Quantification for the Foundation [Foundation quotes]

[Murazor]

This thread started as a resource for versus debating and therefore this summary (and any others to come afterwards) will be organized as a fact sheet for findings concerning a number of fields of interest, such as the scope of the presented civilizations, their populations, their general technological capabilities for warfare and otherwise, as well as any additional matter that seems relevant.

Size & demography

The Galactic Empire in Seldon's day nominally ruled over the entire Milky Way galaxy, spanning "billions of suns" (Mayors, 3) and "nearly twenty-five million inhabited planets" (Psychohistorians, 1). According to Seldon, it has a population of "nearly a quintillion human beings" (Psychohistorians, 6).

Of the post-imperial states, it is known that the Kingdom of Anacreon spans twenty five star systems with thirty one or more inhabited planets and a total population of nineteen billions (Mayors, 6), while the Korellian Republic embraced "some half-dozen stellar systems" (Merchant Princes, 1).

In the period explored, the Foundation grows from a single planet to a minor galactic state with effective control over the Four Kingdoms (Anacreon, plus its competing neighbors of Daribow, Konom and Smyrno) and Askone. Though no specifics are given, extrapolation from the known demographic figures of Anacreon suggests the Foundation to have a population of high tens to low hundreds of billions spread across high tens to low hundreds of planets in Mallow's time.

-Planetary populations of interest

Trantor, Imperial capital and throneworld, has a stated population "well in excess of forty billions" (Psychohistorians, 3) at the beginning of the thirteenth millennium. However, since it is also an ecumenopolis "75.000.000 square miles in extent" (Psychohistorians, 3), this figure suggests extremely low population densities.

Terminus, capital of the Foundation, was first settled by a hundred thousand colonists (Psychohistorians, 6). Fifty years later, the population was "a good million" (Encyclopedists, 3). Approximately one century after this, there were "five million homes on Terminus" (Merchant Princes, 14), which suggests populations in the tens of millions.

Industry

We are given nothing useful about Imperial industrial capacity, except for the fact that Trantor is an ecumenopolis and that it builds big ships. However, since we aren't given either useful timeframes or the amount of resources devoted to either effort, nothing much can be done with either.

For the Foundation, the closest to useful data is the Anacreontian militarization incident, though my initial figures have to be revised after some highly relevant observations in SD.net about the actual meaning of "half again". So....

*Anacreontian militarization (revised).

The battlecruiser Wienis had 150% the volume of the Anacreontian fleet. That fleet was more or less built from scratch in the roughly thirty years that followed the emancipation of Anacreon from the Empire. Note that this was not wartime production and that the Foundation hadn't yet completely rebuilt the Imperial energy production network.

The Wienis was two miles in length. Although we don't know anything about its volume (other than all descriptions of Imperial warships suggesting that they are massive and colossal), I have used the volume of eight Imperial Star Destroyers (ISD), which should be an adequate benchmark within an order of magnitude in either direction.

9E7 m^3 * 8 = 7.2E8 m^3
7.2E8 m^3 * 2/3 = 4.8E8 m^3 (estimated production over thirty years)
4.8E8 m^3 / 30 = 1.6E7 m^3 (estimated yearly production)

Since Anacreon was just a small fraction of the Galactic Empire.

Following closely the boundaries of the old Prefect of Anacreon, it embraced twenty-five stellar systems, six of which included more than one inhabited world. The population of nineteen billion, though still far less than it had been in the Empire's heyday was rising rapidly with the increasing scientific development fostered by the Foundation.

Using the Anacreontian figures for the Empire in a per planet and per capita basis we get that:

Estimated Galactic Empire production (per planet): 1.6E7 m^3 * 800,000 (Anacreon is estimated to have ~30 planets) = 1.28E13 m^3 (~140,000 ISD sized warships a year).
Estimated Galactic Empire production (per capita): 4.8E7 m^3 * 5.25E7 (Galactic population/Anacreontian population) = 8.4E14 m^3 (~9300,000 ISD sized warships a year).

Communications

The technology appears to be the same for all factions in the setting. Mention is made in the text of "wave", "hyperwave" and "ultrawave" (Mayors, 6-7), as well as "sub-ether" communications (Traders, 1). From context, wave appears to refer to communication based in EM effects, such as radio, while hyper and ultra appear to be one and the same with one being noted to propagate "through hyperspace" (Merchant Princes, 17) and the other having "instantaneous speed" and a range of "light-years" (Mayors, 7).

Sub-ether might be a third designation for the same kind of supraluminal comms, but all we are told is that it "cannot be trusted" as a way of delivering confidential information (Traders, 1).

In Imperial times, these techologies were widespread and this made possible for a student of a distant world to have seen Trantor many times in "hyper-video and tremendous three-dimensional newcasts" (Psychohistorians, 1). After the Fall, even the singularly backwards state of Askone could still be contacted by individuals in a different star system for negotiation (Traders, 2) and, in Mallow's time, the Foundation could broadcast in real time 3D imagery to "private 'visors in almost every home of the Foundation's planets" (Merchant Princes, 14).

Space travel & spacecraft

Perhaps simply because of a greater availability of resources, the Empire is shown to build spaceships in a much larger scale than the Foundation. The Wienis, a three hundred years old battlecruiser, was a "two-mile-long ship" (Mayors, 7); Gaal Dornick went to Trantor in a passenger ship carrying "thousands of passengers" (Psychohistorians, 2); and the warships gifted to the Korell Republic by the imperial viceroy of the Normannic Sector are stated to be "like whales to a minnow" in comparison to a Foundation tradeship (Merchant Princes, 17).

In the Imperial side of things Seldon's day, Trantor was daily supplied by "fleets of ships in the tens of thousands" (Psychohistorians, 3).

Meanwhile, in the Foundation side of the coin and talking about Mallow's time period, the half dozen star systems of the isolationist Korell Republic were visited by "better than three hundred" Foundation tradeships in a single year (Merchant Princes, 4). Loss of three ships was a concern only in as much as it represented the possibility of an enemy armed with nuclear technology (Merchant Princes, 1) and the destruction of up to six vessels was regarded as "just a scratch" (Merchant Princes, 18).

-Slower-Than-Light travel

Nothing of note is mentioned concerning slower than light engines, except for relatively vague statements that give the impression of hours being spent in a STL approach to the destination planet after completing the FTL transit.

-Faster-Than-Light travel

The only known method of practical interstellar travel is the Jump, an instantaneous journey through the supraluminal "region" known as hyperspace, during which it is theoretically possible to "traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two neighboring instants of time" (Psychohistorians, 1). In practical terms, however, hyperspace travel is a lot more involved than this and Jumps a lot shorter, so that travel between two distant star systems follows multi-Jump routes. This is what made it possible for Terminus to be isolated from the rest of the galaxy when the province of Anacreon declared independence and became the Four Kingdoms.

Weapons Technology

-Handheld Weaponry

Slugthrowers are not unknown in the galaxy and seem to have spread in the Periphery, during the Fall. Hunting for the Nyakbird of Anacreon is stated to involve use of one type called the "needle gun" (Mayors, 3) and Hober Mallow was surprised to recognize the barrel of the handguns used by the Commdor's bodyguards as nuclear, rather than those of a "explosive projectile weapon" (Merchant Princes, 3).

In regards to energy weapons, generally called "blasters" in-universe, they are shown to have adjustable levels of firepower, from an "almost burnless minimum" (Merchant Princes, 11) to higher levels that can result in a human "head blown into nothingness" (Mayors, , if fired from point blank range.

-Naval Weaponry

Little is known about the weaponry used in capital scale warfare. During the first Seldon Crisis, Hardin mentions that it would be convenient to have "a few great big siege guns fitted for beautiful nuclear bombs" (Encyclopedists, 3), the Imperial battlecruiser is described as having "nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet" (Mayors, 2), and nuclear explosives are noted to be "usual" in "light-armed" Foundation tradeships (Merchant Princes, 1 & 4), during Mallow's time. Other than this, we only have the vaguest mentions of starships being armed, having several guns and so on.

-Forcefields

Defensive forcefields were widespread technology in the pre-Fall Empire. A three hundred years old Imperial battlecruiser is noted to have a shield that "could take a Q-beam without working up radiation" (Mayors, 2), which is apparently supposed to be highly impressive. It is also mentioned that the Empire developed vast shields capable of protecting "a city, or even a ship" (Merchant Princes, 10) and, according to Mallow, "an entire world" (Merchant Princes, 18), but not super-miniaturized man-portable shields for "one, single man" (Merchant Princes, 10).

Meanwhile, the Foundation tradeships have as standard "force-field defenses" (Merchant Princes, 1) that supposedly can only be defeated with "more nuclear power" (Traders, 2 & Merchant Princes, 1). Moreover, their efforts in technological miniaturization allowed them to develop man-portable forcefields as early as Hardin's administration (Mayors, , with the technique being sufficiently developed in Mallow's time that they had also developed a type of blasters "especially designed to pierce" such shields (Merchant Princes, 11).

Other

Though still interesting enough to deserve some commentary, certain technological capabilities of the factions in the setting have little immediate usefulness in a conventional versus scenario and therefore only get cursory mention here.

These include, for example, the Empire's gravity manipulation technology (limited in the period to glorified lifts), the Foundation's economically non-viable transmuters, Mallow's atomic tools, the oft-mentioned lifelike holographic tech, the intriguing mention of teleportation or the anti-spy devices that pop up a couple of times.

Well, that's about it for Foundation. Next, supposing that I continue past this point, would be Foundation and Empire.

See you around.

[ryacko]

http://terminuscity.tripod.com/galactography/index.html

Might be worth posting this. And this:
http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/EG_Terminus.html

[Boeing 757]

First off, great work, Murazor. I've been planning on quantifying the Foundation/Galactic Empire series for some time, but it seems that you're doing it rather well as it stands. I have a flash-key somewhere back home with most of the noteworthy highlights and events all the way from Nemesis up through Pebble in the Sky, so maybe I'll post them here eventually some time when my workload allows for it.

Just wanted to add a few things collectively. About population estimates, the characters often speak of high-end quadrillions to one quintillion as an average, but once or twice they mention multiple quadrillions as a high end. For Trantor likewise, 40 billion are likely to be just a low-end figure, given that in Prelude to Foundation the narrator claims that its population well exceeded 45 billion during the Galactic Empire's heyday. In Second Foundation, four hundred billion people are given as its population.

About size and scope..."Pebble in the Sky" suggests that there are 200 million Imperial planets in the Galaxy, but there seems either to have been a gradual reduction in the number of worlds during Seldon's time, or perhaps many of these worlds are just simply too sparsely populated and not deemed important enough, while the oft quoted 25 million systems could be just the main member systems.

Regarding speed for hyperatomic drive...in "Second Foundation" I derived 7 million(c) for a well traveled route, and in Foundation's Edge a Foundation battlegroup makes an instantaneous jump of ~30,000 lightyears without any issue. Also in I,Robot a ship makes an instantaneous jump of 900,000 lightyears...so they very well may be able to make one big jump from one side of the Milky Way to the other--if they truly wanted.

