Please help me understand Foundation, The Merchant Princes

[tonytrigger]

I have read Foundation up till this chapter, without any problems with understanding, but I ran into a little obstacle here.

The missionary that got into Mallow's ship-how on earth did he get there, and what is his purpose there? What happened to him at the end of chapter 4?

I would be very thankful if someone would summarize chapter 4 of The Merchant Princes for me.

Thank you!

 

[Hober Mallow]

I have read Foundation up till this chapter, without any problems with understanding, but I ran into a little obstacle here.

The missionary that got into Mallow's ship-how on earth did he get there, and what is his purpose there? What happened to him at the end of chapter 4?

I would be very thankful if someone would summarize chapter 4 of The Merchant Princes for me.

Thank you!

I'll never tell.
Seriously, I don't remember. I'd have to re-read that part of the book.

 

[dekket]

spoilers

As is revealed at Hober Mallow's trial, the 'missionary' is actually a secret policeman undercover. The intention was for the 'missionary' to be rescued from the 'mob' by the Foundationers ship, giving the government of that planet the excuse to sieze or perhaphs blow up Mallow's ship.
Mallow did not fall for the ploy, and booted the 'missionary' out of his ship. The 'missionary' was presumably led off by the 'mob', so change out of his costume and unexpectedly go home.
The 'missionary' was basically the bait in the trap.

 

[scidata]

Hi-rez and super slow-motion photography showed up in this and one or two other Asimov stories. I've noticed the same interest with other chemists and biologists; probably comes with the territory.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

Something odd: note how short names the characters get away with!
Ho-ber Mal-low has 4 syllables. Jord Par-ma has 3. Jo-ra-ne Sutt has 4. Pub-lis Man-lio has 4. Jaim Twer has 2.
In Bridle and Saddle, Sal-vor Har-din (4 syllables) establishes that the population of Anacreon as 19 000 000 000 - rapidly growing.
A search for a priest named Jord Parma should have unearthed large numbers of priests named Jord Parma on Anacreon - all of whom were presumably safe on their duties. Although the detail that Jord Parma claimed to have been taught at Terminus would have narrowed the search a bit. Just 5 000 000 TV sets total on Terminus, all of them watching Mallow´s trial.

Were these student priests on Terminus also watching that TV channel about Mallow´s trial?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Just 5 000 000 TV sets total on Terminus

TV was brand new Tech when he wrote this.

Four of the stories were originally published in Astounding Magazine (with different titles) between 1942 and 1944, and the fifth was added when they first appeared in book form.

Unlike UK, USA didn't stop TV transmissions during WWII, but stopped making TVs in 1942.
Color was only in USA shops after book published in 1951. (Much later in UK & Europe).
Electronic TV is an RCA /EMI joint development. Farnsworth's system was inherently impractical (1000 to 10000 less sensitive).
1936 was the year TV really started, but till 1948 very few people had one.

Baird didn't invent a TV system at all, his was a re-engineered version of a late Victorian era mechanical system. Though he did invent a really rather clever near real time to Film to TV based camera later the inspiration for spy and survey satellites before decent CCD cameras, where film was used, developed and scanned on the satellite to give x100 better resolution than electronic camera. This allowed slowed transmission of the pictures in encrypted form to avoid the "Ice Station Zebra" scenario.

The Merchant Princes
(First published in Astounding Science-Fiction (August 1944) as "The Big and the Little")

It was only after 1951 or 1952 that people realised how popular TV would be. Widescreen cinema had existed (using various techniques) even from 1920s, but TV spurred Hollywood to use more colour (colour was rare before WWII) and develop anamorphic lenses to squeeze widescreen into a full frame (earlier they used matte / masking or even up to three cameras and projectors). TV was also the reason for first stereoscopic Cinema (so called 3D) in 1950s.

See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Isaac_Asimov_novel)#The_Merchant_Princes

Spoilers!

 

[chornedsnorkack]

Spoilers!

The council chamber was full in a very literal sense on the fourth day of the trial of Hober Mallow, Master Trader. The only councilman absent was feebly cursing the fractured skull that had bedridden him. The galleries were filled to the aisleways and ceilings with those few of the crowd who by influence, wealth, or sheer diabolic perseverance had managed to get in. The rest filled the square outside, in swarming knots about the open-air trimensional 'visors.

Note: at least the open-air visors were "trimensional"
Note: people still wanted to get into the actual chamber rather than settle for the trimensional visors.

A lone beam of light centered upon him and in the public 'visors of the city, as well as on the myriads of private 'visors in almost every home of the Foundation's planets, the lonely giant figure of a man stared out defiantly.

Note: Foundation's planets. Which ones? Besides Terminus?
Note: "almost every" home. There were few homes in Foundation that lacked private visors. See later, checking the significance of numbers:

Hober Mallow waited to let the significance sink in and was rewarded with the first silence he had yet encountered, as the gallery caught its collective breath. That was for the inhabitants of Terminus itself. The men of the Outer Planets could hear only censored versions that would suit the requirements of religion.

Which means that the men of the "Outer Planets" could not have watched the broadcast. Then which were the planets, plural, where myriads of private visors did show the trial? Just a few sentences back, we hear of multiple planets watching; now we see Terminus alone asserted. Flagrant contradiction in a few lines.

In five million homes on Terminus, excited observers crowded their receiving sets more closely

So, that´s the number.
Note: observers crowded the receiving sets more closely.
Therefore:
the sets were not so large as to make crowding closer pointless;
the observers commonly crowded close to a single receiving set at home, rather than have multiple receiving sets at one home, with each resident watching his or her set

5 million is close to the total number of homes on Terminus, mostly having several residents. Homes that did not have any sets must have been rare; homes which were unoccupied at the time because everyone was out of home watching a public visor (or, as in case of Publis Manlio, expressly a bachelor, present at trial) may have been a minor contributor. We here have an estimate for the population of Terminus around 155 FE.