Encyclopedia Galactica Project

Table of Contents

C

Cleon I

... The last Galactic Emperor of the Entun dynasty. He was born in the year 11,988 of the Galactic Era, the same year in which Hari Seldon was born. (It is thought that Seldon's birthdate, which some consider doubtful, may have been adjusted to match that of Cleon, whom Seldon, soon after his arrival on Trantor, is supposed to have encountered.)
Having succeeded to Imperial thorn in 12,010 at the age of twenty-two, Cleon I's reign represented a curious interval of quiet in those troubled times. This is undoubtedly due to the skills of his Chief of Staff, Eto Demerzel, who so carefully obscured himself from public record that little is known about him.
Clen himself ... [F6]-1-3
... Though often receiving panegyrics for being the last Emperor under whom the First Galactic Empire was reasonably united and reasonably prosperous, the quarter-century reign of Cleon I was one of continuous decline. This cannot be viewed as his direct responsibility, for the Decline of the Empire was based on political and economical factors too strong for anyone to deal with at the time. He was fortunate in his selection of First Ministers - Eto Demerzel and then Hari Seldon, in whose development of psychohistory the Emperor never lost faith. Cleon and Seldon, as the object of the final Joranumite Conspiracy, with its bizarre climax ... [F7]-II-117

Commission of public safety

... The aristocratic coterie rose to power after the assassination of Cleon I, last of the Entuns. In the main, they formed an element of order during the centuries of instability and uncertainty in the Imperium. Usually under the control of the great families of the Chens and Divarts, it degenerated eventually into a blind instrument for maintenance of the status quo. ...
They were not completely removed as a power in the state until after the accession of the last strong Emperor, Cleon II. The first Chief Commissioner. ...
... In a way, the beginning of the Commission's decline can be traced to the trial of Hari Seldon two years before the beginning of the Foundational Era. That trial is described in Gaal Dornick's biography of Hari Seldon. ... [F1]-I-24

D

Darell, Arkady

novelist, born 11, 5, 362 F.E., died 1, 7, 443 F.E. Although primarily a writer of fiction, Arkady Darell is best known for her biography of her grandmother, Bayta Darell. Based on first-hand information, it has for centuries served as a primary source of information concerning the Mule and his times. ... Like "Unkeyed Memories," his novel "Time and Time and Over" is a stirring reflection of the brilliant Kalganian society of the early Interregnum, based, it is said, on a visit to Kalgan in her youth. ... [F3]-II-99

Demerzel, Eto

... While there is no question that Eto Demerzel was the real power in the government during much of the reign of Emperor Cleon I, historians are divided as to the nature of his rule. The classic interpretation is that he was another in the long line of strong and ruthless oppressors in the last century of the undivided Galactic Empire, but there are revisionist views that have surfaced and that insist his way, if a despotism, a benevolent one. Much is made, in this view, of his relationship with Hari Seldon, though that remains episode of Laskin Joranum, whose meteoric rise ... [F7]-I-3

F

The Four Kingdoms

The name given to those portions of the Province of Anacreon which broke away from the First Empire in the early years of the Foundation Era to form independent and shortlived kingdoms. The largest and most powerful of these was Anacreon itself which in area ...
... Undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of the history of the four Kingdoms involves the strange society forced temporarily upon it during the administration of Salvor Hardin. ... [F1]-III-99

K

Korell

... And so after three years of a war which was certainly the most unfought war on record, the Republic of Korell surrendered unconditionally, and Hober Mallow took his place next to Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin in the hearts of the people of the Foundation. [F1]-V-296

M

The Mule

... Less is known of "The Mule" than of any character of comparable significance to Galactic history. Even the period of his greatest renown is known to us chiefly through the eyes of his antagonists and, principally, through those of a young bride ... [F2]-II-103
It was after the fall of the First Foundation that the constructive aspect of the Mule's regime took shape. After the definite break-up of the first Galactic Empire, it was he who first presented history with a unified volume of space truly imperial in scope. The earlier commercial empire of the falled Foundation had been diverse and loosely knit, despite the impalpable backing of the predictions of psychohistory. It was not to be compared with the tightly controlled `Union of Worlds' under the Mule, particularly during the era of the so-called Search ... [F3]-I-7

P

Psychohistory

... Gaal Dornick, using nonmathematical concepts, has defined psychohistory to be that branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli. ...
... Implicit in all these definitions is the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment. The necessary size of such a conglomerate may be determined by Seldon's First Theorem which ... A further necessary assumption is that the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in order that its reaction be truly random. ...
The basis of all valid psychohistory lies in the development of the Seldon functions which exhibit properties congruent to those of such social and economic forces as ... [F1]-I-19

R

Riose, Bel

... In his relatively short career, Riose earned the title of "The Last of the Imperials" and earned it well. A study of his campaigns reveals him to be the equal of Peurifoy in strategic ability and his superior perhaps in his ability to handle men. That he was born in the days of the decline of Empire made it all but impossible for him to equal Peurifoy's record as a conqueror. Yet he had his chance when, the first of the Empire's generals to do so, he faced the Fundation squarely. ... [F2]-I-7

