It's science fiction, but stay with me here. Now I am well aware that science fiction isn't everyone's cup of tea. I mean, when you think of science fiction you probably think Star Trek and similar. Hell, I don't much like Star Trek. But Foundation is a classic to rival any book you care to mention, scifi or not.
It's set approximately 23,000 years in the future, so far ahead that civilisation has forgotten which world was the original cradle of humanity. Humans have colonised millions of star systems across the entire galaxy.
There are no aliens in Foundation. The story is set in the future, but it doesn't focus on the fact that it is the future. There are references to technology, but the technology rarely if ever actually plays a key part in the stories. The science fiction setting is basically just a way for the author to tell any story he likes, which is why it might appeal to a reader with little to no interest in science fiction.
It starts off on the capital world of the Galactic Empire in the last years before visible cracks start to show themselves in society. Although all appears well on the surface, the Empire and galaxy have in fact been in subtle decline for centuries. Scientific research has effectively ground to a halt across the galaxy and corruption is rife.
A group of about a hundred thousand people have been developing a science known as "Psychohistory" which basically combines psychology and mathematics to predict how large groups of humans are likely to behave. Under the leadership of genius Hari Seldon, they are able to plot the course of history and see that Trantor, the Galactic Capital, will lie in ruins within five hundred years.
The psychohistorians' findings are controversial, and they manage to engineer the Empire into exiling 70,000 of them to a remote world called Terminus, where they will compile an Encyclopaedia to preserve knowledge through the coming dark ages. The organisation is named the "Encyclopaedia Foundation number one" (later shortened to just "The Foundation"). The overarching aim is that the Foundation will be subtly guided through a series of crises over 1000 years, eventually emerging as the seed for a second, greater, more compassionate and more powerful Galactic Empire.
The story is told through a series of short stories, spanning 200 years, from the beginning of the end for the Empire, through to the emergence of The Foundation as a major galactic power, ending just over a generation before the first conflict between The Foundation and the remnants of the Empire.
Read it. You won't regret it, whether you normally like science fiction or not. Foundation is one of the literary greats and has played a crucial role in influencing our culture. Star Wars and many other influential cultural works were directly inspired by Foundation.
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