Foundation series

The Foundation series is a science fiction novel series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories and novellas in 1942–1950, and subsequently in three novels in 1951–1953, for nearly thirty years the series was widely known as The Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). It won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Asimov later added new volumes, with two sequels, Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and two prequels, Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993).

The premise of the stories is that in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon devises the theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. Although the momentum of the Empire's fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which "the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little" to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years. The novels describe some of the dramatic events of those years as they are shaped by the underlying political and social mechanics of Seldon's Plan.