Foundation has been described as a condensed retelling of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Terminus is an outlier and an observer in a universe that goes through the convulsions of the slow, but inevitable breakdown.
"Decline and Fall" has been an inspiration for maybe the first book. Being that it started the series, it set the pieces for the worldbuilding, but not the narrative of the whole saga. The later books are way more exploratory in how a society can / should be reconstructed.
That being said, it's still 1950's science fiction. Good writing, but nowhere near the complexity of Stephenson's worldbuilding or G.R.R.Martin's politics / narrative threads.
Foundation has been described as a condensed retelling of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Terminus is an outlier and an observer in a universe that goes through the convulsions of the slow, but inevitable breakdown.