As for firepower calcs, sadly there really isn't too much to go on besides that vague "blow up a planet/Q-beam" quote, but I thought you may be interested in knowing that in "Pebble in the Sky," one of the scientists casually implies that the Empire could "blow up entire planets" in order to wipe out an interstellar virus. It is somewhat vague, but it implies being able to make a habitable world barren...some thing that could imply gigaton or teraton yields, if I'm not mistaken.

[Boeing 757]

Effects of "blasters". It is unclear whether the "blown" matter is turned into neutrinos or sent to another dimension (such as hyperspace), but the lack of collateral effects makes it essentially impossible for this to be DET.

Why not? "Blown into nothingness" could just as well mean "blown to bits as if shot with a large handgun." Asimov, as a writer, wasn't really into gory details.

Good point. It's somewhat hard to tell what exactly Asimov had in mind for blasters. The description of their effects is woefully vague, and that is unfortunately how Asimov preferred it. I would be inclined myself to consider them pure thermal energy weapons, and that seems to be outright implicated in the earlier Galactic Empire books given the kind of damage that they do on targets. It becomes somewhat shadier though in his later work, where he introduces different kinds of blasters from the usual atom-blast variant, like the microwave blaster in Foundation & Earth and the even whackier "implosion/explosion" shenanigans in Forward the Foundation.

[Batman]

How does one derive FTL speeds from the series to begin with? The jump itself is instantaneous regardless of distance, the only time actually spent on interstellar travel is getting in/out of gravity wells (and at least once a jump was made barely outside atmosphere) and calculating the jump. And if memory serves the time needed to get in/out of gravity wells/calculate jumps is all over the board too.

[ryacko]

In Foundation and Empire, the Mule's cohort was destroyed with a blaster and only existed from the waist down...

[Boeing 757]

How does one derive FTL speeds from the series to begin with? The jump itself is instantaneous regardless of distance, the only time actually spent on interstellar travel is getting in/out of gravity wells (and at least once a jump was made barely outside atmosphere) and calculating the jump. And if memory serves the time needed to get in/out of gravity wells/calculate jumps is all over the board too.

Simple answer: it's downright confusing. They spend anywhere from hours, to days in the case of bigger systems, trying to escape a star's gravity with sublight drive. And Asimov didn't make it any easier for us by often ignoring his own work, even sometimes within the same source.

[Batman]

Somebody deciding to fold pretty much every Sci-Fi Asimov ever wrote into the Empire/Foundation universe probably didn't help either.

[Murazor]

How does one derive FTL speeds from the series to begin with? The jump itself is instantaneous regardless of distance, the only time actually spent on interstellar travel is getting in/out of gravity wells (and at least once a jump was made barely outside atmosphere) and calculating the jump. And if memory serves the time needed to get in/out of gravity wells/calculate jumps is all over the board too.

That's the thing.

Though the FTL transit itself is effectively instantaneous, it is evident that there are range limitations, partially caused by the distortions that gravity wells cause in hyperspatial trajectories (though this might not be the only reason) and that long travels are chains of jumps.

In a number of instances, we can calculate how fast they actually go for long range travel while including the time that is used to calculate the new jumps and such.

[ryacko]

Somebody deciding to fold pretty much every Sci-Fi Asimov ever wrote into the Empire/Foundation universe probably didn't help either.

I think Asimov attempted to tie all together as well.

For some reason authors in their later years begin to want everything to fit together nicely, which they shouldn't do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation ... sistencies

[Batman]

I used 'somebody' because I don't know who it was that decided to merge several sets of stories that weren't all that internally consistent to begin with into one large whole. Could've been Asimov himself, though personally I find it more likely that some publisher talked him into it (not because I consider Asimov to be beyond such mundane concerns as 'yay-more revenue' but because UNlike a publisher I expect him to know the inevitable amount of in-universe trouble that is bound to cause).

[ryacko]

I used 'somebody' because I don't know who it was that decided to merge several sets of stories that weren't all that internally consistent to begin with into one large whole. Could've been Asimov himself, though personally I find it more likely that some publisher talked him into it (not because I consider Asimov to be beyond such mundane concerns as 'yay-more revenue' but because UNlike a publisher I expect him to know the inevitable amount of in-universe trouble that is bound to cause).

I just pointed out that the somebody was Asimov. No need to take offense good sir.

[Batman]

I didn't take offense, I just pointed out that I didn't know for sure it was Asimov himself who approved the mess that is the current Expanded Foundationverse.

[Murazor]

FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE

I- PROLOGUE

The Galactic Empire Was Falling.
It was a colossal Empire, stretching across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the mighty multi-spiral that was the Milky Way. Its fall was colossal, too - and a long one, for it had a long way to go.
[...]
At the end of two hundred years, the Foundation was the most powerful state in the Galaxy, except for the remains of the Empire, which, concentrated in the inner third of the Milky Way, still controlled three quarters of the population and wealth of the Universe.

Approximately two hundred years after Seldon's death, what's left of the Galactic Empire is largely concentrated in "the inner third" of the Milky Way and contains ~75% of the human population in existence, leaving the rest for the Foundation and independent Periphery realms.

If population distribution was uniform, it'd be possible to use this in regards to how much the global population has been shrinking as a result of the ongoing Fall. However, since we know from the previous book that the Core concentrates the greater number of settled worlds and the traditionally larger populations... we are outta luck.

II - THE GENERAL (195-196 F.E.)

1. Search for magicians.

He was out of the dowdy ground-car he had appropriated and at the door of the fading mansion that was his destination. He waited. The photonic eye that spanned the doorway was alive, but when the door opened it was by hand.
Bel Riose smiled at the old man. "I am Riose-"
"I recognize you." The old man remained stiffly and unsurprised in his place. "Your business?"
Riose withdrew a step in a gesture of submission. "One of peace. If you are Ducem Barr, I ask the favor of conversation."
Ducem Barr stepped aside and in the interior of the house the walls glowed into life, the general entered into daylight.
He touched the wall of the study, then stared at his fingertips. "You have this on Siwenna?"
Barr smiled thinly. "Not elsewhere, I believe. I keep this in repair myself as well as I can. I must apologize for your wait at the door. The automatic device registers the presence of a visitor but will no longer open the door."
"Your repairs fall short?" The general's voice was faintly mocking.
"Parts are no longer available. If you will sit, sir. You drink tea?"

...

So we have an old automatic door opened that no longer works properly and glowing walls. This is sufficiently remarkable that its presence in Siwenna startles a general of the Imperial military. This does not speak particularly well of the technological capabilities of the Empire at this point. At all.

The general recognized the small black-ivroid boxes that lined the shelves to be books. Their titles were unfamiliar. He guessed that the large structure at one end of the room was the receiver that transmuted the books into sight-and-sound on demand. He had never seen one in operation; but he had heard of them.
Once he had been told that long before, during the golden ages when the Empire had been co-extensive with the entire Galaxy, nine houses out of every ten had such receivers - and such rows of books.

So... a general of the Empire, who commands an entire fleet, has never seen what amounts to a glorified video player in operation. The galaxy really has gone to shit. Which is further confirmed when Ducen Barr tells Riose that he doesn't sell love charms or amulets, 'cause people apparently ask for such things regularly.

Riose held the empty cup as he spoke. "Patrician, listen to me. These are days when the most successful soldiers are those whose function is to lead the dress parades that wind through the imperial palace grounds on feast days and to escort the sparkling pleasure ships that carry His Imperial Splendor to the summer planets. I… I am a failure. I am a failure at thirty-four, and I shall stay a failure. Because, you see, I like to fight.
"That's why they sent me here. I'm too troublesome at court. I don't fit in with the etiquette. I offend the dandies and the lord admirals, but I'm too good a leader of ships and men to be disposed of shortly by being marooned in space. So Siwenna is the substitute. It's a frontier world; a rebellious and a barren province. It is far away, far enough away to satisfy all.
"And so I moulder. There are no rebellions to stamp down, and the border viceroys do not revolt lately, at least, not since His Imperial Majesty's late father of glorious memory made an example of Mountel of Paramay."

Some useful hints about the political state of the Empire under Cleon II, which mostly tell us that things are relatively quiet because the Emperor's father made a point of crushing with extreme prejudice would-be usurpers.

The Siwennian ignored him and proceeded without deflection. "During his exile a wanderer came upon him; a merchant from the edge of the Galaxy; a young man who spoke a strange accent, knew nothing of recent Imperial history, and who was protected by an individual force-shield."
"An individual force-shield?" Riose glared. "You speak extravagance. What generator could be powerful enough to condense a shield to the size of a single man? By the Great Galaxy, did he carry five thousand myria-tons of nuclear power-source about with him on a little wheeled gocart?"

Supposing that we take Riose's statement at face value, it'd suggest that the nuclear generators he is familiar with weigh five million tons. Though he is not a qualified expert in nuclear technology, the guy is rather smart and is in charge of ships with nuclear reactors, so he may know what the heck he talks about.

Barr smiled grimly, and continued, "My father was a Patrician of the Empire and a Senator of Siwenna. His name was Onum Barr."

In other news, the way in which the Empire's government works at the regional level is still somewhat unclear. There have been a number of mentions of viceroys and other representatives of the Emperor who seem to hold the highest authority, but both Foundation and this story make mention of provincial senates, which suggests a measure of self-government for the administrative sub-divisions.

"The story of the magicians antedated even my father, sir. And the proof is more concrete. After leaving my father, this merchant that men call a magician visited a Tech-man at the city to which my father had guided him, and there he left a shield-generator of the type he wore. That generator was retrieved by my father after his return from exile upon the execution of the bloody viceroy. It took a long time to find-
"The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never worked but for the first two days; but if you'll look at it, you will see that no one in the Empire ever designed it."
Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked metal that clung to the curved wall. It came away with a little sucking noise as the tiny adhesion-field broke at the touch of his hand. The ellipsoid at the apex of the belt held his attention. It was the size of a walnut.
"This-" he said.
"Was the generator," nodded Barr. "But it was the generator. The secret of its workings are beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete parts that had existed before fusion."
"Then your 'proof' still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no concrete evidence."
Barr shrugged. "You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by force. If you choose to meet it with skepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to stop?"

The fate of Mallow's personal shield, which IMO confirms a self destruct feature at work, perhaps in order to protect Foundation technological secrets, because I don't see how the thing could be designed to melt in this way upon running out of power.

I am also unsure of what the "sub-electronic investigations" are supposed to be, but if it is what I think (analysis down to particles smaller than electrons) it'd be better than what we can do nowadays and makes me wonder where this guy found the relevant tools in a period in which a freaking video player is something rare.

