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james_davis_nicollFoundation: The Merchant Princes
The Traders appears to have been dropped entirely from the BBC version. Since these are largely independent stories, that won't affect things too much.
This is set about a century and a half after the founding of the Encyclopedia. Terminus still has its little empire of religion addled Kingdoms but is experiencing some difficulty expanding into new territory because the surrounding principalities aren't run by idiots and they are not keen on becoming more pocket theocracies.
Terminus also has a community of traders and one of those, Mallow, is dispatched by a politician named Sutt (pronounced Soot) to Korell, supposedly to see if suspicions that Korell has somehow gained access to atomic technology and weapons are correct [1]. Sutt is worried that Terminus may be facing a Seldon Crisis and that rival atomic powers might be part of it. He's also got his eye on gaining more power on Terminus.
Mallow is a competent man and he not only manages to avoid an engineered political confrontation (at the cost of handing a seemingly harmless religious nut over to an angry mob) and establish firm trade ties to Korell but he also manages to track down the source of the atomics, which is none other than the Galactic Empire itself, much reduced but still a power to be reckoned with.
Mallow is aided in his intelligence mission into the corrupt and self-destructive Empire by an old man who is so astonishingly willing to tell a total stranger about his family's plan to get even with the ambitious officer who needless massacred millions that Mallow is driven to ask why the old man is so willing to tell a stranger that e.g. his only surviving son has worked his way into the official's inner circle and is even now waiting the moment to strike. The old man says he recognizes Mallow as another enemy of the officer but it seems to be there are at least two other explanations, one of which is funny; either the old man is senile or in fact none of his sons are in the fellow's inner circle and the repeated tale is intended to set off a completely pointless witch hunt amongst the bureaucrat's closest allies.
Mallow returns to Terminus where Sutt and Mallow end up on opposite sides of a struggle over Terminus's fate (except that it has All Been Ordained by Seldon so in fact while Mallow and Sutt may be the playing pieces on the board at the time, the player is the long dead Seldon). Mallow expresses a belief that religion has had its day and that in the future Terminus will binds its enemies with chains of gold (at the cost of being entangled in them themselves), that the effectiveness of trade as a weapon of war will be demonstrated in the coming war with ambitious Korell and that the Empire's technology, while impressive, cannot be used to effectively counter Terminus. Mallow proves he is the protagonist by demonstrating the power of the smug lecture of ultimate fate and also by outmaneuvering Sutt at every turn.
Once again, arresting political opponents to keep them from office is a well established trick on Terminus.
I'm kind of baffled that a story whose moral is "dictators who force their nations into economically destructive wars will inevitably be overthrown by consumers missing their luxuries and masters of industry desiring their old levels of profit" got published in 1944. It's true Korell is particularly vulnerable but it still seems like odd timing.
Oh, it's also clear the Foundation uses atomic weapons from time to time. Since cities and ships can be shielded, this will not have the same consequences atomic war would have on a world like 1940s Earth.
[added later]
This, by the way, is the first Foundation story that has women on stage. There are two, one literally a walk-on (we hear her footsteps and nothing else) and the other a dictator's wife who discusses strategy with her husband.
1: The only two sources Sutt can imagine are either that the Korellians have somehow developed it themselves or that some Foundation traitor is selling it to them. The excluded middle may be intended to indicate Sutt is not the protagonist he believes himself to be.
The Traders appears to have been dropped entirely from the BBC version. Since these are largely independent stories, that won't affect things too much.
This is set about a century and a half after the founding of the Encyclopedia. Terminus still has its little empire of religion addled Kingdoms but is experiencing some difficulty expanding into new territory because the surrounding principalities aren't run by idiots and they are not keen on becoming more pocket theocracies.
Terminus also has a community of traders and one of those, Mallow, is dispatched by a politician named Sutt (pronounced Soot) to Korell, supposedly to see if suspicions that Korell has somehow gained access to atomic technology and weapons are correct [1]. Sutt is worried that Terminus may be facing a Seldon Crisis and that rival atomic powers might be part of it. He's also got his eye on gaining more power on Terminus.
Mallow is a competent man and he not only manages to avoid an engineered political confrontation (at the cost of handing a seemingly harmless religious nut over to an angry mob) and establish firm trade ties to Korell but he also manages to track down the source of the atomics, which is none other than the Galactic Empire itself, much reduced but still a power to be reckoned with.
Mallow is aided in his intelligence mission into the corrupt and self-destructive Empire by an old man who is so astonishingly willing to tell a total stranger about his family's plan to get even with the ambitious officer who needless massacred millions that Mallow is driven to ask why the old man is so willing to tell a stranger that e.g. his only surviving son has worked his way into the official's inner circle and is even now waiting the moment to strike. The old man says he recognizes Mallow as another enemy of the officer but it seems to be there are at least two other explanations, one of which is funny; either the old man is senile or in fact none of his sons are in the fellow's inner circle and the repeated tale is intended to set off a completely pointless witch hunt amongst the bureaucrat's closest allies.
