(Part of the original Foundation Trilogy, winner of the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Novel Series) This is the first novel in Isaac Asimov's Foundation saga, originally a three-part masterwork-for which a special Hugo Award was created, Best All-Time Novel Series, recognizing its status as a central work of science fiction-that was later expanded to a seven-part 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-who has developed the study of psychohistory, or the dynamics of very large numbers of humans-has predicted the Empire's certain 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.