Item from Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Foundation's original stated purpose — compiling all human knowledge into one reference work. Actually a cover story for the Seldon Plan. The greatest encyclopedia never completed because it was never meant to be.
The Encyclopedia Galactica is the grandest red herring in literary history. Hari Seldon told the Empire he needed to assemble the galaxy's best scholars on a remote planet to compile a comprehensive reference work before the dark ages destroyed accumulated knowledge. The Emperor's commission approved the project because it sounded harmless and got a troublesome prophet out of the capital. The scholars believed in their mission. The Board of Trustees organized, cataloged, cross-referenced, and compiled with genuine dedication while the Foundation's real purpose — building a civilization that could shorten the interregnum — developed around them. Salvor Hardin's political revolution sidelined the Encyclopedists, but the project continued in diminished form for decades, producing entries that nobody read because everyone was too busy surviving. The Encyclopedia's lasting contribution is literary: its entries serve as chapter epigraphs in the historical record, providing the omniscient academic perspective that contrasts with the ground-level chaos of the narrative. The Encyclopedia knows how everything turned out. The characters living through it do not.
In its physical form, the Encyclopedia exists as data archives — vast libraries of compiled entries covering science, history, culture, and technology from across the galaxy. The Encyclopedists' work product fills storage facilities in the old Foundation quarter on Terminus. Individual entries are scholarly, exhaustive, and increasingly irrelevant to the Foundation's actual activities. Excerpts from the Encyclopedia appear as epigraphs throughout the historical record — dry, authoritative summaries that frame events with academic detachment.
Also known as: the Encyclopedia, the Foundation Encyclopedia, the Galactic Encyclopedia