Mallow returns to Terminus where Sutt and Mallow end up on opposite sides of a struggle over Terminus's fate (except that it has All Been Ordained by Seldon so in fact while Mallow and Sutt may be the playing pieces on the board at the time, the player is the long dead Seldon). Mallow expresses a belief that religion has had its day and that in the future Terminus will binds its enemies with chains of gold (at the cost of being entangled in them themselves), that the effectiveness of trade as a weapon of war will be demonstrated in the coming war with ambitious Korell and that the Empire's technology, while impressive, cannot be used to effectively counter Terminus. Mallow proves he is the protagonist by demonstrating the power of the smug lecture of ultimate fate and also by outmaneuvering Sutt at every turn.
Once again, arresting political opponents to keep them from office is a well established trick on Terminus.
I'm kind of baffled that a story whose moral is "dictators who force their nations into economically destructive wars will inevitably be overthrown by consumers missing their luxuries and masters of industry desiring their old levels of profit" got published in 1944. It's true Korell is particularly vulnerable but it still seems like odd timing.
Oh, it's also clear the Foundation uses atomic weapons from time to time. Since cities and ships can be shielded, this will not have the same consequences atomic war would have on a world like 1940s Earth.
[added later]
This, by the way, is the first Foundation story that has women on stage. There are two, one literally a walk-on (we hear her footsteps and nothing else) and the other a dictator's wife who discusses strategy with her husband.
1: The only two sources Sutt can imagine are either that the Korellians have somehow developed it themselves or that some Foundation traitor is selling it to them. The excluded middle may be intended to indicate Sutt is not the protagonist he believes himself to be.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 12:45 pm (UTC)I note that the USS Kitty Hawk was decommissioned in 2009.
As for weapons, apparently the ability to warp space and modify gravity is easier than the ability to refine a few ppm of isotopes on an industrial scale, and that there's a huge multiplier effect. I don't think you can say anything more than that (and obviously it doesn't conform to known physics).
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 02:51 pm (UTC)Doesn't that descibe a great deal of science fiction, particularly Analog-y style?
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:04 pm (UTC)Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 02:54 pm (UTC)So the absence of knowledge about nucleics (magic fairy dust) does not exclude the presence of nucleic technology in the "barbarian" worlds.
Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 04:02 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 04:02 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 05:21 pm (UTC)Which is why fictional space empires based on pre-industrial models or cyclical theories of history rather suck. I could just barely see motorized barbarians with Darra-style gunsmiths and gearheads, some sort of ungovernable Mad Max area not unlike parts of current Somalia or Afghanistan. A barbarian Manhattan Project? it's like a barbarian Titanic.
Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 06:47 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 07:29 pm (UTC)So Asimov came _that close_ to inventing steampunk. Personally I'd be interested in reading a story about these coal-powered starships.
Other space barbarians:
In a series of John Brunner stories (collected in a single volume by DAW sometime, but I can't remember the title... just the ugly yellow spine of the book) automated starships ply the spacelanes long after the collapse of the culture that had produced them.
Then there's Anderson's Galactic Empire where the "barbarians" are peoples who've been sold technology by irresponsible businessmen, Nicholas Van Rijn, and only use it to kill rob and oppress, which is very different from establishing an empire.
Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 07:43 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-10 01:08 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 07:44 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-09 11:55 pm (UTC)Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2015-10-29 10:43 pm (UTC)Japan is back to coal and oil. So is Germany.
Quoting Dorwin:
"The powah plant did undergo meltdown and it was quite a catastwophe, y'know. I believe wadiatsen damage. Weally, the govuhnment is sewiously considewing placing seveah westwictions upon the indiscwiminate use of nucleah powah though that is not a thing for genewal publication, y'know."
"It had bwoken down some yeahs pweviously and it is thought that the weplacements and wepaiah wuhk wuh most infewiah. It is so difficult these days to find men who weally undahstand the moah technical details of ouah powah systems."
Fits perfectly well with the nuclear stations "built forever" we see 105 years later. No more nuclear stations were licenced to open, and no repairs, because every nuclear station which needed repair needed to be shut down as "unsafe". Therefore no demand for technicians with ability to either build a new nuclear power station or repair a broken one. Therefore all schools teaching such to be shut down. Last technicians who did learn repairing nuclear power stations graduated early 50s just before Dorwin passed his restrictions, found something else to do and died decades before Mallow.
Re: Speaking for Askone
Date: 2012-10-10 03:01 pm (UTC)Same goes for countries that don't make cars of their own; used to be that in Cuba you'd see beaters from the 50's that had well over 100,000 miles on their odometers. They had no choice, after all.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 02:14 pm (UTC)How exactly can Seldon predict technological developments? Those are total unknowns beyond the purview of psychohistory. Once agains Asimov palms whatever card he needs for the Foundation to win.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 02:53 pm (UTC)What this doesn't account for, though, is them going BEYOND the specific new technology his plan requires.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-10 02:51 pm (UTC)There were once good reasons for thinking Capitalism superior to the alternatives, and we tend not to think about that too much.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 08:05 pm (UTC)