A truly mind-boggling book. It starts off with Hari Seldon, inventor of the science of psychohistory – in itself a mind-boggling concept. Psychohistory can predict the general direction history will take by calculating the aggregate probabilities of human behaviour en masse. With this new statistical science he predicts the imminent demise of the Empire, and a Dark Age for humankind.

There is no way to stop the fall of the Empire, but Seldon can see a way to shorten the Dark Age that will follow – establish a Foundation to compile an Encyclopedia Galatica that will contain the sum of human knowledge for future generations to use as a guide to get humanity back on track. The Imperial government is understandably not very happy about his predictions and exiles the Foundation to a distant planet, where its scientists and historians can potter about compiling their encyclopedia and not interfere with the sweep of history. Which is exactly what Seldon has predicted, and has taken into the plan.

The rest of the book follows successive generations of the Foundation’s leaders at three vital moments of crisis, when it looks like the Foundation, with no military or natural resources to speak of, will be crushed with its mission incomplete. To say more about how the crises are resolved would probably amount to a spoiler, but suffice it to say that each is solved not through war but by other broad mechanisms of history – diplomacy, religion and trade. Just the way Seldon predicted and planned it.

The way in which the technology of the Foundation is disguised as religion is fascinating, building on Clarke’s principle that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Well, the whole book is fascinating. Go read it.