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Glad to finally see some Foundation love here. I really enjoyed it. The idea of genetic emporers was pure genius. Don't want to sound like a dickweed, but nowadays it's so rare to find any form of entertainment that seems like it's made by people smarter than me.

The production values are utterly exquisite. I go back to shows like Expanse and The Wheel of Time and they just look cheap in comparison.
 
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I really enjoyed the first season. I'm a fan of Asimov, and I know there are a lot of Asimov fans who are mad online about this loose adaptation. As its own thing though, this is a really good series.
Unhappy asimov fan checking in!

Its so beautiful, but has 0 substance for me. The themes of the books are fully lost; its just star wars.

I wish i hadnt read the books, though. Because boy is it pretty and it seems like it would be fun if i didnt love the source so much and was salty that this was likely the only shot the books will get at a tv adaptation!

Glad it got a second season; more sci fi is more better.
 
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The Mule wasn’t even in the first book, if I recall.
And the second foundation, which has already been introduced, was a huge “holy s***” moment in the books when the reader learns of its existence. I can’t for the life of me understand why they totally ruined this moment.

Each foundation booklet ended in spectacular moments, and the series isn’t cashing in on these moments at all. It’s blowing thru them, spoiling them well in advance. I don’t get it.
Indeed! The mule was such a concern because the first long while of the trilogy is so dedicated to showing you that in this universe, Psychohistory is pretty accurate.

Then it goes “wait”; and shows you how it can be pretty accurate, while also dead wrong.

It even challenges its own premise by revealing the mule; could an event like the mule have prevented societal collapse of the empire?!

Man what complex and special books; feel a bit reduced to “guns and explosions” to me. Im glad to find people who dislike the show, but are not massive butts about it.
 
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Oh nos! I hope these are just overly critical fanatics of the books! This could just set my expectations lower going in.
only ted lasso is a big hit among user critics. Personally i only enjoyed first season of the servant. I didn’t find anything else substantial on Apple TV.
 
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Odd that the author confirmed everyone from season one except the two black women (Lou Llobell and Leah Harvey), who I'd imagine are pretty likely to return given the way the final episode ended.

Just an observation ?‍♂️

Anyway, I watched season one religiously, but understand why it was divisive. And not just for readers of the book. Y'all need to calm down. This is hardly the first time a screen adaptation took a lot of liberties with source material. That said, there are times when the acting and/or story took poor turns.
 
Its so beautiful, but has 0 substance for me. The themes of the books are fully lost; its just star wars.

Well, Star Wars owes quite a bit to Foundation - the second Star Wars trilogy even more so (Coruscant => Trantor at all?) Asimov is responsible for a lot of space opera/galactic empire tropes (except for the ones started by E. E. Doc Smith).

However great the Foundation books are (...they're undisputed classics but, personally, they're not even my favourite Asimov works, let alone SF in general) they're really not great material for a TV show or movie - too much exposition, too little action for a visual medium - and although they're packed with fascinating concept... Well, let's say that to criticise his (few) female characters would falsely suggest that his male characters were complex and well-rounded - and they all spoke as if they were from the 1950s.

Trouble is with "faithful" adaptations of classic SciFi books is that they'd have the target audience of an arthouse movie but the production budget of a summer blockbuster... and we've had some pretty good SF movies that worked by picking a few ideas from a book and taking them in a different direction (almost everything "based on" a Philip K Dick story, for example).

That said, I do get the feeling that the writers had enough new material to write their own "fall of the galactic empire" saga (the "genetic dynasty" is a great idea) without trying to hang it on Foundation.
 
I thoroughly enjoy s1 looking forward to s2. Im sure it'll be a wait, the only Apple TV show I'm interested in. The others have lost me
 
Glad to finally see some Foundation love here. I really enjoyed it. The idea of genetic emporers was pure genius. Don't want to sound like a dickweed, but nowadays it's so rare to find any form of entertainment that seems like it's made by people smarter than me.
Have you tried books?

If you think Goyer is smarter than you, I can only imagine what you’d think of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Niven and Pournelle, Hal Clement, Robert Forward, Sprague de Camp…
 
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I thought the show was pretty good, despite the drastic changes from the books, importing things from the late prequels (Demerzel especially), and the way they've already spoiled the Second Foundation reveal (although Hari's ghost reminds the Foundationers of the Second Foundation every time he appears in the books, he says nothing else about them).

The casting of Salvor Hardin was good, but the writing of him/her isn't -- I mean, the character's gender doesn't really mean anything in the books -- but twisting "the last refuge of the incompetent" the way they did and giving Salvor the "talent" they gave her really takes a lot away from the character.
 
However great the Foundation books are (...they're undisputed classics but, personally, they're not even my favourite Asimov works, let alone SF in general) they're really not great material for a TV show or movie - too much exposition, too little action for a visual medium - and although they're packed with fascinating concept...

If that‘s the excuse, it’s a flimsy one. The screenwriters could easily have added some new subplots involving the battles, etc. that take place off-stage in the original stories.

Well, let's say that to criticise his (few) female characters would falsely suggest that his male characters were complex and well-rounded - and they all spoke as if they were from the 1950s.

