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When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

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Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#461

Post by dragonwriter »

hintymad wrote: post #459
burlesona wrote: post #159

There are a lot of people really hating on the TV show here, so I’ll offer a slightly contrarian take: I would say the biggest problem is the marketing that implies they faithfully are telling the books, when they’re not. The TV show is not faithful to the books. That said: the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction. It works well because they are _short_…

I was wondering if there is an explanation on why the political systems in American's science fictions are just so unimaginative? I mean, a civilization could predict the future, could destroy a planet, could travel across galaxies, and could rule trillions of people, yet they had an empire just like ancient Rome? Change of technologies and productivity and economy will not lead to change of political systems?

> yet they had an empire just like ancient Rome?

It wasn't quite just like ancient Rome, but...

> Change of technologies and productivity and economy will not lead to change of political systems?

It did, which is why their political system wasn't one of the ones popular at the time it was written. The system echoed with past ones because the combined effect of the economic and tech changes (particularly notably the relationship between travel and communications speed) echoed the past.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#462

Post by WorldMaker »

mchusma wrote: post #327
GeekyBear wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it Agreed. The inspiration behind the Foundation series, setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great. However, if you try reading those short stories again today, you're quickly reminded that early in his career, Asimov was already great at world building, but terrible with char…

Agree as well. I loved the premise of the books, but I just couldn't find myself to care about any of the actual characters. I think the same story, but where at least some of the characters are truly immortal (reasonable for far future sci-fi), would be better. Basically a mashup between Peter Hamilton and Foundation would be cool, his work does a good job of showing "far future technologies".

> I think the same story, but where at least some of the characters are truly immortal (reasonable for far future sci-fi), would be better.

The Empire changes/storyline in the show are potentially setting up Demerzel at least to overtly be in some interesting places across the timeline. [1] They've also taken a fun path to play Lee Pace across most of the Fall, though not directly as an immortal.

[1] Plus, lots of fun debate to be had over which Robot Demerzel "really is" and/or how much in communication Demerzel is in with any/all of the rest of Asimov's most famous Robots that we know survived to (and were observing) the Foundation era.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#463

Post by jerf »

inostia wrote: post #441
jerf wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The humble flashlight must be one of the most abused pieces of modern technology in fiction. According to video games, it doesn't matter what century you're in, it is impossible to create a flashlight that lasts for more than a few minutes, and only provides a feeble cone of barely-light for that time. According to science fiction, despite the fact ~98%+ of the people reading this literally have a flashlight in their…

> weaponry in particular, most "ray guns" are noticeably inferior to real-world guns in almost every way except perhaps ammo capacity I was thinking about this watching Foundation. In thousands of years will humans really be _shooting projectiles_ at each other to disrupt vital organs? Why wouldn't it be some kind of device that interacts on a deeper level, I'm thinking like setting off a mini-nuclear-chain-reaction…

The Foundation book series, IIRC, has "disintegrators", which are invisible beams that disrupt the charges of the target atoms and cause the target to lose all chemical cohesion. However, "invisible beams" work poorly for video. As a result, most sci-fi video weapons have the huge disadvantage of forming an arrow pointing directly at where you are. Real firearms have muzzle flash but that has nothing on a huge finger pointing right at you.

Additionally, since the audience needs to "see" the beam, most sci-fi weapons have miserably slow firing rates, enough that on the modern battlefield they would be useless.

"Guns in general seem like something that should already be antiquated."

This comes from a mindset that technology is "tiered" and that later technologies are "better" than earlier ones in all ways. This is caused by watching too much science fiction and/or playing too many video games. It is not how the real universe works. In reality, throwing things really hard at your opponent is likely to be a viable strategy indefinitely. The science fiction technologies that would invalidate this, like Dune's shields, do not seem to be things that exist in the real universe.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#464

Post by radu_floricica »

yufeng66 wrote: post #218
throw0101a wrote: post #150

The economist Paul Krugman of all people wrote a 'review' of Foundation versus Dune : > “Foundation” might seem unfilmable. It mostly involves people talking, and its narrative inverts the hero-saves-the-universe theme that burns many acres of CGI every year. The story spans centuries; in each episode everything appears to be on the brink, and it seems as if only desperate efforts by the protagonists can save the day…

Krugman is just too emotionally invested in the book, so nothing comparable to the book. If the show is not called foundation, he will probably enjoy it.

You're allowed to feel pissed at being tricked. I also almost closed the laptop when I saw Daniel. But in the end I abandoned it because the story was just not compelling, except the emperrors subplot.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#465

Post by StrictDabbler »

GeekyBear wrote: post #326
StrictDabbler wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asimov's first real published story was in 1939 (his high school "published" a story earlier). The Foundation stories were written in 1941-1950. In 1951 Asimov stopped writing fiction for thirty years. So it's not "early Asimov" by any means. When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved. Asimov was always an author only of ideas. His best dialog was the terrible and delibera…

> it's not "early Asimov" by any means He wrote the first Foundation story when he was only 21. That certainly qualifies.

