Foundation and Chaos (Greg Bear) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Janet Asimov, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Jennifer Brehl, David Barber, and Joe Miller. And also to the millions of fans of Isaac Asimov, who will keep his universes and characters alive for a very long time indeed.

The centuries recede, and the legend of Hari Seldon grows: the brilliant man, wise man, sad man who charted the course of the human future in the old Empire. But revisionist views prosper, and cannot always be easily dismissed. To understand Seldon, we are sometimes tempted to refer to apocrypha, myths, even fairy tales from those distant times. We are frustrated by the contradictions of incomplete documents and what amount to hagiographies.

This we know without reference to the revisionists: that Seldon was brilliant, Seldon was key. But Seldon was neither saint nor divinely inspired prophet, and of course, he did not act alone. The most pervasive myths involve…

—Encyclopedia Galactica,

117th Edition, 1054 F.E.