Whose Foundation Is This Anyway?

By Daniel Dern: I’m committed to watching at least the full first season of Foundation on Apple+ because, if nothing else, enough friends — some old-skiffy-savvy, others not — will, I know, want to chat about it, either to share their opinions and thoughts or who knows, ask for mine.

Whether I would otherwise, too soon (two episodes) to tell — my eval may have to wait until at least the full season has run. Is it well done? Visually? You bet. Does it have action? You bet. Does it include a fair amount of Asimov’s original framework? Yup — certainly (based on memory) far more than, psigh, I, Robot (which felt like a good-nuff version of a different Asimov book). Will it be satisfying, or will I want my time back? We’ll see…

(Other people are already chiming in, including Rob Bricken’s review Gizmodo review.)

Meanwhile, it’s none too early to start snarking. (Hey, I did it for Amazon’s LotR plans!) I don’t have as much for this, so let comments carouse.

I’ll start:

  • The (Expanse’s) protomolecule shows up in Episode 4
  • Terminus has (Arrakisian) sandworms, which initially manifest as sudden humongous desert sinkholes
  • Salvor Hardin has midi-chlorians, or at least nano-chlorians
  • Arkady Darell inherits the One Ring from her grandparents
  • It will turn out that Amazon is funding the Encyclopedia Galactica project.

The task of filling up this list I leave to you.

8 thoughts on “Whose Foundation Is This Anyway?

  1. It (also) feels to me like it wouldn’t take much after-the-fact editing to take Hari and all the Foundation and psycho-history stuff out, perhaps add/dub a little of something else (like new plot elements and some new dialog), and have a great sf movie. For extra credit, work in aliens, humongous dinosaurs, and Bruce Willis.

  2. Rob Bricken is truly a pretty awful reviewer, which probably explains why he’s survived at IO9 so long. His default position seems to be to hate whatever it is he’s looking at. But he’s very clever at hating it.

  3. I read the original 3 sometime in the 60s or 70s so I don’t remember a word. I’m viewing this series as just science fiction, and don’t really expect it to match the books much.
    They are books from another time and type of writing. According to Asimov’s forward in the copy of “Foundation” I am reading, the stories if the first three books were written for Campbell’s magazine at the time, so I’m sure there’s more than a touch of his (JWC) influence.
    2 episodes in and it’s been fun. I’ll be looking for the protomolecule and the sand worms…

  4. I read them in the Seventies when I was a teenager, so I remember virtually nothing about them as I read them only once, and I remember them as not being bad, but not being that great either. So when I watch Foundation which I will at some point, it will be judged entirely on its own merits.

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