After reading Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Isaac Asimov realised he could tell the story of the rise and fall of a galactic civilization. With support and encouragement from editor John W. Campbell, Asimov developed a series of stories that recounted the collapse of a Galactic Empire, the actions of the civilization-preserving Foundation and the future predicting science of psychohistory. Eight stories were serialised in Astounding magazine between May 1942 and January 1950, and were later published as a trilogy of fixup novels by Gnome Press between 1951 and 1953.

Asimov revisited the series in the 1980s when, as well as writing new stories about Hari Seldon and the Foundation, he actively worked to merge the Foundation series with his Robot and Galactic Empire short fiction and novels.

The gallery below lists all of the Robot, Galactic Empire and Foundation stories that comprise the larger storyline, ordered by date of publication, including those by other authors subcreating in Asimov's Foundation universe. Some of the stories, particularly the Robot City series, are not entirely consistent with the core storyline. An in-universe chronology is in preparation.