n the far future of the human race, in a populous galactic empire firmly governed from the core planet Trantor, only one man can see the axe waiting to fall. That man is Hari Seldon. He is the proponent of a science dubbed "psychohistory" that uses psychology and statistics to predict the future. Seldon's calculations show that Trantor, with its billions of bureaucrats, will fall within 500 years, propelling the Empire into a Dark Age that will last for millennia.
Not only do Seldon's predictions fall on deaf ears, but the Trantorian government tries him for treason and sedition. He and his staff are exiled to a remote planet at the edge of the galaxy. But Seldon is not dismayed; in fact, this was his plan all along. He has set up this chain of events in order to isolate his group, the Foundation, from the coming disaster. They are to spend the next few generations completing an Encyclopedia Galactica to preserve human knowledge.
But the Dark Age is heralded by fall-of-Rome decadence and barbarism. Provinces of the Empire break apart into their own little kingdoms, and the ones surrounding the Foundation's planet Terminus cast greedy eyes at the Foundation's land and still-running atomic power. Terminus has no army or battle-fleet to protect it. Can they negotiate...or manipulate...their way out of annexation?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right"
At the heart of Foundation is Isaac Asimov's invented science of psychohistory. In order for its predictions to be valid, there must be as few variables as possible at each crisis of choice. That means the circumstances at each crisis have to clamp down on the characters to the point where they seem to have no good choices available. It's a suspenseful mechanism, only slightly undermined by Asimov's tendency to resolve the action offstage and have the main character sum it up for readers over a leisurely cigar.
On the other hand, Asimov very much enjoys turning the tables, and the surprises he builds into the storyline add considerable charm to a staccato narrative. The epigrams and snippets of information from the Encyclopedia Galactica that open each chapter also unify the chunks of story, and help anchor this future time in "historical" reality.
Foundation is the first book of a trilogy (followed by Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation) that received a Hugo Award in 1965 for "Best All-Time Series." Asimov returned to the world of Foundation later in his career with several large novels, and recently some acclaimed authors (such as Gregory Benford and Greg Bear) have taken up the torch with shared-world sequels. It's science fiction on a grand scale, and it deserves its place as part of the historical foundation of the field today.
