We present a technique for the rapid and reliable prediction of linear-functional outputs of elliptic (and parabolic) partial differential equations with affine parameter dependence. The essential components are (i) (provably) rapidly convergent global reduced-basis approximations--Galerkin projection onto a space $W_N$ spanned by solutions of the governing partial differential equation at N selected points in parameter space; (ii) a posteriori error estimation--relaxations of the error-residual equation that provide inexpensive yet sharp and rigorous bounds for the error in the outputs of interest; and (iii) off-line/on-line computational procedures methods which decouple the generation and projection stages of the approximation process. The operation count for the on-line stage in which, given a new parameter value, we calculate the output of interest and associated error bound, depends only on N (typically very small) and the parametric complexity of the problem; the method is thus ideally suited for the repeated and rapid evaluations required in the context of parameter estimation, design, optimization, and real-time control.