The Foundation Trilogy (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) by Isaac Asimov

A landmark of science fiction's ""Golden Age,"" Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy which comprises the novels Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation has long been regarded a visionary masterpiece whose astonishing historical scope perfectly conveys science fiction's sense of wonder. First published as a cycle of stories in the 1940s and '50s, Asimov's iconic trilogy has endured to become, like the author himself, a legend of science fiction. Set in the far future, Foundation envisions a Galactic Empire that has thrived for 12,000 years, but whose decline into an age of barbarism lasting some 30 millennia is imminent if the predictions of renegade psycho-historian Hari Seldon are accurate. Hoping to shorten the interval of this impending new Dark Age, Seldon convinces the Empire's Commission of Public Safety to allow him to enact a diversionary plan one full of surprising subterfuges and intrigues intended to create and protect a Foundation on which the future Empire will be erected. Foundation and Empire advances the story farther into the future, in which a technologically advanced Foundation triumphs over attacking forces of the collapsing Empire.