SFScope friend Andrew Porter alerts us to the fact that the Folio Society is reprinting Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation Trilogy. The three-volume hardcover, slipcased set is introduced by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and illustrated by Alex Wells (frontispicee and six color illustrations per volume). The 792-page collection is available for $140 from this page.

The trilogy, originally written as a series of novellas published in Astounding from 1942 to 1950, won a special Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. The Folio Society says “In 1941, Isaac Asimov, a young scientist and writer, was inspired by Edward Gibbon’s [[[History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]] – and by contemporary global politics – to write an epic for his own age. He set out to tell of ‘the fall of the Galactic Empire and the return of feudalism, written from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the Second Galactic Empire’. The result was The Foundation Trilogy, an extraordinary science fiction epic that raises profound questions. Why do empires rise and fall? How is society best run? Can history be predicted? Asimov explores these ideas in a multi-layered, ingenious story that is as gripping today as when it was first published.”

Samples of the illustrations, as well as descriptions of the individual volumes, are available on this page.

Krugman’s spoilerific eight-page introduction is available for free in this pdf file. And reading it makes me want to dig out my copy of the trilogy for a re-read… if only I had the time.

Science fiction Grand Master Isaac Asimov died in 1992, at the age of 72.