Hugo Award for Best Novel . Locus Award for Best Novel. Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Hugo Award for Best Series of All Time. The devastating and bitter confrontation between the two Academies has finally come to an end. The scientists of the First Academy won a victory, and now they are returning to the long-developed plan of Gary Seldon to create a new Empire on the ruins of the old one. But there are rumors that the Second Academy has not been destroyed and its recalcitrant adherents are preparing their revenge. Now, two exiled Academy citizensan apostate Council member and a historiango in search of the mythical planet Earth...and evidence that the Second Academy still exists. A dissident telepath from the Second Academy also goes in search of the Earth. Meanwhile, something or someone from outside the Academies makes plans in accordance with their own sinister goal. Soon, representatives of both the First and Second Academy will find themselves rushing to the very end of the universe to meet their fate.