This is the first novel in Isaac Asimov's Foundation saga, a three-part masterwork (later expanded to seven) that proved so central to the literature of science fiction that in 1966 a special Hugo Award was created for it: Best All-Time Novel Series. Foundation describes a far future in which humanity numbers in the quadrillions, spread across millions of worlds, governed by the vast and presumably eternal Empire. But genius mathematician Hari Seldon has predicted the Empire's downfall; in order to mitigate the chaos that would follow, he proposes that a Foundation of all human knowledge be built at the edge of the galaxy.