foreknowledge

Columbus used his foreknowledge of a lunar eclipse to force the Arawak residents of present-day Jamaica to heel in fear.

The result was a uLIPSTIC, a universal platform not bound by foreknowledge of molecules, ligands, or receptors.

This enables him to plan a project — the “foundation” of the title — that will long outlast his death, complete with periodic messages to his heirs that always show foreknowledge of their challenges and crises.

Until one day the foreknowledge fails, because an inherently unpredictable figure has come upon the scene — the Mule, a Napoleon of galactic politics, whose advent was hard for even a psychohistorian to see coming because he’s literally a mutant, graced by some genetic twist with the power of telepathy.

It’s not to the point of Hollywood’s “Minority Report,” in which “Precrime” police use foreknowledge to arrest people before they commit crimes, but police across the country are turning to artificial intelligence to carry out their duties.