Foundation

Mind-numbing. Read it this morning, watched a movie since, and I'm still in awe of it. My first sci-fi ever (as in when I first read it, today was not the first time I read sci-fi) and probably still my favourite.

It begins a really long time into the future when humankind is spread across space and is all part of one big Empire. Everyone thinks it will last forever, but a man called Hari Seldon predicts the collapse of the Empire, and he is right because he is the best psychohistorian ever. Psychohistory is 'the study of mob reactions to events', or the prediction of events by using a mixture of history, psychology and statistics, more or less. So he creates a mini world to tide over the chaos, which is known as Foundation. The book talks about mainly four heroes - Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, Limmar Ponyets and Hober Mallow. Fascinating.

(Statutory warning: this was written some time ago, but I couldn't finish it and am publishing it now.)