Foundation Trilogy

It is the story of the Galactic Empire, crumbling after twelve thousand years of rule. And it is the particular story of psycho-historian Hari Seldon, the only man who can see the horrors the future has in store: a dark age of ignorance, barbarism and violence that will last for thirty thousand years.

Asimov was born in Russia in 1919, his family moved to the USA where his father owned a succession of sweet shops.
Asimov graduated from Columbia University and, after a brief period in the army, he joined the Boston University school of medicine and thereafter took to full time writing, until his death in 1992

Introducer biography : Michael Dirda is a book critic on the Washington Post.