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Apple Shares Teaser for Upcoming Apple TV+ Series 'Foundation'
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What Sci Fi novel or movie has ever been 100% realistic or foretelling?
The best sci fi novels are those that focus on a human trait, strength, weakness, and bring it to the future in dark hyperbole. Sci Fi is more about a snapshot of what the current culture sees in their own future than it really is about the future itself... You are thinking too hard to critique a work in a genre that is based on fleeting cultural projection.
I'm hopeful this series will be good. The books are...alright. I liked them a lot as a teenager but then just reread them last year. I didn't enjoy them. They are plodding, philosophical works. I have huge respect for Asimov and his writing but the Foundation series are in some ways they are like watching C-SPAN -- occasionally interesting but mostly just locution without locomotion. I like philosophy and enjoy philosophical works but the Foundation books are about 98% talking and 2% action (although Asimov slightly improves the balance after the first couple books). Most of the action takes place off-page.
All this being said, there is much richness and creativity underlying the Foundation books. All the screenwriter(s) need to do is hold true to Asimov's foundation (pun intended), add in some action (but not too much), and keep the message 'smart'. The series probably won't be better than the books but they have the potential to be.
All this being said, there is much richness and creativity underlying the Foundation books. All the screenwriter(s) need to do is hold true to Asimov's foundation (pun intended), add in some action (but not too much), and keep the message 'smart'. The series probably won't be better than the books but they have the potential to be.
I think they aged pretty well (lack of diversity is one problem for sure) - i re-read them once a decade. The big problem is how do you tell a story that lasts thousands of years.
I reread the first 3 in the series last month, and it's still great to me. I hope that Apple does a good job with this, but the trailer doesn’t leave me with optimism.
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No. Now I've seen what they have in mind, it's exactly what I expected. The big cop-out is the "Based on... " thing. It shares the name - "Foundation", and the names of some of the characters... and that's it. Everything else is the product of the production company. These changes are not 'alterations' for the purposes of making the task of filming easier. It's just pointless fiddling with the basics of the story to suit the personal agendas of the makers, and pandering to the appetites and social mores of the times.
Recasting / gender swapping... one of the major changes is in making Eto Demerzel female. You might consider this a trivial change, purely done in the interests of balance and inclusivity. However, if you've read any of the books set in what we might call the "Foundation" universe then you'll know what a huge deal this is, as in, utterly fundamental to the vast bulk of what comes before and after "Foundation". Read "The Caves of Steel" and go on from there, and you'll get the picture. With that one change, the producers have painted themselves into a corner which they can only escape from if they make the central theme of the whole series gender politics and sexuality. Which it isn't.
'Foundation' is not "Star Wars", or Dune, or indeed anything else. There's a school of thought which says that without changing aspects of it to make it palatable to a modern audience, it's unfilmable. This is incorrect. If you stay close to the source material, then of course, you don't get "Star Wars", or anything involving bands of plucky exiles etc. etc., but you would get something closer to say... "I, Claudius". A series which placed 12 in the list of 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. Incidentally, featuring a young Patrick Stewart! Google it if you don't know it.
Someone once commented that Asimovs books don't have any action , just lots of talking. The reply was that the talking is the action! And indeed, that is the case. No strong or pivotal female characters? Then you haven't read the books. Two characters, central to the overall story that encompasses the original three Foundation novels are Bayta and Arkady Darell. There are others. But we digress... Foundation isn't about technology, connectivity, gender politics, black holes, spacecraft, people running around with guns and stuff on fire. With depressing predictability, it's about what I'd expect from whoever thought that making shallow, forgettable 'Batman" movies was credential enough for this. Imagine deciding to film Gibbons "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", and then, bizarrely, deciding that the guy that did that Batman movie would be perfect for the job.
Sure, it'll look fabulous, as it should, and all the money will be right up there on screen, giant spacecraft, moody lighting, black holes from that other movie and everything. It might even have an engaging story of some sort, in the vein of "plucky band of outsiders, beset on all sides by sinister, monolithic and implacable foes, seek to right wrongs and save the galaxy against all the odds". I wonder why they didn't just write their own story... but it seems they've done just that, and tacked the name "Foundation" onto it to lend it some gravitas and authority.
I was not convinced when it was first announced that they were going to do this. As more information has become available, I became less and less convinced, and more sure that they'd produce pretty much what we see in the trailer. It could have been, should have been great... but instead, it looks like we'll get something like Will Smiths 2004 "I, Robot" - also notionally from an Asimov book, and about as far from it as this will be. Another missed opportunity.
NB: If you think Asimov couldn't make predictions about the future, then you should read some of his non-fiction. Also, I know these books inside out, and can, and will, quote passages verbatim.
E.g: "Foundation" - Part 1: The Psychohistorians. First line after entry for Hari Seldon is as follows:
"His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before."
First word of the first line of the first chapter of the first book - changed, for no reason. Downhill from there.
Recasting / gender swapping... one of the major changes is in making Eto Demerzel female. You might consider this a trivial change, purely done in the interests of balance and inclusivity. However, if you've read any of the books set in what we might call the "Foundation" universe then you'll know what a huge deal this is, as in, utterly fundamental to the vast bulk of what comes before and after "Foundation". Read "The Caves of Steel" and go on from there, and you'll get the picture. With that one change, the producers have painted themselves into a corner which they can only escape from if they make the central theme of the whole series gender politics and sexuality. Which it isn't.
'Foundation' is not "Star Wars", or Dune, or indeed anything else. There's a school of thought which says that without changing aspects of it to make it palatable to a modern audience, it's unfilmable. This is incorrect. If you stay close to the source material, then of course, you don't get "Star Wars", or anything involving bands of plucky exiles etc. etc., but you would get something closer to say... "I, Claudius". A series which placed 12 in the list of 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. Incidentally, featuring a young Patrick Stewart! Google it if you don't know it.
