Foundation

Asimov conceived Foundation as a tribute to Gibbon's History of Rome transposed to a galactic scale, and the result is one of the most ambitious narrative edifices in science fiction. The idea of "psychohistory" — predicting the future of masses as a statistical problem — remains fascinating decades later. The characters are more archetypes than people, which can disappoint, but the scale of the vision compensates. Essential reading for understanding the genre.