Foundation V

Hello , the Foundation saga continues with the Foundation trilogy epic, last weeks episode IV dealt with the cleaverly outmanouvered General Roise, so what happened..


"The General," tells how the Galactic Empire, now well into its collapse, launches an attack against the Foundation. They are led by General Bel Riose, a commander of supposedly unparalleled prowess. The Empire, though a mere shadow of its former self, still retains far more resources and personnel than the Foundation. Riose asks the Emperor for reinforcements, apparently more than he could possibly need, so he can guarantee victory over the Foundation. He also rejects the Foundation's offer of "You stop invading us and we'll pay you a generous amount of money." Devers, a native of the foundation intercepts a message that summarizes the General's doings, and escapes to Trantor, trying to see the emperor and show him the message. He fails and is nearly killed, but the emperor finds out anyway. In the end, the emperor decides that Riose is too dangerous (refusing bribes? Highly suspicious. Taking that many reinforcements? And he's popular enough that he could easily turn them against the Empire and carve out his own territory), and has him tried and executed....

This was the psychohistorical defense: Under a weak emperor, an upstart general would have much greater opportunities for an internal overthrow than an external conquest on the edge of the Galaxy. A weak general, of course, is no threat to the foundation, even under a strong Emperor. The strong emperor himself, in a declining empire, cannot dare to leave the central planet to make war at the fringes of the empire, because he would be soon disposed of by the competition at the court at the central planet. So, the emperor cannot play general himself, because then someone will take over while he is off conquering the Foundation. The only time there would be an actual threat to the Foundation would be when there was both a strong emperor and a strong general; the general could not overthrow the emperor, so his attention would be diverted outwards. A strong Emperor, however, is one that allows no one else to become too powerful; a strong emperor would kill a competent, strong general before he even launched an attack. So, the strong emperor would eventually become fearful of the strong general's exploits, and being a capable emperor he would get rid of a general like Riose, as happens in the story. In all cases, the Foundation is invulnerable.

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Foundation V (The Mule) (37mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !