[SteveS]

Michael Andre-Driussi, in the article mentioned in the first message of this thread, says that Emperor Cleon I is the only thing Traveller draws from Asimov's Foundation series. An obvious first point where he's wrong is that there's also a Cleon II (or else Cleon I would just be called Cleon). But in reading more about the Foundation universe, I find that its influences on Traveller are pervasive. The only reason I didn't notice that right away is that I read the Foundation trilogy so long ago that it was still a trilogy, when I was a kid, something like a decade before Traveller was first published.

I don't have time right now to start a new Foundation and Traveller thread, but there is opposition to "Mentalics" in Foundation. The first is the Mule, and the opposition to him isn't very effective, and it's not because he's a Mentalic, it's because he's overthrowing the Empire. But the Second Foundation reinvents Mentalics as a way to perform its Manipulations to hasten the end of the Long Night -- and its Mentalics face a fair amount of opposition too, though my memory of just what opposition is lost in over four decades of faded memory.

Maybe someone with fresher memory of Second Foundation can elaborate. On the other hand, if anyone had read it recently enough, they'd have seen that and maybe added to this thread. But maybe someone else has the books closer than a library or buying new books, and the time to read them.

Edit: right after I posted this, I saw mention of Second Foundation in the immediately preceding message, which I initially overlooked. OK, consider this an elaboration on that point, though I wrote it as an independent thought.