Hari Seldon - Prelude To Foundation

Prelude To Foundation

As a 32-year-old assistant professor of mathematics at Helicon University, Seldon visits Trantor from his native Helicon to attend the Decennial Mathematics Convention. He presents a paper which indicates that one could theoretically predict the Galactic Empire's future. At first, Seldon has no idea how this could be done in practice, and he is fairly confident that no one could actually fulfill the possibility. Shortly after his presentation, he becomes a lightning rod for political forces who want to use psychohistory for their own purposes. The rest of the novel tells of his flight, which lasts for approximately a year and which takes him through the complex and variegated world of Trantor. During his flight to escape the various political factions, he discovers how psychohistory can be made a practical science. It is in this novel that he meets his future wife Dors Venabili, future adopted son Raych Seldon, and future partner Yugo Amaryl.

Read more about this topic:  Hari Seldon

Famous quotes containing the words prelude to, prelude and/or foundation:

    The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.
    Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)

    I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.
    Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)

    I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,—its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)