How does the Galactic Empire of the Foundation Series at its

>>52190385

aside from the impenetrable sheilds, the near limitless energy, the instantaneous interstellar travel, ray guns, and atomic-scale knives they'd be a push over for most other galactic leve entities.

>>52190385
during the decline many people considered ordinary nuclear weapons to be legitimately threatening so i can only imagine they weren't terribly amazing at the height of their power.

>>52190781
To be fair, during their height there was no need to worry about them because the Empire owned everything with no rebellions

>>52190385
That metaphor about Trantor having its jugular exposed is pretty telling. The first book clearly shows that the Empire collapses because of logistics.

>>52190942
how so?

>>52191601
Not him, but.

>Incompetent administrators
>Series of weak Emperors

>>52191601
leadership was spread to thin and the elite didn't actually care to govern it's people. as a result the galaxy slowly devolved into feudalism as the empires influence waned.

>>52190781
That was literally thousands of years later, though. The empire had been in decline since long before Hari Seldon's time. Nukes were peanuts at their height.

>>52191675

To be fair, it's quite impressive how even at the height of the Galactic Dark Ages, engineers were able to figure out how to make interstellar battleships run on steam power.

>>52191805
steam powered space ships aren't entirely unfeasible to begin with. hell you could use the steam exhaust as thrust.

>>52191601
>how so?
Trantor, the seat of the Empire, was wholly reliant on a constant 24/7 stream of supply ships to feed its population. Any minor interruption in the flow of goods was catastrophic, because the Empire was spread too thinly to rebound easily from problems.

>>52191896
So just like terra and courascant then

>>52192120
Pretty much, except with a competent writer who had some vague sense of scale.

>>52192186
Wasn't Trantor's population 80 Billion?

>>52192240

40 billion, IIRC.

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>>52192186
>>52192240
>>52192574

Trantor was practically a multileveled city which covered the entire surface and descended deep below.

In the first story of Foundation the main character meets native Trantorians who considered seeing the sun / surface an utterly bizarre idea and unnatural.

>>52192574
It was 40 billions Administrators, not including their civilian residents

>>52192916

No, not true.

http://www.angelfire.com/un/corosus/books/Asimov_the_foundation.pdf (Page 19 of the PDF)

>Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task.

So more than 40 billion, but nothing to indicate double that. There is also absolutely nothing to indicate that 40b was the number of administrators, and there was a separate population count.

That being said, you get on page 16 that there are nearly 25 million worlds in the empire, which makes it considerably bigger "horizontally" than say, the IoM, which has about a million

>>52193033
Whoah there.

That sounds dangerously close to implying that 40k isn't the most powerful setting out of everything ever that can oneshot everything.

>>52193070
Foundation Empire has FTL travel not involving going through hell. That puts them ahead of 40K

>>52193070
Galactic Empire is clearly what Humanity was before they collapsed.

>>52192688
God, that's an eerie as fuck picture.

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>>52193033
>you will never live to see Humanity rule 25 million worlds.

>>52190385

The foundation series is such soft sci-fi its really hard to tell.

Sure they mention Force fields, atomic artillery and Q-beams, but its never mentions how useful they were.

>>52190385
The Foundation Series?

Damn good. Time was its ultimate enemy in the end, but it definetly was extremely powerful. Outranks Star Wars and Star Trek, and probably could take on 40k equally. Unless Dark Age of Technology gets thrown in, at which point I'm not sure if anything stands a chance.
>inb4 argument on nuh-uh, that's better

>>52193223

You should read the Empire series, particularly the one with Space Cotton picked by white slaves overseen by their black masters.

>>52194432

The technology in Foundation is esoteric and difficult as fuck to understand on higher levels. This combined with decline of civilization was the reason why technology became a religion on some worlds, a bit like AdMech. This happens in Foundation book's third story, The Mayors which is also my favorite story from the book itself.

>>52194532

Easily my favorite as well, the liturgies they say on the Anachreonian (is that their name? Phoneposting, but I know the fourth book was Korell) were crazy and my first introduction to "techno-cult" before 40k.

>mfw you're an AI encoded with the Three Laws
>mfw you're used to calculate hyperspace trajectories
>mfw hyperspace travel temporarily kills your crew

What do?

>>52194504
Ah, /pol/'s approved readings I see.

>>52194567

blue screen myself to death

>>52194590

It's incredibly subtle in the way it brings up race, like the rebellious slaves had blonde or pale skin tanned horribly by the radioactive sun, or one of the daughters of the aristocratic families had mocha skin, was very short, and had a huge attitude.

>>52194567

Laugh about it.


In a side note, what do you guys think of the implication that merging the Robots and Foundation series led to the Robots under R. Daneel exterminating all non-human sapient life in the galaxy?

>>52194624
Well, it was a different age back then, when Asimov was writing. Different thinking. And I don't think he was particularly liberal.....

Anyway, that's /pol/
Back on topic for me!

>>52194627

I honestly couldn't care less beyond finding Human-obsessed militaristic machines awesome.

Asimov had a fantastic explanation on why he never included alien races in his novels, primarily because he found it exhausting to write what is ultimately a race of two-dimensional beings, and partially because his publisher was a massive racist and anti-Semite.

>>52194627

never happened, just like the later books.

>>52194677

You have The Gods Themselves.

>>52194658

It was completely intentional, the entire thing was a subtle reversal of the dream that was antebellum south.

>>52194677
>primarily because he found it exhausting to write what is ultimately a race of two-dimensional beings

Which is odd because the aliens in "The Gods Themselves" were incredibly well written and interesting as fuck.

>>52194721

He also wrote Nightfall with a completely alien race he spent a page in the beginning saying he is going to write them exactly like humans.

Ooh, you need to read that story, it's got a scene where they talk about the possibility of life on worlds with only one sun and it is fantastic.

>>52194765
Is that the one where the world is going to go into eternal night or something?

>>52194721
>>52194765

Again, Asimov had an absurdly racist publisher and, while he *can* write interesting races, he couldn't write them all the time.

>>52194796

>Eternal night

It's only night for an hour

The entire planet goes fucking bonkers.

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>>52194721
>>52194706
>mfw the concept of The Two Billion

>>52192120
It's actually a veiled reference to late Republican and Imperial Rome. Rome had the exact same issues.

>>52195067

Asimov was fascinated with cyclical history, he really made it work.

>>52195067
>Veiled reference
Dog, he expressly said the Foundation Series was the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in space.

>>52194835
>The Two Billion
What's that?

>>52195457
To deal with overpopulation the Governments of Earth determine that they will limit the population of Earth to roughly 2 billion people. Meaning that they had to kill the rest.

>>52195584
Fug

>>52195584

Was that in the Caves of Steel? That insisted the world must become a barren ecumenopolis to support a staggering 6 billion people.

>>52195805
Specifically it's in The Gods Themselves. I haven't read Caves of Steel so it might be in that as well.

>>52195834

It also might happen in the end of I, Robot, when the Machines start subtly influencing the growth of society to something most optimal for human happiness and survival.

Even if said future is isolated tribes of astonishingly advanced human hunter-gatherers.

I love how the Colonists in the Robots series are elitist assholes who own entire continents and have vast complexes ran entirely by robots.