James Gunn wrote that flat characters are more appropriate to science fiction than rounded characters. (That’s the late Professor James Gunn, SFWA Grandmaster and founder of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, not the sleazy film director with the same name.)

Trouble is with "faithful" adaptations of classic SciFi books is that they'd have the target audience of an arthouse movie but the production budget of a summer blockbuster...

Denis Villeneuve proved that wrong with “Dune”.

 
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I see people hating on it, but in reality it's actually a great scifi series and most of the people hating are because they have read the 80+year old novels lol, obviously there will be changes!
It's acted brilliantly for the most part which is more than I can say or a lot of scifi in general unfortunately, production values incredible, story intricate and none-basic.

Those ”80+year old novels“ (which aren’t 80+ years old, if you actually do math) are head and shoulders above anything you’ll ever watch on the boob tube.

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Odd that the author confirmed everyone from season one except the two black women (Lou Llobell and Leah Harvey), who I'd imagine are pretty likely to return given the way the final episode ended.

Just an observation ?‍♂️

Anyway, I watched season one religiously, but understand why it was divisive. And not just for readers of the book. Y'all need to calm down. This is hardly the first time a screen adaptation took a lot of liberties with source material. That said, there are times when the acting and/or story took poor turns.
even ignoring the books, it felt like some of the episodes had very little happen in them, which isnt great for such a short season. 2 of 8 episodes or whatever being filler is not ideal...
 
Those ”80+year old novels“ (which aren’t 80+ years old, if you actually do math) are head and shoulders above anything you’ll ever watch on the boob tube.

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Well Audrey for the most part of your post I’m telling you the amount of shock, awe, and chills on my spine watching this TV series foundation with the main Cleon character with the flick of the wrist like Queen Elizabeth II does waving at a crowd kills an entire civilization so profound!
 
James Gunn wrote that flat characters are more appropriate to science fiction than rounded characters.

That depends what sort of SF you are talking about - and what medium. Its a huge genre (...given there's a SF sub-genre of every other genre).

Certainly, the "classic SF short story" can be like that - take a mind-blowing fictional science/future society concept, wrap it in in a minimal plot and deliver it in 5000 exposition-heavy words - possibly without even fully resolving the plot. That's arguably where modern SF has its roots - short stories in 1940s magazines - and of course that's precisely the origin of the original Foundation trilogy - it was 10 years of 1940s short stories bundled together. It's a format that works (a) in print and (b) for SF fans - especially for "hard" SF where a lot of exposition is required. It also makes good radio plays (the BBC 'did' Foundation - amongst other Asimov stuff - as an audio drama years ago - it's bound to be out there on the interwebs somewhere). It can also work in a TV anthology show - Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Amazing Stories (...the last incarnation of that is an AppleTV+ show) - and, for my money, the best SF (in the 'near-future society/human effects of technology' class) show on TV in the last decade has been Black Mirror.

I think the problem comes with taking that sort of short-story, concept-delivery-system SF and trying to spin it out into a feature length story (let alone a long-form 'Game of Thrones in Spaaace' series). That demands a stronger plot and stronger characters.

Denis Villeneuve proved that wrong with “Dune”.
...well, yes, but third time (or 4th if you count Jodorowsky) lucky....

Dune has a much stronger, clearer plot than Foundation - it's challenging to film in other ways and also has the issue of a huge amount of back-story and world-building detail to convey, but that's all hung on the backbone of a solid "Hero's Journey (subverted)" plot about Paul Atreides, with plenty of chases, battles, heroics, peril and suspense.

The issues with Dune are more "what to cut out" and "how to have people riding on a giant worm without looking silly" - not "how do we give this collection of short stories an actual plot" (or, if you're David Lynch, "how do we make this already fantastic story even weirder and less accessible") - SF Channel even managed to make a fair adaptation on a budget by saying "look, this is basically a Shakespeare tragedy in spaaacce".

Funnily enough, it has struck me that the Apple version of Foundation has made it play more like Dune than Foundation - they've focussed more on machinations in the imperial court, emphasised it's feudalist nature, added a powerful religious order (in the books, the Foundation set themselves up as a religion at one point, but that was it), thrown prophecy into the mix and given the main-ish protagonist the gift of prescience (...the books had mind control - but to predict the future you Used Science) emphasised Terminus as a hostile wilderness. Heck, they've even added a flipping spacing guild to the mix.
 
And the second foundation, which has already been introduced, was a huge “holy s***” moment in the books when the reader learns of its existence.
Really? The Second Foundation is mentioned in part one of the first book - page 40 of my copy. That's while the story is still set on Trantor. It's hardly a big surprise when it turns up later. What it is might be a surprise - but not its existence.
 
Really? The Second Foundation is mentioned in part one of the first book - page 40 of my copy. That's while the story is still set on Trantor. It's hardly a big surprise when it turns up later. What it is might be a surprise - but not its existence.

The Second Foundation was more of a legend, like Shangri La. People had heard of it, but no one knew where it was, what it was, or if it even existed.
 
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