"I continued my father's researches after he died, and then the second accident I mentioned came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon."
"And who is Hari Seldon?"
"Hari Seldon was a scientist of the reign of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a psychohistorian; the last and greatest of them all. He once visited Siwenna, when Siwenna was a great commercial center, rich in the arts and sciences."
"Hmph," muttered Riose, sourly, "where is the stagnant planet that does not claim to have been a land of overflowing wealth in older days?"
"The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet ruled to the uttermost star; when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a semi-barbarian border province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline of Imperial power and the eventual barbarization of the entire Galaxy."
Riose laughed suddenly. "He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds some day; come to the warmth and the wealth of the center."
The old man shook his head somberly. "Circulation ceases first at the outer edges. It will take a while yet for the decay to reach the heart. That is, the apparent, obvious-to-all decay, as distinct from the inner decay that is an old story of some fifteen centuries."
"And so this Hari Seldon foresaw a Galaxy of uniform barbarism," said Riose, good-humoredly. "And what then, eh?"
"So he established two foundations at the extreme opposing ends of the Galaxy - Foundations of the best, and the youngest, and the strongest, there to breed, grow, and develop. The worlds on which they were placed were chosen carefully; as were the times and the surroundings. All was arranged in such a way that the future as foreseen by the unalterable mathematics of psychohistory would involve their early isolation from the main body of Imperial civilization and their gradual growth into the germs of the Second Galactic Empire - cutting an inevitable barbarian interregnum from thirty thousand years to scarcely a single thousand."
"And where did you find out all this? You seem to know it in detail."
"I don't and never did," said the patrician with composure. "It is the painful result of the piecing together of certain evidence discovered by my father and a little more found by myself. The basis is flimsy and the superstructure has been romanticized into existence to fill the huge gaps. But I am convinced that it is essentially true."
[...]
"In the obvious way. I could become an explorer. I could find this Foundation you speak of and observe with my eyes. You say there are two?"
"The records speak of two. Supporting evidence has been found only for one, which is understandable, for the other is at the extreme end of the long axis of the Galaxy."

Ducem Barr is oddly well informed. He knows more about this than the Imperial Court, as we'll see a few chapters later.

He also says one outright falsehood, because Seldon NEVER visited Siwenna and this we know for a fact. And Barr literally has no business knowing about the existence of the Second Foundation. That one was secret as heck and the First Foundation only knew of its existence, because Seldon mentions it in the Time Vault recordings.

So what's going on here?

Doylist answer: Asimov changed his mind about stuff later. 'tis a retcon as any other.
Wattsonian answer: Ducem Barr is affiliated with the Second Foundation or a third party in the know. Either way, there is more to this guy than it seems.

[ryacko]

You know, if you read the novels chronologically, the Wattsonnian answer makes the most sense, and it is interesting trying to spot which characters are in fact from the second foundation.

[Murazor]

http://terminuscity.tripod.com/galactography/index.html

The site provides some canon information, but adds a ton of fanfic stuff. The star charts, for example, are total bollocks.

http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/EG_Terminus.html

Same for this. Johnny Pez is a very respectful author of fanfiction, but adds names and events that don't come from Asimov and are not sanctioned by the relevant copyright holders.

Good fanfiction is still fanfiction, much as I would prefer some of it to the Second Foundation trilogy.

[Murazor]

2. The Magicians.

There were four men in the room, and the room was set apart where none could approach. The four men looked at each other quickly, then lengthily at the table that separated them. There were four bottles on the table and as many full glasses, but no one had touched them.
And then the man nearest the door stretched out an arm and drummed a slow, padding rhythm on the table.
He said, "Are you going to sit and wonder forever? Does it matter who speaks first?"
"Speak you first, then," said the big man directly opposite. "You're the one who should be the most worried."
Sennett Forell chuckled with noiseless nonhumor. "Because you think I'm the richest. Well - Or is it that you expect me to continue as I have started. I don't suppose you forget that it was my own Trade Fleet that captured this scout ship of theirs."
"You had the largest fleet," said a third, "and the best pilots; which is another way of saying you are the richest. It was a fearful risk; and would have been greater for one of us."
[...]
The fourth man blinked his little eyes stealthily. Words crept out from between thin lips. "It is nothing to sleep over in fat triumph, this grasping of little ships. Most likely, it will but anger that young man further."
[...]
"That has been discussed and disposed of," said Forell. He waved the subject aside with a flatly final gesture.
"The government is soft," complained the third man. "The mayor is an idiot."
The fourth man looked at the other three in turn and removed the stub of a cigar from his mouth. He dropped it casually into the slot at his right where it disappeared with a silent flash of disruption.
He said sarcastically, "I trust the gentleman who last spoke is speaking through habit only. We can afford to remember here that we are the government."

Self-explanatory. The ultimate result of Mallow's methods of strong armed economic control is the rise of a small cadre of mercantile oligarchs who for all intents and purposes are the Foundation during the time of the Riose crisis.

As for other things, here it is mentioned that the Imperials use "scout ships" of unknown capabilities, but which even members of the Foundation consider "little ships".

"It can be told in a few enough words," said Forell, grimly. "He's an Imperial general or whatever rank corresponds to that over there. He's a young man who has proved his military brilliance - so I am told - and who is the idol of his men. Quite a romantic career. The stories they tell of him are no doubt half lies, but even so it makes him out to be a type of wonder man."
"Who are the 'they'?" demanded the second man.
"The crew of the captured ship. Look, I have all their statements recorded on micro-film, which I have in a secure place. Later on, if you wish, you can see them. You can talk to the men yourselves, if you think it necessary. I've told you the essentials."
"How did you get it out of them? How do you know they're telling the truth?"
Forell frowned. "I wasn't gentle, good sir. I knocked them about, drugged them crazy, and used the Probe unmercifully. They talked. You can believe them."
"In the old days," said the third man, with sudden irrelevance, "they would have used pure psychology. Painless, you know, but very sure. No chance of deceit."
"Well, there is a good deal they had in the old days," said Forell, dryly. "These are the new days."

I do not at the moment recall if the Foundation book actually mentioned the Probe. This is a device often referenced, but never actually seen onscreen as far as I can recall.

It is alternatively described as a technological device which reads minds or as just a very advanced lie detector, which might be explained if different kinds of artifacts with roughly the same purpose are all described as "Probes". This particular quote, of course, seems to favor the "lie detector" description.

3. The Dead Hand.

Bel Riose interrupted his annoyed stridings to look up hopefully when his aide entered. "Any word of the Starlet?"
"None. The scouting party has quartered space, but the instruments have detected nothing. Commander Yume has reported that the Fleet is ready for an immediate attack in retaliation."
The general shook his head. "No, not for a patrol ship. Not yet. Tell him to double - Wait! I'll write out the message. Have it coded and transmitted by tight beam."

The captured scout-ship is actually described by Riose as a patrol ship and we also get a mention of tight beam communications, which presumably allows for more secure (but not completely, or there would be little point in coding it) transmission of information through hyperwaves.

Riose sat down and crossed his legs. "Barr, we had an earlier discussion half a year ago."
"About your magicians?"
"Yes. You remember what I said I would do."
Barr nodded. His arms rested limply in his lap. "You were going to visit them in their haunts, and you've been away these four months. Did you find them?"
"Find them? That I did," cried Riose.

I am pretty sure that we are never given a distance between Terminus and Siwenna. However, if this little fact ever comes up, it'd be possible to calculate long range hypership speeds considering that Riose is noted to have needed four months to go to Terminus from Siwenna and back, plus a stay of undetermined length in Terminus itself. Left here for possible future reference.

The Siwennian openly displayed a certain quiet satisfaction. "You will notice that so far it would seem to bear out quite accurately my reconstruction of events from the paltry data on the subject that I have gathered."
"It is no doubt," replied Riose with vexed sarcasm, "a tribute to your analytical powers. It is also a hearty and bumptious commentary on the growing danger to the domains of His Imperial Majesty."
Barr shrugged his unconcern, and Riose leaned forward suddenly, to seize the old man's shoulders and stare with curious gentleness into his eyes.
[...]
"Then you realize that it must be stopped in embryo or perhaps not at all. You have known of this Foundation before anyone had heard of it. You know more about it than anyone else in the Empire. You probably know how it might best be attacked; and you can probably forewarn me of its countermeasures. Come, let us be friends."
Ducem Barr rose. He said flatly, "Such help as I could give you means nothing. So I will make you free of it in the face of your strenuous demand."
"I will be the judge of its meaning."
"No, I am serious. Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world."
"Why not?" Bel Riose's eyes glistened fiercely. "No, stay where you are. I'll tell you when you may leave. Why not? If you think I underestimate this enemy I have discovered, you are wrong. Patrician," he spoke reluctantly, "I lost a ship on my return. I have no proof that it fell into the hands of the Foundation; but it has not been located since and were it merely an accident, its dead hulk should, certainly have been found along the route we took. It is not an important loss - less than the tenth part of a fleabite, but it may mean that the Foundation has already opened hostilities. Such eagerness and such disregard for consequences might mean secret forces of which I know nothing. Can you help me then by answering a specific question? What is their military power?"
"I haven't any notion."
"Then explain yourself on your own terms. Why do you say the Empire can not defeat this small enemy?"
The Siwennian seated himself once more and looked away from Riose's fixed glare. He spoke heavily, "Because I have faith in the principles of psychohistory. It is a strange science. It reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari Seldon, and died with him, for no man since has been capable of manipulating its intricacies. But in that short period, it proved itself the most powerful instrument ever invented for the study of humanity. Without pretending to predict the actions of individual humans, it formulated definite laws capable of mathematical analysis and extrapolation to govern and predict the mass action of human groups."
"So-"
"It was that psychohistory which Seldon and the group he worked with applied in full force to the establishment of the Foundation. The place, time, and conditions all conspire mathematically and so, inevitably, to the development of a Second Galactic Empire."
Riose's voice trembled with indignation. "You mean that this art of his predicts that I would attack the Foundation and lose such and such a battle for such and such a reason? You are trying to say that I am a silly robot following a predetermined course into destruction."
"No," replied the old patrician, sharply. "I have already said that the science had nothing to do with individual actions. It is the vaster background that has been foreseen."
"Then we stand clasped tightly in the forcing hand of the Goddess of Historical Necessity."
"Of Psychohistorical Necessity," prompted Barr, softly.
"And if I exercise my prerogative of freewill? If I choose to attack next year, or not to attack at all? How pliable is the Goddess? How resourceful?"
Barr shrugged. "Attack now or never; with a single ship, or all the force in the Empire; by military force or economic pressure; by candid declaration of war or by treacherous ambush. Do whatever you wish in your fullest exercise of freewill. You will still lose."
"Because of Hari Seldon's dead hand?"
"Because of the dead hand of the mathematics of human behavior that can neither be stopped, swerved, nor delayed."
The two faced each other in deadlock, until the general stepped back.
He said simply, "I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will."

Once more we are back to the fact that Ducem Barr knows a whole lot of stuff that he has no business knowing, particularly in regards to psycho-history. Seeing how Seldon and the Second Foundation made every effort to ensure continued monopoly of both psychohistory and mental power, Barr's zealot like faith in the predictive powers of a lost science is suspicious as heck.

4. The Emperor.

Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, nor even particularly incongruous.

In news that should surprise no one, medical technology (at least in the post-Fall empire) doesn't have an answer to all the ailments that humans can suffer.

He stirred uneasily. And now Brodrig craved audience. The low-born, faithful Brodrig; faithful because he was hated with a unanimous and cordial hatred that was the only point of agreement between the dozen cliques that divided his court.
Brodrig - the faithful favorite, who had to be faithful, since unless he owned the fastest speed-ship in the Galaxy and took to it the day of the Emperor's death, it would be the radiation-chamber the day after.

Apparently, death by irradiation is a form of execution in the empire. Depending on the specifics, this might be something between unpleasant and horrific.

Cleon II touched the smooth knob on the arm of his great divan, and the huge door at the end of the room dissolved to transparency.
Brodrig advanced along the crimson carpet, and knelt to kiss the Emperor's limp hand.

