Foundation and Empire [antikvár]

PrologueThe Galactic Empire was falling.It was a colossal Empire, stretching across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the mighty double-spiral that was the Milky Way. Its fall was colossal, tooand a long one, for it had a long way to go.It had been falling for centuries before one man became really aware of that fall. That man was Hari Seldon, the man who represented the one spark of creative effort left among the gathering decay. He developed and brought to its highest pitch the science of psycho-history.Psycho-history dealt not with man, but with man-masses. ^ It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could j forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy ; that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound ; of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is some-thing else again.Hari Seldon plotted the social and economic trends of the time, sighted along the curves and foresaw the continuing and accelerating fall of civilization and the gap of thirty thousand years that must elapse before a strugghng new Empire could emerge from the ruins.It was too late to stop that fall, but not too late to close the gap of barbarism. Seldon established two Foundations at "op-posite ends of the Galaxy" and their location was so designed , that in one short millennium events would knit and mesh so n as to force out of them a stronger, more permanent, more ij quickly appearing Second Empire.