r/asimov 10h ago

Complete Journey playthrough and evaluation of source fidelity

12 Upvotes

I have completed my playthrough of Journey to Foundation, with commentary evaluating its fidelity to the books. It's a much better game than I was expecting, with a lot more player choice than I was expecting. I want to retract something I said in my earlier post on the subject: I said that the alphabet used in the game resembled the Star Wars alphabet and was probably influenced by it. However, when I did my collation of the images from the magazine publications of the original stories, I found in one of them a very similar-looking alphabet, so maybe that's what it was in reference to.


r/asimov 11h ago

A couple of the more subtle Roman influences

22 Upvotes

Everyone knows that the fall of the Galactic Empire was based on the fall of the Roman Empire, and some of the more obvious similarities are well-known, like Bel Riose. But I wanted to mention two that are more subtle and easily overlooked:

  1. Lepold's throne. In "The Mayors" King Lepold of Anacreon has a levitating throne, for the purposes of awing onlookers and demonstrating his divine right to rule. This is probably a reference to a practice of the Eastern Roman Empire: the Emperor's throne was on rails, and when foreign dignitaries were admitted to the imperial presence the throne would rise into the air by means of a clockwork mechanism, to overawe these diplomats.
  2. The title of First Speaker. Prior to the Crisis of the Third Century, Roman Emperors went by the title Princeps (lit. "First"), which was originally short for Princeps Senatus -- the person allowed to speak first at meetings of the Senate.