Foundation
Gnome Press, 1951
As the Galactic Empire decays, the mathematician Hari Seldon uses psychohistory, a science that predicts the behaviour of whole populations, to shorten the dark age that will follow it.
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) wrote the Foundation stories in the 1940s, and they were gathered as Foundation in 1951, the first book of the trilogy. Seldon’s Foundation is set up to preserve knowledge and steer a thousand years of history. Each crisis it meets is settled less by force than by trade, religion and the control of technology.
The book is still under copyright, so no copy is kept here. Open Library lends it.