Overture to the Foundation

A bold depiction of humanity's future, introducing one of the greatest masterpieces of science fiction literature, Isaac Asimov's cycle of Foundation novels. It is a work unsurpassed in its unique blend of non-stop action, bold ideas and sophistication, charting the struggle of a brave group of people to save civilisation from an unstoppable tide of darkness and violence - and it all begins with the story of one extraordinary man.

The year is 12 020 E. G. and Emperor Cleon I. sitting uneasily on the imperial throne in Trantor. Here in the glorious, many-domed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technical and cultural complexity. But Kleon knows that some people are bent on his downfall - people he would have destroyed if he could foresee the future. Hari Seldon came to Trantor to publish a treatise on psychohistory, his remarkable predictive theory. But the young off-world mathematician does not yet know that he has already sealed his fate and that of the whole of humanity. Hari is endowed with prophetic powers that make him the most wanted man in the Empire... a man with the key to the future - an apocalyptic power that will forever be known as the Foundation.