Three novels by Isaac Asimov that take place in a galaxy-spanning human civilization. In later years he would weld them into his overarching Robots/Foundation continuity, setting them in the lengthy era spanning the human colonization of the galaxy (The Stars, Like Dust), to the rise of the planet Trantor to being the pre-eminent galactic power on its way to founding the Galactic Empire (The Currents of Space), to the high period of that pre-Foundation Galactic Empire (Pebble in the Sky).
The Empire novels:
- Pebble in the Sky (1950)
- The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
- The Currents Of Space (1952)
The rise of Trantor to become the center of the Galactic Empire provides examples of:
- Absent Aliens: The three novels are set thousands of years apart, in a vast interstellar civilization (eventually a civilization that takes up the entire Milky Way Galaxy) but there are no aliens to be seen. (The Robot stories, earlier in the internal chronology, of course had robots; while in the later novels of the Foundation series Asimov introduced Transhuman Aliens, including some with roots in the "Spacers" of the "Robot trilogy" from long before even The Stars, Like Dust.)
- Galactic Superpower: By the time of The Currents of Space the empire of Trantor covers a significant fraction of the entire galaxy, and the Trantorian Empire increasingly dominates even the areas beyond its formal sovereignty. By the time of Pebble in the Sky the Trantorian Empire has been transformed into a true Galactic Empire, ruling every part of the Milky Way Galaxy (and with intergalactic travel never a factor in the setting).
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Over the course of the three novels, Earth goes from being something of a backwater, whose status as the original motherworld of the human race is still known to scholars, but about which most ordinary people have never given a second thought; to being a planet whose inhabitants claim to be the motherworld of the species...which claim is treated by the rest of the galaxy as an absurd provincial superstition. (By the time of the Foundation Series the very existence of Earth has been forgotten.)
- Standard Sci-Fi History: The three novels are set during the "Interstellar Exploration and Colonization" phase (The Stars, Like Dust) — as noted above, skipping the "Alien Contact" phase — through the "Formation of Empire" period (The Currents of Space) and "Empire at its Height" period (Pebble in the Sky).
