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possession of Terminus by any of them would make that kingdom too powerful. The other kingdoms forced the Anacreons to leave. Hardin then sold atomic devices to everyone. But he put atomic science, viewed by barbarians as a kind of magic, within a religious framework of faith and miracles. This has enhanced the military capabilities of the barbarians and conferred religious authority upon their rulers. The Anacreons attack Terminus, but the Anacreon priests are offended by the blasphemy against their religious center and lead a rebellion. Seldon appears again in the Time Vault. His warning this time: beware the spirit of regionalism (or nationalism) because it is stronger than spiritual power. |
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In ''The Traders" ("The Big and the Little" in Astounding for August 1944) another fifty years have passed. The Foundation on Terminus has absorbed its barbarian neighbors and rules them with its scientific religion. Basically irreligious Traders sell Foundation atomic power and gadgets to other worlds for metals. The Foundation is committed to expansion through the export of its religion. A Trader named Limmar Ponyets is sent to Askone, where machines are sacrilegious, to save another Trader who has been arrested for interfering in local politics (actually, he was a Foundation agent-missionary). Ponyets works upon Askonian greed for gold by jury-rigging a transmutation machine to turn base metals into gold, talks one influential Askonian into accepting the machine, and then blackmails him, with secret films of his blasphemous association, into introducing Foundation machines. |
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"The Merchant Princes" (published as "The Wedge" in Astounding, October 1944) takes place about twenty-five years later. Religion has rigidified into faith. The Mayor's office has stultified and even the Traders have grown rich and self-satisfied. One of them, Hober Mallow, is considered a political threat by Jorane Sutt, the Mayor's secretary and the real political power. Mallow is sent to investigate the disappearance of Foundation ships near Korell. When a Foundation missionary seeks refuge in Mallow's ship from a Korellian mob, Mallow surrenders him to the Korellians. This leads to an audience with the Commdor, the hereditary ruler of the "republic," in which Mallow persuades the Commdor that the atomic devices Mallow has to sell will increase the Commdor's profits. Mallow dispenses with the religious paraphernalia "religion," he says, "would cut my profits" and the Korellian economy soon is dependent upon Foundation devices and efficiency. Mallow then traces the Spaceship-and-Sun design on Korellian handguns to Siwenna, where an Empire viceroy wants to carve out a new Empire among the barbarians, and discovers that Siwenna's atomic |
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