Hacker News Reader

Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

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_ stories, and following the span of history, frequently jumping ahead a generation, is cool. But it would’ve been very difficult to render that as-is for television and have much of an audience. Also, the original stories were written in the 1940s and some parts feel quite dated (everyone is smoking all the time, the hyper focus on nuclear power, the relative role of women). So whoever picked the stories up, they were going to make a lot of changes.

If you think of the series merely as “inspired by” them not “based on them,” then the show isn’t bad. It has some corny flaws like most TV (the combat, just terrible), but they’ve developed a few good characters, added some new mysteries, and the order in which they’re unfolding events over time is interesting.

So, is it a classic? No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. But IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :)

View on HN

I agree with you. It took me a while to get my head around the approach they were taking (I re-read the whole series prior to it airing) but what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it. Even just getting rid of the 1950s stereotype gender roles - which is the obvious place to start - doesn’t change the long arcs of obvious dialogue.

It’s a really grand scope for a universe - but I’m enjoying the series so far and it will be interesting to see where they go with it. Basically I’m just hungry for more space and since it’s visually very appealing and the universe is compelling, I think it deserves a chance.

>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 characters and dialog.

Add in the mismatch between the cultural norms of the 1940's (when the early Foundation stories were written) and the cultural norms today, and a rewrite was always going to be required.

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 deliberately corny dialog in the Azazel fantasy-comedy stories, very much done in imitation of P.G. Wodehouse's cleverer banter.

Excerpt from one of the 80's foundation books:

“Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence ?” Pelorat said, “If you list it like that.”

“List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”

Cringe.

I agree that Asimov, late or early, lives or dies on his ideas, and never was a great writer - he doesn't do lovely prose, naturalistic dialog, or vivid, multi-dimensional characters. But I don't see anything particularly bad about the dialog you've quoted.

> When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved.

OK, great, it's not just me. I was about to respond, "wait, did he ever get good at characters and dialog? I've read a lot of Asimov, and at no point have those ever not been distractingly bad."

> it's not "early Asimov" by any means

He wrote the first Foundation story when he was only 21.

That certainly qualifies.

I think the OP would agree that it was "early Asimov" but you can't blame the writing on that. The OP was making the point that his writing never improved.

Having said that there were cringeworthy aspects of the first Foundation book that improved over the subsequent books. I recently reread the series and came to the shocking conclusion that he must have been a virgin (or at least not exposed to women) in the first book.

"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...

His retcon from the 80's wasn't any better in terms of dialogue

I read the first 5ish foundation books fairly recently and they were great, especially the odd numbered ones. Asimov never did become a genius of dialogue and character, but the characters and dialogue in foundation 1 are both very good and I don’t understand why some people in this thread dismiss it. The first foundation book is one of the best

Look, Foundation has great concepts, but if you think it has even good characters and dialogue, you...need to read fiction with good characters and dialogue.

> The first foundation book is one of the best

Best of what, though?

> you...need to read fiction with good characters and dialogue.

Suggestions?

In my case, it’s been 20+ years since I read Foundation (IIRC only the first three books)

Literally anything? Never let me go? The wizard of Earthsea? I have a hard time seeing how can anyone not agree with the parent's assessment. Foundation is interesting because of the idea/plot it presents. But the characters themselves bring little to the table. In a way the Foundation series is a good piece of conceptual art, but sci-fi novels.

I would argue that 1Q84 (don't read it!, it sucks) is the exact opposite. Interesting characters but lacking an overarching setting/plot.

> 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”

An awesome book but can you imagine what it would get turned into these days?!

An excellent Babylon 5 episode!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deconstruction_of_Fallin...

(For very fuzzy definitions of “these days”)

That is a good book.

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 just couldn't find myself to care about any of the actual characters.

I felt the only actual 'character' you where supposed to care about was Civilization itself. Everybody and everything else where bit players and side characters who's fates only mattered to the extend they helped or hindered Civilization.