If I am reading this right, the imperial palace includes doors that dematerialize upon pressing a button. Pretty neat and exotic, even if I don't have the slightest clue of how this could be weaponized.

Brodrig rose from his kneeling posture at a gesture of permission and said, "It concerns General Bel Riose, the Military Governor of Siwenna."
"Riose?" Cleon II frowned heavily. "I don't place him. Wait, is he the one who sent that quixotic message some months back? Yes, I remember. He panted for permission to enter a career of conquest for the glory of the Empire and Emperor."
"Exactly, sire."
The Emperor laughed shortly. "Did you think I had such generals left me, Brodrig? He seems to be a curious atavism. What was the answer? I believe you took care of it."
"I did, sire. He was instructed to forward additional information and to take no steps involving naval action without further orders from the Imperium."
"Hmp. Safe enough. Who is this Riose? Was he ever at court?"
Brodrig nodded and his mouth twisted ever so little. "He began his career as a cadet in the Guards ten years back. He had part in that affair off the Lemul Cluster."
"The Lemul Cluster? You know, my memory isn't quite - Was that the time a young soldier saved two ships of the line from a head-on collision by… uh… something or other?" He waved a hand impatiently. "I don't remember the details. It was something heroic."
"Riose was that soldier. He received a promotion for it," Brodrig said dryly, "and an appointment to field duty as captain of a ship."
"And now Military Governor of a border system and still young. Capable man, Brodrig!"
[...]
"Another message, sire, has been received from General Riose."
"Oh? And to what effect?"
"He has spied out the land of these barbarians and advocates an expedition in force. His arguments are long and fairly tedious. It is not worth annoying Your Imperial Majesty with it at present, during your indisposition. Particularly since it will be discussed at length during the session of the Council of Lords." He glanced sidewise at the Emperor.

Some interesting commentary regarding Riose's career. Alas, we have no info whatsoever about the specifics of the Lemul Cluster incident, so we only know that a head on collision at undetermined speeds would have been bad to an undetermined extent for the Imperial ships of the line involved in the accident.

Cleon II frowned. "The Lords? Is it a question for them, Brodrig? It will mean further demands for a broader interpretation of the Charter. It always comes to that."
"It can't be avoided, sire. It might have been better if your august father could have beaten down the last rebellion without granting the Charter. But since it is here, we must endure it for the while."
"You're right, I suppose. Then the Lords it must be. But why all this solemnity, man? It is, after all, a minor point. Success on a remote border with limited troops is scarcely a state affair."

Some useful factoids concerning the political state of the Galactic Empire during Cleon II (last of the "strong" emperors), its internal fragmentation and the relative importance of Riose's war effort for the imperial state as a whole (in other words, negligible).

"He report none. But already he asks for reinforcements."
"Reinforcements!" The Emperor's eyes narrowed with wonder. "What force has he?"
"Ten ships of the line, sire, with a full complement of auxiliary vessels. Two of the ships are equipped with motors salvaged from the old Grand Fleet, and one has a battery of power artillery from the same source. The other ships are new ones of the last fifty years, but are serviceable, nevertheless."
"Ten ships would seem adequate for any reasonable undertaking. Why, with less than ten ships my father won his first victories against the usurper. Who are these barbarians he's fighting?"
The Privy Secretary raised a pair of supercilious eyebrows. "He refers to them as 'the Foundation.'"

A brief description of Riose's fleet assets and how some of those have old parts scavenged from derelicts. How these "ships of the line" compare with the Anacreontian battlecruiser or the vessels given by the viceroy of Siwenna to the Korell republic we are never directly told, though if naval terminology is consistent one can more or less reasonably expect these "ships of the line" to be greater in size than the Wienis.

"The Foundation? What is it?"
"There is no record of it, sire. I have searched the archives carefully. The area of the Galaxy indicated falls within the ancient province of Anacreon, which two centuries since gave itself up to brigandage, barbarism, and anarchy. There is no planet known as Foundation in the province, however. There was a vague reference to a group of scientists sent to that province just before its separation from our protection. They were to prepare an Encyclopedia." He smiled thinly. "I believe they called it the Encyclopedia Foundation."
"Well," the Emperor considered it somberly, "that seems a tenuous connection to advance."
"I'm not advancing it, sire. No word was ever received from that expedition after the growth of anarchy in that region. If their descendants still live and retain their name, then they have reverted to barbarism most certainly."

Oddly enough, Ducem Barr is a lot better informed about the Foundation in all relevant ways than Trantor's imperial court. How very peculiar, really.

[Murazor]

5. The War Begins.

From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy's rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.
Worlds isolated in their new barbarism of two centuries felt the sensation once again of Imperial overlords upon their soil. Allegiance was sworn in the face of the massive artillery covering capital cities.
Garrisons were left; garrisons of men in Imperial uniform with the Spaceship-and-Sun insignia upon their shoulders. The old men took notice and remembered once again the forgotten tales of their grandfathers' fathers of the times when the universe was big, and rich, and peaceful and that same Spaceship-and-Sun ruled all.

Start of the war between Foundation and the Galactic Empire's Twentieth Border Fleet, a vast enveloping maneuver.

Then the great ships passed on to weave their line of forward bases further around the Foundation. And as each world was knotted into its proper place in the fabric, the report went back to Bel Riose at the General Headquarters he had established on the rocky barrenness of a wandering sunless planet.
Now Riose relaxed and smiled grimly at Ducem Barr. "Well, what do you think, patrician?"
"I? Of what value are my thoughts? I am not a military man." He took in with one wearily distasteful glance the crowded disorder of the rock-bound room which had been carved out of the wall of a cavern of artificial air, light, and heat which marked the single bubble of life in the vastness of a bleak world.
"For the help I could give you," he muttered, "or would want to give you, you might return me to Siwenna."
"Not yet. Not yet." The general turned his chair to the comer which held the huge, brilliantly-transparent sphere that mapped the old Imperial prefect of Anacreon and its neighboring sectors. "Later, when this is over, you will go back to your books and to more. I'll see to it that the estates of your family are restored to you and to your children for the rest of time."

Self-explanatory. Riose, with just the resources under his command, can set up shop in a random sunless, airless world, with no comment of this being some kind of complicated or noteworthy accomplishment. Unfortunately, we don't know much about the place except that it contains interstellar communication equipment, holomaps and an spaceport of some kind. Also, it is somewhat noteworthy that they found a sunless planet in the first place. Either Riose's troops went looking and found it, or the Galactic Empire keeps good astrographic databases even this late into the Fall.

"Thank you," said Barr, with faint irony, "but I lack your faith in the happy outcome of all this."
Riose laughed harshly, "Don't start your prophetic croakings again. This map speaks louder than all your woeful theories." He caressed its curved invisible outline gently. "Can you read a map in radial projection? You can? Well, here, see for yourself. The stars in gold represent the Imperial territories. The red stars are those in subjection to the Foundation and the pink are those which are probably within the economic sphere of influence. Now watch-"
Riose's hand covered a rounded knob, and slowly an area of hard, white pinpoints changed into a deepening blue. Like an inverted cup they folded about the red and the pink.
"Those blue stars have been taken over by my forces," said Riose with quiet satisfaction, "and they still advance. No opposition has appeared anywhere. The barbarians are quiet. And particularly, no opposition has come from Foundation forces. They sleep peacefully and well."
"You spread your force thinly, don't you?" asked Barr.
"As a matter of fact," said Riose, "despite appearances, I don't. The key points which I garrison and fortify are relatively few, but they are carefully chosen. The result is that the force expended is small, but the strategic result great. There are many advantages, more than would ever appear to anyone who hasn't made a careful study of spatial tactics, but it is apparent to anyone, for instance, that I can base an attack from any point in an inclosing sphere, and that when I am finished it will be impossible for the Foundation to attack at flank or rear. I shall have no flank or rear with respect to them.

A brief elaboration about Riose's tactics in the first stage of the war. Unfortunately, nothing is revealed about what is involved in the fortification of those chosen spots, since presumably it is something somewhat more complex than putting a garrison of stormtroopers in the capital city of the chosen planet and calling it a day.

Barr allowed the angry silence to continue for a moment, then asked quietly, "Have you received an answer from the Emperor?"
Riose removed a cigarette from a wall container behind his head, placed a filter tip between his lips and puffed it aflame carefully. He said, "You mean my request for reinforcements? It came, but that's all. Just the answer."
"No ships."
"None. I half-expected that. Frankly, patrician, I should never have allowed myself to be stampeded by your theories into requesting them in the first place. It puts me in a false light."
"Does it?"
"Definitely. Ships are at a premium. The civil wars of the last two centuries have smashed up more than half of the Grand Fleet and what's left is in pretty shaky condition. You know it isn't as if the ships we build these days are worth anything. I don't think there's a man in the Galaxy today who can build a first-rate hypernuclear motor."
"I knew that," said the Siwennian. His eyes were thoughtful and introspective. "I didn't know that you knew it. So his Imperial Majesty can spare no ships. Psychohistory could have predicted that; in fact, it probably did. I should say that Hari Seldon's dead hand wins the opening round."

Apparently, the Imperial Grand Fleet of Riose's time is less than half of what existed in Seldon's day, with a lot of the remaining nominal strength being modern ships of sub-standard capacities, because of the Empire's technological decadence. Barr also remains adamant about his absolute faith in the power of psycho-history.

He stepped in casually, and looked about with calculating eyes. He favored the general with a rudimentary wave of the hand and a half nod.
"Your name?" demanded Riose, crisply.
"Lathan Devers." The trader hooked his thumbs into his wide and gaudy belt. "Are you the boss here?"
"You are a trader of the Foundation?"
"That's right. Listen, if you're the boss, you'd better tell your hired men here to lay off my cargo."
The general raised his head and regarded the prisoner coldly. "Answer questions. Do not volunteer orders."
"All right. I'm agreeable. But one of your boys blasted a two-foot hole in his chest already, by sticking his fingers where he wasn't supposed to."
Riose shifted his gaze to the lieutenant in charge. "Is this man telling the truth? Your report, Vrank, had it that no lives were lost."
"None were, sir," the lieutenant spoke stiffly, apprehensively, "at the time. There was later some disposition to search the ship, there having arisen a rumor that a woman was aboard. Instead, sir, many instruments of unknown nature were located, instruments which the prisoner claims to be his stock in trade. One of them flashed on handling, and the soldier holding it died."
The general turned back to the trader. "Does your ship carry nuclear explosives?"
"Galaxy, no. What for? That fool grabbed a nuclear puncher, wrong end forward and set at maximum dispersion. You're not supposed to do that. Might as well point a neut-gun at your head. I'd have stopped him, if five men weren't sitting on my chest."

1) This nuclear puncher is presumably a industrial tool of the type previously used by Hober Mallow in book 1, when he modernized the industries of the Korell Republic. In any case, when used in maximum dispersion it can open two foot holes in a human chest.
2) Neut-gun mention. Maybe a neutron gun? In any case, Lathan Devers apparently regards this thing as being lethal. As far as I remember, though, no further mentions of this are made.
3) Devers doesn't carry nuclear explosives, which used to be standard for all Foundation Traders. Either the times have changed enough that such weapons are no longer regarded as being needed or it is just that the Foundation didn't want its weapons to fall in Imperial hands. Devers was supposed to be part of the Foundation's half-assed spying effort, after all.