S

Seldon, Hari

... born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as -79 to the year 1 F.E. Born to middle-class parents on Helicon. Arcturus sector (where his father, in a legend of doubtful authenticity, was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet), he early showed amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are innumerable, and some are contradictory. At the age of two, he is said to have ...
... Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of psychohistory. Seldon found the field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science. ...
... The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography written by Gaal Dornick who, as a young man, met Seldon two years before the great mathematician's death. The story of the meeting ... [F1]-I-3
... found dead, slumped over his desk in his office at Streeling University in 12,069 G.E. (1 F.E.). Apparenttly Seldon has been working up to his last moments on psychohistorical equations; his activated Prime Radiant was discovered clutched in his hand. ...
According to Seldon's instructions, the instrument was shipped to his colleague Gaal Dornick who had recently emigrated to Terminus. ...
Seldon's body was jettisoned into space, also in accordiance with instructions he'd left. The official memorial service on Trantor was simple, though well attended. It is worth nothing that Seldon's old friend former First Minister Eto Demerzel attended the event. Demerzel had not been seen since his mysterious disappearance immediate following the Joranumite Conspiracy during the reign of Emperor Cleon I. Attemps by the Commission of Public Safety to locate Demerzel in the days following the Seldon memorial proved to be unsuccessful. ...
Wanda Seldon, Hari Seldon's granddaughter, did not attend the ceremony. It was rumored that she was grief-stricken and had refused all public appearances. To this day, her whereabouts from then on remain unknown. ...
It has been said that Hari Seldon left this life as he lived it, for he died with the future he created unfolded all around him. ... [F7]-V-479

Seldon, Wanda

... In the waning years of Hari Seldon's life, he grew most attached to (some say dependent upon) his granddaughter, Wanda. Orphaned in her teens, Wanda Seldon devoted herself to her grandfather's Psychohistory Project, filling the vacancy left by Yugo Amaryl. ...
The content of Wanda Seldon's work remains largely a mystery, for it was conducted in virtually total isolation. The only individuals allowed access to Wanda Seldon's research were Hari himself and a young man named Stettin Palver (whose descendant Preem would four hundred years later contribute to the rebirth of Trantor, as the planet rose from the ashes of the Great Sack [300 F.E.]). ...
Although the full extent of Wanda Seldon's contribution to the Foundation is unknown, it was undoubtedly of the greatest magnitute. ... [F7]-IV-337

Streeling University

... An institution of higher learning in the Streeling Sector of ancient Trantor ... Despite all these claims to fame in the fields of the humanities and sciences alike, it is not for those that the University looms large in today's consciousness. It would probably have come as a total surprise to the generations of scholars at the University to know that in later times Streeling University would be most remembered because a certain Hari Seldon, during the period of The Flight, had been in residence there for a short time. [F6]-3-49

T

Terminus

... Its location (see map) was an odd one for the role it was called upon to play in Galactic history, and yet as many writers have never tired of pointing out, an inevitable one. Located on the very fringe of the Galactic spiral, an only planet of an isolated sun, poor in resources and negligible in economic value, it was never settled in the five centuries after its discovery, until the landing of the Encyclopedists. ...
It was inevitable that as a new generation grew, Terminus would become something more than an appendage of the psychohistorians of Trantor. With the Anacreonian revolt and the rise to power of Salvor Hardin, first of the great line of. ... [F1]-II-49

Traders

... and constantly in advance of the political hegemony of the Foundation were the Traders, reaching out tenuous fingerholds through the tremendous distances of the Periphery. Months or years might pass between landings on Terminus; their ships were often nothing more than patchquilts of home-made repairs and improvisations; their honesty was none of the highest; their daring ...
Through it all they forged an empire more enduring than the pseudo-religious despotism of the Four Kingdoms. ...
Tales without end are told of these massive, lonely figures who bore half-seriously, half-mockingly a motto adopted from one of Salvor Hardin's epigrams, "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!" It is difficult now to tell which tales are real and which apocryphal. There are none probably that have not suffered some exaggeration. ... [F1]-IV-173
... With psychohistoric inevitability, economic control of the Foundation grew. The traders grew rich; and with riches came power. ...
It is sometimes forgotten that Hober Mallow began life as an ordinary trader. It is never forgotten that he ended it as the first of the Merchant Princes. ... [F1]-V-205

Trantor

... At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency reached its climax. As the center of the Imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations and located, as it was, toward the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity the Race had ever seen.
Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task. (It is to be remembered that the impossibility of the proper administration of the Galactic Empire under the uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in the Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner table of Trantor. ...
Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's dedicate jugular vein. ... [F1]-I-12
... The capital of the First Galactic Empire ... Under Cleon I, it had its "twilight glow." To all appearance, it was then at its peak. Its land surface of 200 million square kilometers was entirely domed (except for the Imperial Palace area) and underlaid with an endless city that extended beneath the continental shelves. The population was 40 billion and although the signs were plentiful (and clearly visible in hindsight) that there were gathering problems, those who lived on Trantor undoubtedly found it still the Ethernal World of legend and did not expect it would ever ... [F6]-2-27

V

Venabili, Dors

... Historian, born in Cinna ... Her life might well have continued on its uneventful course were it not for the fact that, after she had spent two years on the faculty of Streeling University, she became involved with the young Hari Seldon during the Flight ... [F6]-4-67
The life of Hari Seldon is well encrusted with legend and uncertainty, so that little hope remains of ever obtaining a biography that can be thoroughly factual. Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of his life deals with his consort, Dors Venabili. There is no information whatever concerning Dors Venabili, except for her birth on the world of Cinna, prior to her arrival at Streeling University to become a member of the history faculty. Shortly after that, she met Seldon and remained his consort for twenty-eight years. If anything, her life is more interlarded with legend than Seldon's is. There are quite unbelievable tales of her strength and speed and she was widely spoken of, or perhaps whispered of, as "The Tiger Woman." Still more puzzling than her coming, however, is her going, for after a certain time, we hear of her no more and there is no indication as to what happened.
Her role as a historian is evidenced by her works on ... [F7]-III-225

All quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 116th Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, without permission of the publishers.

[F1]	Foundation
[F2]	Foundation and Empire
[F3]	Second Foundation
[F4]	Foundation's Edge
[F5]	Foundation and Earth
[F6]	Prelude to Foundation
[F7]	Forward the Foundation