> 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.

I would love to see someone take a stab at the Night's Dawn trilogy.

The world building for the Confederation and the Adamist and Edenist societies as well as the various alien races was very well done.

They might want to rethink the choice of Al Capone, which seems a bit over the top.

I agree; it really could make a surpassingly excellent show.

All the possession contagion dovetails with our COVID concerns, yet is so different as to allow exploration by metaphor.

The instagramish phenomenon Kiera Nightly convinces youths to travel to a remote place where they are tortured until they yield to possession: Reminds me of fyrefest.

The large amount of hilarious dark humor should translate very well. For example, the sadistic edenist who overcomes possession by being the mentally strongest edenist. And the plain sadist who re-possesses his body from his possessor by being more screwed-up than a soul that had endured what amounts to hell.

I just finished this recently after dropping it halfway through because my eyes were in danger of rolling out of the back of my head due to the Capone stuff.

Re-characterising Al leaves quite the role to complete. You can't leave us hanging without suggesting what other /newly/ historical figure could replace them.

The gratuitous hedonism, cruelty, and torture that the returned partake in could certainly be a selling point for say HBO to pick the series up.

It's been a while, but I remember Asimov leaving a lot out of the books. i.e. Stories would start after the violence or some clever twist would side step it altogether. He left a lot for a visual medium to add-in. The core is there so far: psychohistory, robots, huge Trantor, planning to 'save' a galaxy amount of culture and info for a galactic reboot, etc.

It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's the first live action adaptation beyond the robot movie. Kind of always have to be forgiving with a first attempt. Even Star Trek TNG didn't get into a grove until 2nd or 3rd season.

Arguably, the departure of Gene Roddenberry was what made TNG what it was after the 2nd season. Giving more spotlight to Klingons and Romulans, violating the prime directive, made for a more interesting show. Later DS9 improved on these concepts, by showing a Federation that is willing to bend the rules when desperate times, using deception (forging evidence to disrupt the Dominion-Romulan alliance), covert operations (Section 31) and even planning a genocide (infecting Odo with a disease to spread the disease to other Founders, also Hugh in Star Trek TNG).

> how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it

What movies have you seen that have been faithful to the literary work but still were great movies? I'm struggling to come up with one.

Kubrik made the film Lolita based on the screenplay Nabokov wrote in adaption from his novel.

The narrative frame and structure for the screenplay is quite different than the novel, but more suitable for a visual medium. I'll leave it to you to decide if it is a great movie, but the proposition that slavishly transliterating a novel into a movie is usually a bad idea seems reasonable to me.

2001 is a marginal case, in that the book was written concurrently with the movie (based on a pre-existing short story).

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The movie is a scene-by-scene rendering of the novel, but it's also fantastic.

Contact and Dune 2021, mostly. For tv, the Expanse books are adapted very well.

The Expanse has its own problems, though. Namely, that a lot of the acting is terrible. Foundation at least, to me, has some strong acting and interesting character relationships.

I’m watching The Expanse now for the first time and I love it. Some characters are 2-dimensional and have childish motivations sure.

But there was a scene in which Chrisjen Avasarala gives an “imminent war” speech extremely sarcastically, like Homer to Marge in the bedroom.

I figured they’d address in the episode what her secret plan was for that speech.

Turns out: no plan, the actress wasn’t being sarcastic. She was going for strength and gravitas.

It makes no sense to me how an otherwise high quality show has those scenes. Surely the director could have gotten a non-sarcastic take. And if not, they’d have to minimize the actress’s role.

As it is, every scene with her in it breaks the fourth wall and reminds me I’m watching actors acting in front of cameras, rather than a visual narrative.

https://youtu.be/-sbFhOeqTzY

I enjoyed the realpolitik of Expanse but hated the trite interpersonal conflicts which seems to be a mainstay of modern drama. I find the main characters to be rather childish.