"Good, and co-operation is what I mostly crave." Riose smiled, and said in a low aside to Ducem Barr, "I hope the word 'crave' means what I think it does. Did you ever hear such a barbarous jargon?"

Brief commentary about the linguistic shift between the different branches of the galactic standard language.

Devers said blandly, "Right. I check you. But what kind of co-operation are you talking about, boss? To tell you straight, I don't know where I stand." He looked about him, "Where's this place, for instance, and - what's the idea?"
"Ah, I've neglected the other half of the introductions. I apologize." Riose was in good humor. "That gentleman is Ducem Barr, Patrician of the Empire. I am Bel Riose, Peer of the Empire, and General of the Third Class in the armed forces of His Imperial Majesty."

Presumably, Riose's condition as peer of the empire makes him equivalent to high ranking galactic aristocrats, despite not being noble born himself. Alas, we don't know what his military rank involves exactly and how it compares with -for example- Generals of the First Class.

The trader's jaw slackened. Then, "The Empire? I mean the old Empire they taught us about at school? Huh! Funny! I always had the sort of notion that it didn't exist any more."
"Look about you. It does," said Riose grimly.
"Might have known it though," and Lathan Devers pointed his beard at the ceiling. "That was a mightily polished-looking set of craft that took my tub. No kingdom of the Periphery could have turned them out." His brow furrowed. "So what's the game, boss? Or do I call you general?"

Supposing that this isn't just Devers talking shit to make Riose happy, Imperial spaceships are still a cut above anything that Periphery realms can make. Unsurprising, of course, since bad as the Empire is at this point, the barbarian kingdoms still got hit worse by the Fall.

"I'm not. In fact, I'll give it to you straight. You know all I know about it. It's silly stuff, half-baked. Every world has its yams; you can't keep it away from them. Yes, I've heard that sort of talk; Seldon, Second Empire, and so on. They put kids to sleep at night with the stuff. The young squirts curl up in the spare rooms with their pocket projectors and suck up Seldon thrillers. But it's strictly non-adult. Nonintelligent adult, anyway." The trader shook his head.

Fun little note.

Remember that home video system that Riose had only heard about in legends, until he visited Barr's mansion? The Foundation apparently has them in pocket edition.

The room to which they were led was smaller, barer. It contained two beds, a visi-screen, and shower and sanitary facilities. The soldiers marched out, and the thick door boomed hollowly shut.
"Hmp?" Devers stared disapprovingly about. "This looks permanent."
"It is," said Barr, shortly. The old Siwennian turned his back.

Devers and Barr's moderately comfortable living conditions in Riose's permanent base.

Not sure what to say about the visi-screen, considering that Barr's video was supposed to be some kind of big deal. Maybe it is 3D vs 2D? Dunno, honestly.

The trader thrust out a lower lip and nodded his head slowly. He slipped off the flat-linked bracelet that hugged his fight wrist and held it out. "What do you think of that?" He wore the mate to it on his left.
The Siwennian took the ornament. He responded slowly to the trader's gesture and put it on. The odd tingling at the wrist passed away quickly.
Devers' voice changed at once. "Right, doc, you've got the action now. Just speak casually. If this room is wired, they won't get a thing. That's a Field Distorter you've got there; genuine Mallow design. Sells for twenty-five credits on any world from here to the outer rim. You get it free. Hold your lips still when you talk and take it easy. You've got to get the trick of it."
Ducem Barr was suddenly weary. The trader's boring eyes were luminous and urging. He felt unequal to their demands.
Barr said, "What do you want?" The words slurred from between unmoving lips.

The anti-spying device from Foundation, still in use at this point in time.

6. The Favorite.

The tiny ships had appeared out of the vacant depths and darted into the midst of the Armada. Without a shot or a burst of energy, they weaved through the ship-swollen area, then blasted on and out, while the Imperial wagons turned after them like lumbering beasts. There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.
The great ships searched, then returned to their original task, and world by world, the great web of the Enclosure continued.

First battle between Foundation and Empire and, I think, the only one that is actually described in the text. Not much can be gleamed from these few lines, but...

1) Foundation ships are tiny and gnat-like in comparison to Imperial designs.
2) Bursts of energy and shots (of atomic explosives, presumably) are mentioned as two distinct weapons systems.
3) The Foundation loses two ships and causes no damage.
4) The Imperials hit the destroyed Foundation ships with causes them to "shrivel in atomic disintegration". I understand that causing atomic disintegration in matter requires dramatically greater amounts of energy than mere vaporization, but don't recall the specifics. Anyone can help with this?

Riose crossed his legs and offered a cigarette to the other. He fingered one himself as he spoke, "It is what one would expect from the enlightened wisdom of His Imperial Majesty to send so competent an observer as yourself. It relieves any anxiety I might have felt that the press of more important and more immediate business might perhaps force into the shadows a small campaign on the Periphery."
"The eyes of the Emperor are everywhere," said Brodrig, mechanically. "We do not underestimate the importance of the campaign; yet still it would seem that too great an emphasis is being placed upon its difficulty. Surely their little ships are no such barrier that we must move through the intricate preliminary maneuver of an Enclosure."

Not sure if this is supposed to be flattery or fact. Either way, the point is made again that the war against the Foundation is not even remotely a big deal for Trantor.

"No? I pray you to remember that a world which has developed in isolation for two centuries can not be interpreted to the point of intelligent attack by a month's visit. I am a soldier, not a cleft-chinned, barrel-chested hero of a subetheric trimensional thriller. Nor can a single prisoner, and one who is an obscure member of an economic group which has no close connection with the enemy world introduce me to all the inner secrets of enemy strategy."

Another mention of subetheric communications... which apparently still are used to broadcast 3D adventure movies for the general public. I'm honestly a bit lost about why Barr's device is supposed to be a big deal, now.

Also, Riose was one month or so in Terminus, meaning that he at most spent one and a half months going from Terminus to Siwenna. Would be nice if we actually get the relevant interstellar distance, since we have everything else that is needed for a FTL speed calc.

"It has been useful, but not vitally so. His ship is tiny, of no account. He sells little toys which are amusing if nothing else. I have a few of the cleverest which I intend sending to the Emperor as curiosities. Naturally, there is a good deal about the ship and its workings which I do not understand, but then I am not a tech-man."
"But you have among you those who are," pointed out Brodrig.
"I, too, am aware of that," replied the general in faintly caustic tones. "But the fools have far to go before they could meet my needs. I have already sent for clever men who can understand the workings of the odd nuclear field-circuits the ship contains. I have received no answer."
"Men of that type can not be spared, general. Surely, there must be one man of your vast province who understands nucleics."
"Were there such a one, I would have him heal the limping, invalid motors that power two of my small fleet of ships. Two ships of my meager ten that can not fight a major battle for lack of sufficient power supply. One fifth of my force condemned to the carrion activity of consolidating positions behind the lines."
The secretary's fingers fluttered impatiently. "Your position is not unique in that respect, general. The Emperor has similar troubles."

Some more about the technological and cultural decadence of the Empire, resulting in the military governor of a province of "twenty-five first-rank planets" not having qualified personnel to repair two ships that represent one fifth of his combat power, while in the middle of a major military operation. A state of things that apparently is rather commonplace.

The general threw away his shredded, never-lit cigarette, lit another, and shrugged. "Well, it is beside the immediate point, this lack of first-class tech-men. Except that I might have made more progress with my prisoner were my Psychic Probe in proper order."
The secretary's eyebrows lifted. "You have a Probe?"
"An old one. A superannuated one which fails me the one time I needed it. I set it up during the prisoner's sleep, and received nothing. So much for the Probe. I have tried it on my own men and the reaction is quite proper, but again there is not one among my staff of tech-men who can tell me why it fails upon the prisoner. Ducem Barr, who is a theoretician of parts, though no mechanic, says the psychic structure of the prisoner may be unaffected by the Probe since from childhood he has been subjected to alien environments and neural stimuli. I don't know. But he may yet be useful. I save him in that hope."

As it will be revealed somewhat later, Devers is shielded against Psychic Probing thanks to one of his gizmos.

Unfortunately, once again we aren't given enough specifics about the technology, although this particular description seems to suggest a mind reading device (seeing that there would be little point in using a lie detector on a speaking person without waking up said person for interrogation). Unless the "proper reaction" that Riose hoped for involves making Devers talk in his dreams or something.

[Simon_Jester]

So we have an old automatic door opened that no longer works properly and glowing walls. This is sufficiently remarkable that its presence in Siwenna startles a general of the Imperial military. This does not speak particularly well of the technological capabilities of the Empire at this point. At all.

It surely does not. It could be phrased: "You have this? On Siwenna?" or "You have this on Siwenna?" By itself, it could just be that Bel Riose is amazed to see working technology like motion-sensitive lights on a relatively peripheral world, two hundred years into the Fall.

So... a general of the Empire, who commands an entire fleet, has never seen what amounts to a glorified video player in operation. The galaxy really has gone to shit. Which is further confirmed when Ducen Barr tells Riose that he doesn't sell love charms or amulets, 'cause people apparently ask for such things regularly.

The statement is not by itself- there's the context and... yeah. Not good.

The Siwennian ignored him and proceeded without deflection. "During his exile a wanderer came upon him; a merchant from the edge of the Galaxy; a young man who spoke a strange accent, knew nothing of recent Imperial history, and who was protected by an individual force-shield."
"An individual force-shield?" Riose glared. "You speak extravagance. What generator could be powerful enough to condense a shield to the size of a single man? By the Great Galaxy, did he carry five thousand myria-tons of nuclear power-source about with him on a little wheeled gocart?"

Supposing that we take Riose's statement at face value, it'd suggest that the nuclear generators he is familiar with weigh five million tons. Though he is not a qualified expert in nuclear technology, the guy is rather smart and is in charge of ships with nuclear reactors, so he may know what the heck he talks about.

Fifty million; "myria" is the abbreviation for "ten thousand" as "kilo" is for one thousand.

On the other hand, Riose may simply assume that this is the size of a shield generator because it's the size of the generators on his ships (a two mile warship could swallow a fifty-million-ton generator without a burp, if much of its weight is heavy metals). Or because he assumes it takes more power to "condense" a shield into a smaller area of coverage, not less- so he'd need a generator many times larger and more powerful than normal to do the job.

In which case the Federation knows a trick he doesn't.

"Was the generator," nodded Barr. "But it was the generator. The secret of its workings are beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete parts that had existed before fusion."
"Then your 'proof' still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no concrete evidence."
Barr shrugged. "You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by force. If you choose to meet it with skepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to stop?"

The fate of Mallow's personal shield, which IMO confirms a self destruct feature at work, perhaps in order to protect Foundation technological secrets, because I don't see how the thing could be designed to melt in this way upon running out of power.

"Diffraction patterns" means something like X-ray diffraction. I'm surprised that it's available in Imperial space, except that it sounds like the kind of thing you'd keep running at a central facility tended by specialists. Which seems to be the fate of a lot of machinery during the Fall. Things that are very valuable capital-budget items survive because they are tended. Mass-market items fail and aren't replaced.

