he follows the Foundationer on his search. The search leads both of them to an obscure planet named Gaia, and a discovery that is not at all what either one of them expected.
Four years later Asimov wrote a fifth Foundation story, completing the story of Golan Trevize:
Asimov, Isaac
c.1986, Del Rey
ISBN: 0-345-33996-7
This novel completes the story of Golan Trevize's search for Earth. In the course of this search he encounters a whole network of unknown, uncataloged worlds, which together reveal the secret of Earth's location. He also encounters something unusual for an Asimov story: not one but two clearly non-human, alien intelligences. In my opinion this is by far the weakest of the five Foundation books that I have, because Asimov made a serious mistake in it. He uses this novel to connect his earlier 'humaniform robot' stories, particularly the Lije Bailey stories, to the Foundation universe. The two just don't mesh very well, and so FOUNDATION AND EARTH becomes a mis-matched patchwork of the two milieus.
