For more than ten millennia, humanity explored the Galaxy; the Empire, whose capital was Trentor, numbered more than twenty million inhabited worlds. But the laws of the Empire are inexorable, and the once prosperous Galactic Empire is slowly falling. but is surely moving towards complete disintegration. Endless star wars begin, interplanetary trade fades, distant worlds lose contact with the center of the Galaxy. And only the genius of Gary Seldon resists the final decline of human culture. A group of scientists from the Academy they created is building the beginnings of a new civilization on the ruins of the Empire.