I am also unsure of what the "sub-electronic investigations" are supposed to be, but if it is what I think (analysis down to particles smaller than electrons) it'd be better than what we can do nowadays and makes me wonder where this guy found the relevant tools in a period in which a freaking video player is something rare.

He probably didn't do it himself- handed it over to the tech-men and had them look at it, in (say) the same place they examine parts of their own machines to figure out if they're still usable.

[I assume for the sake of argument that the tech-men's machinery isn't really irreplaceable in all its parts; spares have to exist for some things, but they'd be used sparingly. It's likely that some machines break down and are cannibalized for spare parts to keep others running]

He said simply, "I'll take that challenge. It's a dead hand against a living will."

Once more we are back to the fact that Ducem Barr knows a whole lot of stuff that he has no business knowing, particularly in regards to psycho-history. Seeing how Seldon and the Second Foundation made every effort to ensure continued monopoly of both psychohistory and mental power, Barr's zealot like faith in the predictive powers of a lost science is suspicious as heck.

That said, I like Riose's attitude.

Oddly enough, Ducem Barr is a lot better informed about the Foundation in all relevant ways than Trantor's imperial court. How very peculiar, really.

The Court isn't really putting in an effort- and from the sounds of it, a lot of technology for reading old records has been lost.

[I wonder if it's as much a problem with file formats as anything else... ]

[Murazor]

7. Bribery.

The two within looked up from their evening meal and one reached out with his foot to cut off the cracked voice which rattled out of the battered pocket-transmitter with bright liveliness.
"More books?" asked Lathan Devers.
The sergeant held out the tightly-wound cylinder of film and scratched his neck. "It belongs to Engineer Orre, but he'll have to have it back. He's going to send it to his kids, you know, like what you might call a souvenir, you know."
Ducem Barr turned the cylinder in his hands with interest. "And where did the engineer get it? He hasn't a transmitter also, has he?"
The sergeant shook his head emphatically. He pointed to the knocked-about remnant at the foot of the bed. "That's the only one in the place. This fellow, Orre, now, he got that book from one of these pig-pen worlds out here we captured. They had it in a big building by itself and he had to kill a few of the natives that tried to stop him from taking it."
He looked at it appraisingly. "It makes a good souvenir - for kids."

More video player weirdness. I really, really don't get why this thing is supposed to be special in a galaxy that still has trimensional movie broadcasts and television, yet just as clearly it IS special.

"Even so. There are other armies and other leaders. You must go deeper. There is this Brodrig, for instance - no one more than he has the ear of the Emperor. He could demand hundreds of ships where Riose must struggle with ten. I know him by reputation."
"That so? What about him?" The trader's eyes lost in frustration what they gained in sharp interest.
"You want a pocket outline? He's a low-born rascal who has by unfailing flattery tickled the whims of the Emperor. He's well-hated by the court aristocracy, vermin themselves, because he can lay claim to neither family nor humility. He is the Emperor's adviser in all things, and the Emperor's too in the worst things. He is faithless by choice but loyal by necessity. There is not a man in the Empire as subtle in villainy or as crude in his pleasures. And they say there is no way to the Emperor's favor but through him; and no way to his, but through infamy."
"Wow!" Devers pulled thoughtfully at his neatly trimmed beard. "And he's the old boy the Emperor sent out here to keep an eye on Riose. Do you know I have an idea?"
"I do now."
"Suppose this Brodrig takes a dislike to our young Army's Delight?"
"He probably has already. He's not noted for a capacity for liking."
"Suppose it gets really bad. The Emperor might hear about it, and Riose might be in trouble."
"Uh-huh. Quite likely. But how do you propose to get that to happen?"
"I don't know. I suppose he could be bribed?"
The patrician laughed gently. "Yes, in a way, but not in the manner you bribed the sergeant - not with a pocket freezer. And even if you reach his scale, it wouldn't be worth it. There's probably no one so easily bribed, but he lacks even the fundamental honesty of honorable corruption. He doesn't stay bribed; not for any sum. Think of something else."

And Ducem Barr turns out to be hugely well informed about the Emperor's secretary, who proves instrumental through his actions in the resolution of the ongoing crisis, even though he later claims that he has never been in Trantor.

Nothing suspicious here. Move along, citizen.

In a more serious note, Barr claims that Brodrig could ask (and get) hundreds of ships for the war effort if he wanted to. Considering the quality and accuracy of his info, there is no particular reason to disbelieve.

"My honest tradesman," he said, "I have a Psychic Probe of my own, one that ought to suit you peculiarly well. You see this-"
And between thumb and forefinger, held negligently, were intricately designed, pink-and-yellow rectangles which were most definitely obvious in identity.
Devers said so. "It looks like cash," he said.
"Cash it is - and the best cash of the Empire, for it is backed by my estates, which are more extensive than the Emperor's own. A hundred thousand credits. All here! Between two fingers! Yours!"

Which seems to suggest that the Trantorian Empire doesn't work with fiat money anymore. That or there are now a bunch of credits of different value, all of which are more or less broadly accepted.

"For what, sir? I am a good trader, but all trades go in both directions."
"For what? For the truth! What is the general after? Why is he fighting this war?"
Lathan Devers sighed, and smoothed his beard thoughtfully.
"What he's after?" His eyes were following the motions of the secretary's hands as he counted the money slowly, bill by bill. "In a word, the Empire."
"Hmp. How ordinary! It always comes to that in the end. But how? What is the road that leads from the Galaxy's edge to the peak of Empire so broadly and invitingly?"
"The Foundation," said Devers, bitterly, "has secrets. They have books, old books - so old that the language they are in is only known to a few of the top men. But the secrets are shrouded in ritual and religion, and none may use them. I tried and now I am here - and there is a death sentence waiting for me, there."
"I see. And these old secrets? Come, for one hundred thousand I deserve the intimate details."
"The transmutation of elements," said Devers, shortly.
The secretary's eyes narrowed and lost some of their detachment. "I have been told that practical transmutation is impossible by the laws of nucleics."
"So it is, if nuclear forces are used. But the ancients were smart boys. There are sources of power greater than the nuclei and more fundamental. If the Foundation used those sources as I suggested-"
Devers felt a soft, creeping sensation in his stomach. The bait was dangling; the fish was nosing it.
The secretary said suddenly, "Continue. The general, I am sure, is aware of a this. But what does he intend doing once he finishes this opera-bouffe affair?"
Devers kept his voice rock-steady. "With transmutation he controls the economy of the whole set-up of your Empire. Mineral holdings won't be worth a sneeze when Riose can make tungsten out of aluminum and iridium out of iron. An entire production system based on the scarcity of certain elements and the abundance of others is thrown completely out of whack. There'll be the greatest disjointment the Empire has ever seen, and only Riose will be able to stop it. And there is the question of this new power I mentioned, the use of which won't give Riose religious heebies.
"There's nothing that can stop him now. He's got the Foundation by the back of the neck, and once he's finished with it, he'll be Emperor in two years."
"So." Brodrig laughed lightly. "Iridium out of iron, that's what you said, isn't it? Come, I'll tell you a state secret. Do you know that the Foundation has already been in communication with the general?"
Devers' back stiffened.
"You look surprised. Why not? It seems logical now. They offered him a hundred tons of iridium a year to make peace. A hundred tons of iron converted to iridium in violation of their religious principles to save their necks. Fair enough, but no wonder our rigidly incorruptible general refused - when he can have the iridium and the Empire as well. And poor Cleon called him his one honest general. My bewhiskered merchant, you have earned your money."

Besides the hogwash that Devers says, which may or may not be partially true, I am mostly surprised because the Empire still seems to work with a resource scarcity economy, despite having easy access to the natural resources of an entire galaxy.

"What is the latest?"
"Why, that Lord Brodrig, the darling of the Emperor, is now second in command at his own request."
Devers spoke for the first time. "At his own request, boss? How come? Or are you growing to like the fellow?" He chuckled.
Riose said, calmly, "No, can't say I do. It's just that he bought the office at what I considered a fair and adequate price."
"Such as?"
"Such as a request to the Emperor for reinforcements."
Devers' contemptuous smile broadened. "'He has communicated with the Emperor, huh? And I take it, boss, you're just waiting for these reinforcements, but they'll come any day. Right?"
"Wrong! They have already come. Five ships of the line; smooth and strong, with a personal message of congratulations from the Emperor, and more ships on the way. What's wrong, trader?" he asked, sardonically.

Self-explanatory. Reinforcements received by Riose after Brodrig takes a personal interest in the matter of the war.

"Here they are. You were caught easily. You surrendered at first blow with a burnt-out shield. You're quite ready to desert your world, and that without a price. Interesting, all this, isn't it?"
"I crave to be on the winning side, boss. I'm a sensible man; you called me that yourself."
Riose said with tight throatiness, "Granted! Yet no trader since has been captured. No trade ship but has had the speed to escape at choice. No trade ship but has had a screen that could take all the beating a light cruiser could give it, should it choose to fight. And no trader but has fought to death when occasion warranted. Traders have been traced as the leaders and instigators of the guerilla warfare on occupied planets and of the flying raids in occupied space.
"Are you the only sensible man then? You neither fight nor flee, but turn traitor without urging. You are unique, amazingly unique - in fact, suspiciously unique."

So, in short, Foundation trade-ships of the period have more speed than anything fielded by the Empire and defensive shields capable of taking all the firepower of a Imperial "light cruiser" (type of ship mentioned only in passing). Since the Foundation is losing at this point (and losing bad) it stands to reason that the gap between the light cruisers and ships of the line must be rather enormous.

"Well, that will be seen shortly. It is what I came here for. For instance, your ship will be searched for a personal force-shield. You have never worn one; yet all soldiers of the Foundation do. It will be significant evidence that there is information you do not choose to give me. Right?"

If I remember correctly, the global Foundation KIA figure of the Riose War is noted to be around half a million casualties. Some of these will have been crew of destroyed starships, but there is a definite implication here of the Imperials taking down Foundation ground troops, regardless of the shields. Wonder how they do that, whether they just keep throwing men into the meatgrinder until the shield runs out of juice or if they just call in airstrikes or such when they encounter shielded foes.

There was no answer. He continued, "And there will be more direct evidence. I have brought with me the Psychic Probe. It failed once before, but contact with the enemy is a liberal education."
His voice was smoothly threatening and Devers felt the gun thrust hard in his midriff - the general's gun, hitherto in its holster.
The general said quietly, "You will remove your wristband and any other metal ornament you wear and give them to me. Slowly! Atomic fields can be distorted, you see, and Psychic Probes might probe only into static. That's right… I'll take it."

Self-explanatory. Psychic Probing can be fooled through technological counter-measures that "distort atomic fields". Whatever that means.

Riose stepped behind his desk, with his blast-gun held ready. He said to Barr, "You too, patrician. Your wristband condemns you. You have been helpful earlier, however, and I am not vindictive, but I shall judge the fate of your behostaged family by the results of the Psychic Probe."
And as Riose leaned over to take out the message capsule, Barr lifted the crystal-enveloped bust of Cleon and quietly and methodically brought it down upon the general's head.
It happened too suddenly for Devers to grasp. It was as if a sudden demon had grown into the old man.
"Out!" said Barr, in a tooth-clenched whisper. "Quickly!" He seized Riose's dropped blaster and buried it in his blouse.

And when Riose makes mention of trying to probe Barr's secrets, an experienced general lets himself be distracted by routine matters in a situation in which he is holding prisoners he suspects to be hostile at gunpoint, and an old academic surprises and beats up a young, fit man. And then he escapes, leaving his hostage family to die as traitors. He justifies the thing later by explaining that he is a prominent leader of a Siwennan resistance movement, but considering my suspicions regarding him, Barr's actions are really, really interesting.

The trade ship was rising above the dead planet before the signal lights began their eerie blink and against the creamy cobweb of the great Lens in the sky which was the Galaxy, other black forms rose.
Devers said grimly, "Hold tight, Barr - and let's see if they've got a ship that can match my speed."
He knew they hadn't!

Yet another statement to the effect of Foundation tradeships being swifter in slower-than-light speeds than any Imperial design. Which is only logic, considering the smaller sizes and higher energy densities involved in this.

8. To Trantor.

Devers bent over the little dead globe, watching for a tiny sign of life. The directional control was slowly and thoroughly sieving space with its jabbing tight sheaf of signals.
Barr watched patiently from his seat on the low cot in the comer, He asked, "No more signs of them?"
"The Empire boys? No." The trader growled the words with evident impatience. "We lost the scuppers long ago. Space! With the blind jumps we took through hyperspace, it's lucky we didn't land up in a sun's belly. They couldn't have followed us even if they outranged us, which they didn't."

This is interesting in regards to the specifics of Jump mechanics, as well as the dangers involved. If I am reading Devers correctly, this means that Foundation vessels can make longer jumps than their imperial counterparts (unsurprising, but I think that this is the first explicit mention of there being range limitations in Jumps).

"I'm calling the Association - or trying to."
"The Association? Who are they?"
"Association of Independent Traders. Never heard of it, huh? Well, you're not alone. We haven't made our splash yet!"
For a while there was a silence that centered about the unresponsive Reception Indicator, and Barr said, "Are you within range?"
"I don't know. I haven't but a small notion where we are, going by dead reckoning. That's why I have to use directional control. It could take years, you know."
"Might it?"
Barr pointed; and Devers jumped and adjusted his earphones. Within the little murky sphere there was a tiny glowing whiteness.
For half an hour, Devers nursed the fragile, groping thread of communication that reached through hyperspace to connect two points that laggard light would take five hundred years to bind together.
Then he sat back, hopelessly. He looked up, and shoved the earphones back.
[...]
Barr said, "I'm omnivorous. But what about the Association. Have you lost them?"
"Looks so. It was extreme range, a little too extreme. Doesn't matter, though. I got all that counted."

And this comes to confirm that there is also a range limitation for hyperwave (five hundred light years being extreme range for a ship-mounted communication device), which confirms some of the previous speculation and explains why the Periphery didn't know that the Empire was still around. It all falls together pretty well. Neat.

"Cracked his skull? With Brodrig his second in command?" Barr's face sharpened with hate. "All Siwenna would have been my hostage. Brodrig has proven his worth long since. There exists a world which five years ago lost one male in every ten - and simply for failure to meet outstanding taxes. This same Brodrig was the tax-collector. No, Riose may live. His punishments are mercy in comparison."

Barr still super-well informed about Brodrig's career and other specifics...

"The message capsule. The one that Riose received just before I jacked him. Does that count as something?"
"I don't know. Depends on what's in it!" Devers sat down and turned it over carefully in his hand.
When Barr stepped from his cold shower and, gratefully, into the mild warm current of the air dryer, he found Devers silent and absorbed at the workbench.
The Siwennian slapped his body with a sharp rhythm and spoke above the punctuating sounds. "What are you doing?"
Devers looked up. Droplets of perspiration glittered in his beard. "I'm going to open this capsule."
"Can you open it without Riose's personal characteristic?" There was mild surprise in the Siwennian's voice.
"If I can't, I'll resign from the Association and never skipper a ship for what's left of my life. I've got a three-way electronic analysis of the interior now, and I've got little jiggers that the Empire never heard of, especially made for jimmying capsules. I've been a burglar before this, y'know. A trader has to be something of everything."
He bent low over the little sphere, and a small flat instrument probed delicately and sparked redly at each fleeting contact.
He said, "This capsule is a crude job, anyway. These Imperial boys are no shakes at this small work. I can see that. Ever see a Foundation capsule? It's half the size and impervious to electronic analysis in the first place."
And then he was rigid, the shoulder muscles beneath his tunic tautening visibly. His tiny probe pressed slowly-
It was noiseless when it came, but Devers; relaxed and sighed. In his hand was the shining sphere with its message unrolled like a parchment tongue.
"It's from Brodrig," he said. Then, with contempt, "The message medium is permanent. In a Foundation capsule, the message would be oxidized to gas within the minute."

So apparently these message capsules that pop up now and then (if you'll remember, one was involved in the "teleport" quote) conventionally require to be opened a "personal characteristic", which may or may not be a biometric lock of some kind, and Foundation models are superior once again thanks to being shielded against scanning and a self-destruct feature for their contents.

But Ducem Barr waved him silent. He read the message quickly.
FROM: AMMEL BRODRIG, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY OF HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, PRIVY SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL, AND PEER OF THE REALM.
TO: BEL RIOSE, MILITARY GOVERNOR OF SIWENNA. GENERAL OF THE IMPERIAL FORCES, AND PEER OF THE REALM. I GREET YOU.
PLANET #1120 NO LONGER RESISTS. THE PLANS OF OFFENSE AS OUTLINED CONTINUE SMOOTHLY. THE ENEMY WEAKENS VISIBLY AND THE ULTIMATE ENDS IN VIEW WILL SURELY BE GAINED.

Nothing of real interest here, other than a planet being designated as "1120". That label for a planet can be interpreted to mean that Riose and his forces are conducting operations in a thousand plus planets in this war. Which more or less would seem to fit the scale that the Foundation can be expected to operate in at this point in time.

"If he does!" Devers' one-sided smile was lost in his beard. "Why, watch then, and I'll show you."
With one finger the lavishly monogrammed sheet of message-parchment was thrust back into its slot. With a soft twang, it disappeared and the globe was a smooth, unbroken whole again. Somewhere inside was the tiny oiled whir of the controls as they lost their setting by random movements.
"Now there is no known way of opening this capsule without knowledge of Riose's personal characteristic, is there?"
"To the Empire, no," said Barr.
"Then the evidence it contains is unknown to us and absolutely authentic."
"To the Empire, yes," said Barr.
"And the Emperor can open it, can't he? Personal Characteristics of Government officials must be on file. We keep records of our officials at the Foundation."
"At the Imperial capital as well," agreed Barr.
"Then when you, a Siwennian patrician and Peer of the Realm, tell this Cleon, this Emperor, that his favorite tame-parrot and his shiniest general are getting together to knock him over, and hand him the capsule as evidence, what will he think Brodrig's 'ultimate ends' are?"
Barr sat down weakly. "Wait, I don't follow you." He stroked one thin cheek, and said, "You're not really serious, are you?"
"I am." Devers was angrily excited. "Listen, nine out of the last ten Emperors got their throats cut, or their gizzards blasted out by one or another of their generals with bigtime notions in their heads. You told me that yourself more than once. Old man Emperor would believe us so fast it would make Riose's head swim."

Some more about message capsule security and Devers' next scheme. Oddly enough, Barr is initially reluctant to go to Trantor and claims that he doesn't know the navigational coordinates -which is realistic enough I guess, if he is more of an historian.

"Doc," said Devers, patiently, "don't be a hick tom the sticks. Riose said my ship surrendered too easily and, brother, he wasn't kidding. This ship has enough fire-power and enough juice in its shield to hold off anything we're likely to meet this deep inside the frontier. And we have personal shields, too. The Empire boys never found them, you know, but they weren't meant to be found."

And some more about how tradeships compare to Imperial vessels which pretty much confirms what Riose previously stated about the blasted things.

[Murazor]

The Court isn't really putting in an effort- and from the sounds of it, a lot of technology for reading old records has been lost.

[I wonder if it's as much a problem with file formats as anything else... ]

It actually comes up during either the Seldon books or the non-Asimov Second Foundation trilogy.

But, anyway, a significant fraction (~20% or so) of the older records in Trantor's Galactic Library were considered unreadable, because of a combination of no longer used machine languages, data degradation and linguistic shift. Dors Venabili comments about the matter.

[Murazor]

9. On Trantor

The stars were as thick as weeds in an unkempt field, and for the first time, Lathan Devers found the figures to the right of the decimal point of prime importance in calculating the cuts through the hyper-regions. There was a claustrophobic sensation about the necessity for leaps of not more than a light-year. There was a frightening harshness about a sky which glittered unbrokenly in every direction. It was being lost in a sea of radiation.

Self-explanatory. The effects of a high density of gravity wells on hyperspace jumping seem obvious. However, it makes me wonder why Trantor as a capital for over ten thousand years, even though it seems obvious that travel has to be slower near the galactic core.

And in the center of an open cluster of ten thousand stars, whose light tore to shreds the feebly encircling darkness, there circled the huge Imperial planet, Trantor.
But it was more than a planet; it was the living pulse beat of an Empire of twenty million stellar systems. It had only one, function, administration; one purpose, government; and one manufactured product, law.

In Seldon's day the empire was formed by twenty five million worlds and, two centuries later, it still has twenty million stellar systems under its yoke. This is not entirely surprising, considering that it was previously noted to concentrate three fourths of the galactic population, but it means that the entire Periphery (2/3rds of the galactic volume) contain just a few million worlds.

Though there is also a possibility of somewhat aggressive colonization of new worlds. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember that something to this effect is briefly mentioned in Foundation's Edge.

The entire world was one functional distortion. There was no living object on its surface hut man, his pets, and his parasites. No blade of grass or fragment of uncovered soil could be found outside the hundred square miles of the Imperial Palace. No fresh water outside the Palace grounds existed but in the vast underground cisterns that held the water supply of a world.
The lustrous, indestructible, incorruptible metal that was the unbroken surface of the planet was the foundation of the huge, metal structures that mazed the planet. They were structures connected by causeways; laced by corridors; cubbyholed by offices; basemented by the huge retail centers that covered square miles; penthoused by the glittering amusement world that sparkled into life each night.
One could walk around the world of Trantor and never leave that one conglomerate building, nor see the city.

In Trantor, at least, nothing much seems to have changed since Seldon's time. Still described as a grand ecumenopolis standing upon feet of clay.

A fleet of ships greater in number than all the war fleets the Empire had ever supported landed their cargoes on Trantor each day to feed the forty billions of humans who gave nothing in exchange but the fulfillment of the necessity of untangling the myriads of threads that spiraled into the central administration of the most complex government Humanity had ever known.

And no, we are not given the number of ships that land in Trantor every day. It was tens of thousands in Seldon's time, but we don't know if the number is the same, greater or lesser in Riose's day.

