Forward the Foundation (Foundation, #7)

by Isaac Asimov

“I deny your right to question me on the matter.”

Gonna start using this

Being feared is nothing. Being despised, even, can be lived with. But being laughed at—that’s fatal.

For one thing, Trantor was the most highly populated of all the worlds, with its forty billion people.

I’m only just now thinking about Trantor’s physical size - if 40 billion people live there, even heavily concentrated, could it be similarly sized to Earth? We have 7+ billion but of course wide swaths of the planet have low concentrations of people and no one lives on 50+% if our surface area that’s covered by oceans. So it seems possible that 40 billion people could habitate the surface area of Earth if the entire planet were as dense as a city. But if not and Trantor is bigger, then it has more gravity, and we’re not led to believe these humans have evolved past current humanity enough to adjust to big gravity differences, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve yet mastered gravitational manipulation since they talk in the previous book about gravitic elevators being a new technology…

“It’s all but impossible to change people’s minds and hearts, Raych. It’s enough to try and perhaps eliminate the worst of the injustices.”

“Gruber, this is not the time to make bargains. Fail me and you will not be Chief Gardener. Instead, you will be discharged without a pension.”

When did Hari become such a dick?

And when Seldon appears, Planchet will raise his blaster. Our people will raise the cry of ‘Treason!’ In the confusion and hurly-burly, Planchet will kill Seldon and then you will kill Planchet. You will then drop your blaster and leave. There are those who will help you leave. It’s been arranged.”

He knows who Planchet is - why does he think he’ll kill his father?

The word “tradition” covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.

Gruber, staring at him, babbled, “Everyone screaming and yelling. I thought, Who would know? They would think someone else had killed the Emperor. But then I couldn’t run.” “But, Gruber. Why?” “So I wouldn’t have to be Chief Gardener.” And he collapsed.

This doesn’t really make sense.

“But you know what she is.” “Of course I know what she is. She’s a woman who loves me. She’s the woman I love. That’s what she is.” “And before you fell in love with her, what was she? You know some of what she had to do while undercover in Wye—you were one of her ‘assignments.’ How many others were there? Are you able to live with her past? With what she did in the name of duty? Now you can afford to be idealistic. But someday you will have your first quarrel with her—or your second or your nineteenth—and you’ll break down and say, ‘You wh——!’ ”

I did not peg Dors as a slut-shamer

“If you’ll study the red line and the red shading, you will see that the blue dot of Terminus lies slightly outside it—fifty light-years outside it, in fact.

Only 50 light years is “slightly” 😳