"Search by the Second Foundation" (the second half of the book "Second Foundation") was one of the very last science fiction stories he wrote, apart from the spate of novels in the 80's.

It gets confusing because once he was famous, magazines would call him up asking for a story and he'd give them one that he'd written between 1939-1951 that had been rejected. They'd accept it because he was now a legend.

So Second Foundation, at least, is not early Asimov. It's arguably late Asimov. And it's exactly as wooden as the other parts of the original trilogy.

That said, I've read every bit of fiction he ever wrote and loved most of it, so...

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#466

Post by jjk166 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #454
jjk166 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the deviations from the books, this is really one of the smallest.

It's a critical deviation, which shouldn't have been done on a whim. Seldon's psycohistory predicted the path of the whole empire with great accuracy, but knowing their destiny would make people act differently, so Terminus didn't have psycohistorians, just a vault that would open at crucial events and give information. It would have worked well until the Mule threw a wrench with its mental ability to tune other mind…

I think there's a wide gulf between predicting the entire course of the collapse of a galactic empire centuries out into the future, and being able to anticipate a meteorite impact fractions of a second into the future. At most, Gaal has had a vague, bad feeling about something minutes before it happened. While they may have the second foundation refine this ability and be able to predict things out over longer time frames, as of yet there is no one who can make predictions in any way comparable to psychohistory. Whether or not there is a need for this really depends on where the story is going, which is at this point unclear but definitely not the direction of the original books.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#467

Post by jjk166 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #456
jjk166 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the deviations from the books, this is really one of the smallest.

To echo the sibling comment: the largest possible deviation you can make when filming Foundation is to undermine the entire premise of psychohistory.

Nothing that's happened in the show thusfar undermines the premise of psychohistory. Psychohistory is about using mathematics to predict the large scale and long term behaviour of society, it has nothing to do with someone having essentially heightened reflexes.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#468

Post by inostia »

jerf wrote: post #463
inostia wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weaponry in particular, most "ray guns" are noticeably inferior to real-world guns in almost every way except perhaps ammo capacity I was thinking about this watching Foundation. In thousands of years will humans really be _shooting projectiles_ at each other to disrupt vital organs? Why wouldn't it be some kind of device that interacts on a deeper level, I'm thinking like setting off a mini-nuclear-chain-reaction…

The Foundation book series, IIRC, has "disintegrators", which are invisible beams that disrupt the charges of the target atoms and cause the target to lose all chemical cohesion. However, "invisible beams" work poorly for video. As a result, most sci-fi video weapons have the huge disadvantage of forming an arrow pointing directly at where you are. Real firearms have muzzle flash but that has nothing on a huge finger…

> This comes from a mindset that technology is "tiered" and that later technologies are "better" than earlier ones in all ways.

That wasn't really what I was going for. What I was thinking was actually efficiency. Of course projectiles will always be effective, but they are not the most efficient. Technology tends towards an increase in efficiency, and inefficient technologies are often supplanted by new ones (swords being largely displaced by guns, muzzle loading weapons being largely replaced by automatic, etc).

If the point is to eliminate an adversary's existence, I can imagine that in thousands of years more efficient means will have been invented. But you're probably right that it doesn't make for exciting television.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#469

Post by GeekyBear »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #404
GeekyBear wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it Agreed. The inspiration behind the Foundation series, setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great. However, if you try reading those short stories again today, you're quickly reminded that early in his career, Asimov was already great at world building, but terrible with char…

> setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading “A Canticle for Leibowitz”

That is a good book.

Re: When “Foundation” Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Asimov’s Vision Gets Lost

#470

Post by StrictDabbler »

twoWhlsGud wrote: post #357
StrictDabbler wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiting Hard for Godot sounds amazing . The characters keep avoiding explosions and evading terrorists, mostly uninterested and unaffected by them, focused only on their eventual meeting with their CIA contact who is code named Godot. Occasionally an unusually big action sequence will trigger an extended reflection on the banality of it all.

Excellent point. I'd definitely would watch that. And seriously, I think your larger point is that if you're going mess about with some legendary original source material, doing it in a self-referential way that says, "Yes, we know the original isn't what we're doing here, and here's how we are different on purpose " is probably something you want to think about.

You're making me aware of that larger point, though it may have been implicit.

And the thing is that I love Waiting for Godot, so I could make a strong pitch.

I've just read an interview with the writer, David Goyer:

https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/foundation-apple-adapta...

It's frustrating and I'm not sure why. I think it's because Goyer didn't realize that the 80's books were fan fiction.

Isaac Asimov was always his own biggest fan.

If you write an adaptation of the Foundation series that focuses on Gaal Dornick you're working with a prequel.

The only good prequel ever made is Godfather II, right?

Because a good story starts as late as it possibly can.

So in this case, self-referential or not, Goyer was doomed. He's basing the series on some very bad books.

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