"When the Galatic Empire began to die, when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony- the Foundation- to incubate art, science and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire. The course of the Foundation's growth was plotted according the science of psychohistory- conditions were arranged to bring about a series of crises forcing humanity to move rapidly along the route to future Empire and shorten the Dark Age..."--