Someone once commented that Asimovs books don't have any action , just lots of talking. The reply was that the talking is the action! And indeed, that is the case. No strong or pivotal female characters? Then you haven't read the books. Two characters, central to the overall story that encompasses the original three Foundation novels are Bayta and Arkady Darell. There are others. But we digress... Foundation isn't about technology, connectivity, gender politics, black holes, spacecraft, people running around with guns and stuff on fire. With depressing predictability, it's about what I'd expect from whoever thought that making shallow, forgettable 'Batman" movies was credential enough for this. Imagine deciding to film Gibbons "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", and then, bizarrely, deciding that the guy that did that Batman movie would be perfect for the job.
Sure, it'll look fabulous, as it should, and all the money will be right up there on screen, giant spacecraft, moody lighting, black holes from that other movie and everything. It might even have an engaging story of some sort, in the vein of "plucky band of outsiders, beset on all sides by sinister, monolithic and implacable foes, seek to right wrongs and save the galaxy against all the odds". I wonder why they didn't just write their own story... but it seems they've done just that, and tacked the name "Foundation" onto it to lend it some gravitas and authority.
I was not convinced when it was first announced that they were going to do this. As more information has become available, I became less and less convinced, and more sure that they'd produce pretty much what we see in the trailer. It could have been, should have been great... but instead, it looks like we'll get something like Will Smiths 2004 "I, Robot" - also notionally from an Asimov book, and about as far from it as this will be. Another missed opportunity.
NB: If you think Asimov couldn't make predictions about the future, then you should read some of his non-fiction. Also, I know these books inside out, and can, and will, quote passages verbatim.
E.g: "Foundation" - Part 1: The Psychohistorians. First line after entry for Hari Seldon is as follows:
"His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before."
First word of the first line of the first chapter of the first book - changed, for no reason. Downhill from there.
so I guess you never read or watch anything that wasn’t made in the last 5 years.
Art has no place in an encyclopedia? You say you read the books, but clearly you didn’t as this was addressed directly in The Second Foundation.
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As someone who has read all the Foundation novels many times (including the prequels and the hard to find occasionally out of print Foundation and Earth) the only Character I recognize here is Hari Seldon. I’m guessing this series takes place somewhere between Forward the Foundation and the first Foundation book which would be about the time the Galactic Empire begins to crack in ways everyone can see. This explains how they could get away with all these new characters that have nothing to do with the published series though I don’t understand why they would go this route instead of just actually adapting the books themselves as there are some amazing characters throughout. I won’t lie, I’m extremely disappointed that we probably won’t get to see The Mule, one of the first truly creative and surprising dramatic twists I can recall experiencing.
Impressive production values but gotta say after that teaser this just doesn’t feel like the show I was hoping it would be.
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Not to be nit-picking but Stranger in a Strange Land isn't Asimov, it's Robert Heinlein. And half of its principal characters are women.
Thanks for all that! I just downloaded "Caves of Steel" and "Foundation" e-books, thanks to your words.
And LOTR made 4 movies out of a trilogy. Wondering if Foundation covers the first book (its namesake) or the trilogy. If the former (and it works well) maybe there are more to follow.
Apple today during its WWDC keynote shared a trailer for the upcoming Apple TV+ series "Foundation," a sci-fi series that's based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov, and the company has now shared a longer teaser on its Apple TV YouTube channel.
The show will be produced by Skydance Television and is set to debut on Apple TV+ in 2021."Foundation" will join other Apple TV+ shows like "The Morning Show," "Little America," "See," "For All Mankind," "Defending Jacob," and more. A full list of Apple TV+ shows both released and in the works are available in our Apple TV+ content guide.
Article Link: Apple Shares Teaser for Upcoming Apple TV+ Series 'Foundation'
This looks awesome. First show that looks legit through and through. Keep it up
This together with Shantaram may really start making a difference in the current perception of Apple TV+.
Can’t wait to watch both.
Can’t wait to watch both.
Why is it important that a story that takes place 50,000 years in the future, on a planet or planets far across the galaxy, look like it takes place in 1950s America? Personally, the last thing I want to see in world-building literature is the limit of the author's imagination.
Make sure you get all seven foundation books, not just the first three...
...and don't forget Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn, and Robots and Empire, which fit between the Caves of Steel and the Foundation series...
While I personally agree with your assessment in the sense that if I had to pick one of either Foundation or The Stars My Destination, it would be the latter, there are so many great works of science fiction that there will be no consensus on which is the greatest, and I am not sure why to point out that one in particular.
Also, The Stars My Destination is a very different kind of book - the ancestor of cyberpunk and a careening roller coaster that introduces and in few pages races past ideas each of which other authors would have turned into trilogies. I think in a series format it would lose a lot of its sheer momentum. And its protagonist does some terrible things - I am pretty sure some of these would be changed, and the ensuing controversy would be a lot more unpleasant than the discussions about whether Eto Demerzel in Foundation or Liet Kynes in Dune can be cast as female. I really don't see Apple touching that one.
2021.
long after everyone’s free subscriptions have run out. I doubt too many will keep on for it. It should have been nov-Dec.
long after everyone’s free subscriptions have run out. I doubt too many will keep on for it. It should have been nov-Dec.
It may have been intended for then, but there’s this little thing called a worldwide pandemic that messed with a lot of production schedules.
Ah... then you will need to also actually read the books, and also the books that come before the "Foundation" trilogy. And also the sequels. And then you'll understand why, if you gender-swap one character in particular, for no other reason that empty virtue signalling, you create an enormous problem for the whole series. It just doesn't work, it is not an improvement, and there's no need for it.