Considered one of the great classics in the genre, Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy describes the events spanning more than a thousand years and resulting in the creation of an ideal universal ruling corporation. In this initial volume, the Galactic Empire is beginning to die and the ends of the Galaxy are reverting to barbarism. Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists create a colony - the Foundation - to incubate art, science, and technology that would form the nucleus of the Second Empire. Utilizing the science of psychohistory and arranging to bring about a series of crises forcing the Empire to evolve more rapidly, they plot the course along which the Foundation grows. As the Galactic Empire declines, psychohistorian Hari Seldon and his band of psychobiologists form the Foundation, designed to be the nucleus of an eventual ideal universal ruling corporation.