# Foundation *Foundation* is the keystone work of [[Isaac Asimov]]'s galactic-history saga, first serialized in *Astounding* in the 1940s and collected as a trilogy in the early 1950s (later extended with sequels and prequels). It is the single most influential science-fiction work on the worldview of the modern tech elite. ## The premise A mathematician, Hari Seldon, develops **psychohistory** — a statistical science that predicts the behavior of large populations across centuries. Foreseeing the inevitable collapse of a galactic empire and a thirty-thousand-year dark age to follow, Seldon establishes a "Foundation" of scientists at the galaxy's edge to preserve knowledge and compress the coming darkness to a single millennium. The saga follows the Foundation through successive crises in which Seldon's plan, and the limits of prediction, are tested. The core fantasy is that a small, far-sighted technical elite can read the direction of history and bend it toward a better outcome — a deeply flattering proposition to anyone who already believes they are that elite. ## Why it matters here [[Elon Musk]] calls Foundation "fundamental to creation of [[SpaceX]]," casting himself as a latter-day Seldon working to "prolong civilization" and preserve the "light of consciousness," and fusing the saga with Asimov's Zeroth Law (see [[Three Laws of Robotics]]). A copy rode the [[Tesla]] Roadster into orbit in 2018. The Foundation premise is also a clear ancestor of the [[Longtermism]] now common among AI founders. It is Case One in [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]]. ## See also - [[Isaac Asimov]] — the author - [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] — the hub - [[Longtermism]] — the present-day descendant of its premise