There had been the preliminary halt in space, where the first of what had grown into a hundred questionnaires had been filled out. There were the hundred cross-examinations, the routine administration of a simple Probe, the photographing of the ship, the Characteristic-Analysis of the two men, and the subsequent recording of the same, the search for contraband, the payment of the entry tax - and finally the question of the identity cards and visitor's visa.
Ducem Barr was a Siwennian and subject of the Emperor, but Lathan Devers was an unknown without the requisite documents. The official in charge at the moment was devastated with sorrow, but Devers could not enter. In fact, he would have to be held for official investigation.
From somewhere a hundred credits in crisp, new bills backed by the estates of Lord Brodrig made their appearance, and changed bands quietly. The official hemmed importantly and the devastation of his sorrow was assuaged. A new form made its appearance from the appropriate pigeonhole. It was filled out rapidly and efficiently, with the Devers characteristic thereto formally and properly attached.
[...]
In the hangar, the trade ship was another vessel to be cached, photographed, recorded, contents noted, identity cards of passengers facsimiled, and for which a suitable fee was paid, recorded, and receipted.

The procedure for visiting Trantor seems... complex. Perhaps a sign of bureaucratic strangulation as a factor in the Fall?

And then Devers was on a huge terrace under the bright white sun, along which women chattered, children shrieked, and men sipped drinks languidly and listened to the huge televisors blaring out the news of the Empire.
Barr paid a requisite number of iridium coins and appropriated the uppermost member of a pile of newspapers. It was the Trantor Imperial News, official organ of the government. In the back of the news room, there was the soft clicking noise of additional editions being printed in long-distance sympathy with the busy machines at the Imperial News offices ten thousand miles away by corridor - six thousand by air-machine - just as ten million sets of copies were being likewise printed at that moment in ten million other news rooms all over the planet.

Iridium coins suggest that the Empire is using commodity money (a hundred tons of iridium a year were considered a reasonable tribute to get Riose to stop curbstomping the Foundation), which is a tremendously backwards way of doing things. However, the fact that Devers and Barr are throwing around money guaranteed by Brodrig makes things more uncertain.

I also like the quaint retro feel of the news-room with public televisions and print-on-demand newspapers. There is apparently one of these for every four thousand people living in Trantor, so it is an adequate set-up to keep people informed in a setting lacking an Internet equivalent.

He said, "I better leave it to you, doc."
Barr was calm, low-voice. "I tried to tell you, but it's hard to believe without seeing for yourself, I know that. Do you know how many people want to see the Emperor every day? About one million. Do you know how many he sees? About ten. We'll have to work through the civil service, and that makes it harder. But we can't afford the aristocracy."
"We have almost one hundred thousand."
"A single Peer of the Realm would cost us that, and it would take at least three or four to form an adequate bridge to the Emperor. It may take fifty chief commissioners and senior supervisors to do the same, but they would cost us only a hundred apiece perhaps. I'll do the talking. In the first place, they wouldn't understand your accent, and in the second, you don't know the etiquette of Imperial bribery. It's an art, I assure you. Ah!"
[...]
Barr shrugged, "You can't go fast on Trantor. If you try, you'll end up at the point of an atom-blaster, most likely."
"How long will it take?"
"A month, if we're lucky. A month, and our hundred thousand credits - if even that will suffice. And that is providing the Emperor does not take it into his head in the meantime to travel to the Summer Planets, where he sees no petitioners at all."

Barr claims that he has never been in Trantor. And yet he is something of an expert in court politics, "the etiquette of Imperial bribery" and the going rates for bribing Peers of the Realm and senior bureaucrats.

I am getting boring with my paranoia about this character, but the guy is really, really, really suspicious.

Also, it seems that Brodrig really paid Devers a metric crapton of money for that false info about the Foundation.

"You will not leave." The commissioner arose, and his eyes no longer seemed near-sighted. "You need answer no question now; that will be reserved for a later - and more forceful - time. Nor am I a commissioner; I am a Lieutenant of the Imperial Police. You are under arrest."
There was a glitteringly efficient blast-gun in his fist as he smiled. "There are greater men than you under arrest this day. It is a hornet's nest we are cleaning up."
Devers snarled and reached slowly for his own gun. The lieutenant of police smiled more broadly and squeezed the contacts. The blasting line of force struck Devers' chest in an accurate blaze of destruction - that bounced harmlessly off his personal shield in sparkling spicules of light.
Devers shot in turn, and the lieutenant's head fell from off an upper torso that had disappeared. It was still smiling as it lay in the jag of sunshine which entered through the new-made hole in the wall.

Personal forcefield ownage and another incident in which humans who get hit by blasters turn into half the man they used to be. Whether through direct transfer of energy or exotic voodoo shit, Devers blaster shot causes a man's upper torso to disappear and has enough leftover juice to blast a hole in the wall. Impressive.

But Barr snatched a copy of the Imperial News before diving into the huge barn of the hangar, where the ship lifted hastily through a giant cavity burnt fiercely into the roof.
"Can you get away from them?" asked Barr.
Ten ships of the traffic-police wildly followed the runaway craft that had burst out of the lawful, radio-beamed Path of Leaving, and then broken every speed law in creation. Further behind still, sleek vessels of the Secret Service were lifting in pursuit of a carefully described ship manned by two thoroughly identified murderers.
"Watch me," said Devers, and savagely shifted into hyperspace two thousand miles above the surface of Trantor. The shift, so near a planetary mass, meant unconsciousness for Barr and a fearful haze of pain for Devers, but light-years further, space above them was clear.

Self-explanatory. Hyperjumping in relatively close proximity to a planetary mass (three thousand kilometers above the planetary surface) is tremendously painful for young, fit characters and causes unconsciousness in those with frailer bodies.

10. The War Ends.

The Siwennese delegation, with Ducem Barr a lionized member, signed the Convention, and Siwenna became the first province to pass directly from the Empire's political rule to the Foundation's economic one.
Five Imperial Ships of the Line - captured when Siwenna rebelled behind the lines of the Empire's Border Fleet - flashed overhead, huge and massive, detonating a roaring salute as they passed over the city.

Outcome of the Riose war, following Riose being recalled to Trantor and executed as traitor under trumped up charges.

"By psychohistorical necessity, I presume." Forell rolled the phrase sonorously with the humorous ease of long familiarity.
"Exactly." Barr grew serious. "It never penetrated earlier, but once it was over and I could… well… look at the answers in the back of the book, the problem became simple. We can see, now, that the social background of the Empire makes wars of conquest impossible for it. Under weak Emperors, it is tom apart by generals competing for a worthless and surely death-bringing throne. Under strong Emperors, the Empire is frozen into a paralytic rigor in which disintegration apparently ceases for the moment, but only at the sacrifice of all possible growth."
Forell growled bluntly through strong puffs, "You're not clear, Lord Barr."
Barr smiled slowly. "I suppose so. It's the difficulty of not being trained in psychohistory. Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations. But let's see now-"
Barr considered, while Forell relaxed, back to railing, and Devers looked into the velvet sky and thought wonderingly of Trantor.
[...]
Forell said dryly, "I can't say you're getting clearer."
"A moment," continued Barr earnestly. "Look at the situation. A weak general could never have endangered us, obviously. A strong general during the time of a weak Emperor would never have endangered us, either; for he would have turned his arms towards a much more fruitful target. Events have shown that three-fourths of the Emperors of the last two centuries were rebel generals and rebel viceroys before they were Emperors.
"So it is only the combination of strong Emperor and strong general that can harm the Foundation; for a strong Emperor can not be dethroned easily, and a strong general is forced to turn outwards, past the frontiers.
"But, what keeps the Emperor strong? What kept Cleon strong? It's obvious. He is strong, because he permits no strong subjects. A courtier who becomes too rich, or a general who becomes too popular is dangerous. All the recent history of the Empire proves that to any Emperor intelligent enough to be strong.
"Riose won victories, so the Emperor grew suspicious. All the atmosphere of the times forced him to be suspicious. Did Riose refuse a bribe? Very suspicious; ulterior motives. Did his most trusted courtier suddenly favor Riose? Very suspicious; ulterior motives. It wasn't the individual acts that were suspicious. Anything else would have done which is why our individual plots were unnecessary and rather futile. It was the success of Riose that was suspicious. So he was recalled, and accused, condemned, murdered. The Foundation wins again.
"Look, there is not a conceivable combination of events that does not result in the Foundation winning. It was inevitable; whatever Riose did, whatever we did."
The Foundation magnate nodded ponderously. "So! But what if the Emperor and the general had been the same person. Hey? What then? That's a case you didn't cover, so you haven't proved your point yet."
Barr shrugged. "I can't prove anything; I haven't the mathematics. But I appeal to your reason. With an Empire in which every aristocrat, every strong man, every pirate can aspire to the Throne - and, as history shows, often successfully - what would happen to even a strong Emperor who preoccupied himself with foreign wars at the extreme end of the Galaxy? How long would he have to remain away from the capital before somebody raised the standards of civil war and forced him home. The social environment of the Empire would make that time short.

The psychohistorical components of the fourth crisis as outlined by Ducem Barr who is not a trained psycho-historian and most definitely isn't an agent of the Second Foundation.

[Simon_Jester]

More video player weirdness. I really, really don't get why this thing is supposed to be special in a galaxy that still has trimensional movie broadcasts and television, yet just as clearly it IS special.

I'm guessing that it's a file format thing- say, a huge number of older texts are recorded in some kind of dense or weird storage medium, and modern devices in the Empire cannot read them.

Which seems to suggest that the Trantorian Empire doesn't work with fiat money anymore. That or there are now a bunch of credits of different value, all of which are more or less broadly accepted.

Or credits are in the nature of 'personal checks' by the nobility: they're fiat money but there are many people whose fiats are of different value. Credits issued by the king of the galaxy would be worth more than credits issued by the duke of Backwater, just as in real life no one cares about Zimbabwe dollars.

If I remember correctly, the global Foundation KIA figure of the Riose War is noted to be around half a million casualties. Some of these will have been crew of destroyed starships, but there is a definite implication here of the Imperials taking down Foundation ground troops, regardless of the shields. Wonder how they do that, whether they just keep throwing men into the meatgrinder until the shield runs out of juice or if they just call in airstrikes or such when they encounter shielded foes.

Or they have weapons that can overpower a typical personal shield (the blaster equivalent of tank guns), or which a typical 'nuclear shield' does not stop (i.e. bomb shrapnel- no, that wouldn't work because slugthrowers are a common threat the shields would have to stop)

The psychohistorical components of the fourth crisis as outlined by Ducem Barr who is not a trained psycho-historian and most definitely isn't an agent of the Second Foundation.

Note that all this is inspired by the campaigns of Belisarius under Justinian the Great during the 6th century AD (the resemblance to "Bel Riose" is NOT a coincidence). Belisarius was by all appearances a tactical genius who won huge victories over mighty enemy armies with relatively little effort. However, he never enjoyed Justinian's trust for long, and the more he won the more suspicious he became. They kept up a sort of love-hate relationship instead of Belisarius being executed, but it was the sort of thing that could easily inspire a story like this.

[Batman]

Forget about file formats-you no longer have the right codec, you're fucked.

[Boeing 757]

One thing which I could never quite bring myself to believe regarding Asimov's storyline is how a galaxy virtually filled to the brim with human-populated worlds could lose so much technology in such a short timespan. I understand that the plot is historically grounded in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but that analogy can only be fitted so far to a galactic society which had endured steadfastly for 22,000 years. Which kind of social force could be responsible for such widespread decay? It simply makes no sense.