They are written in a childish manner: the white knight, the highly assertive love interest, the sociopath who wishes he could be a good guy, and the cowboy. Their personalities are unrealistic in ways that I would attribute to a young teenager. That said, the quirks of these trope-like characters is sometimes amusing. I enjoy the series mainly for the protomolecule plot, despite the characters.

I enjoyed Neon Genesis Evangelion despite the characters.

I think the acting gets much better over the seasons. And when I rewatched seasons 1-3 recently, I didn't notice it. But maybe I'm so into the characters and stories that it just doesn't register anymore. And the Expanse certainly does have interesting character relations as the story progresses.

To be fair, I never made it past Season 1 so you may be right. It was just so distracting that I couldn't force myself to continue. More and more people recommend it, though, so I may have to just suffer through those early seasons to get to the good stuff.

The Expanse is one of only five science fiction productions on TV I could seriously recommend to someone. It deals with big themes in a coherent manner. And the characters get incredible depth as the seasons continue. And thematic/political elements get way more interesting. Almost every other science fiction series turns out to be mostly fluff (admittedly, very entertaining fluff) when viewed through the lens of The Expanse.

What are the other 4?

My other Four:

   o Firefly - no brainer.  Brilliant.
   o Battlestar Galactica  - Has some issues mid-late course, but still pretty end-end enthralling.
   o Dark (I keep re-watching this over and over every few months.  I have many notebook pages full of analysis.  Seriously good SciFi for the most part.)
   o Altered Carbon (mostly Season 1 - but Season 2 was okay)

Big Recommendation:

Not really science fiction (even bigger themes explored) but far superior in terms of overall quality of work/screen writing, and has a similar "concept" that a lot of supposed science fiction shows have - "The Leftovers" - Which I put on my list of the 5 most brilliant things on Television (Sopranos/The Wire/Deadwood/Breaking Bad being the other 4).

I'll give a honorable mention to stuff I loved but I can't totally recommends:

   o Travelers - I'm a sucker for a good Time Travel Show. 
   o Foundation - Pretty - I watch it, but I totally would never recommend it.
   o Fringe - Wow -  was totally into this.  Definitely an acquired taste though.
   o Raised By Wolves - Interested in where it's going.  Could entirely suck eventually I guess. 
   o Black Mirror - Hit and miss, though hits often enough that I keep coming back to it.
   o WestWorld - I mean, we all watched it.  Season 1 was *awesome* if you watched it in realtime and didn't read all the internet commentary when the aha moment hit you.  Season 2 was pretty good as well IMHO.  Season 3 was just dreck where the screen writing tanked *but* it paid an *awesome* homage to the very last of the Foundation Novels to bring it all home.

I did want to quit around episode 6 of season 1 on my first watch. Part of the problem is that it takes most of season 1 to cement the main characters and establish the story. I stuck it out and was hooked by season 2. Season 3 was fantastic. The story just keeps evolving, all the way up to book 9 and various novellas (season 6 is coming out in December).

Lord of the Rings by popular consensus, surely?

LOTR and Harry Potter are easy to translate to the big screen because both follow the Hero's Journey formula. The same can be said with Dune. The only difficulty with Dune is that all of its content is hard to fit in two hour snippets.

I thought the same about Dune. It's one of my favorite books, but there's a lot of detail in there that didn't make it to the movie.

How could I forget about LOTR! Admittedly Ive not seen any of the Harry Potter movies.

Hmmm. Harry Potter movies ? ~Lord of the rings ? Dune (even though I didn't enjoy it) ?

> Harry Potter

As far as "faithful to the literary work", while the first one did a pretty fine job, it would bee an understatement to say that it didn't stay the distance especially past Azkaban. (Azkaban which is ironicaly form me is still a great movie on his own as the screenplay is in my eye a sweet wink at back to the future II)

My memories are fuzzy and I admit I don't remember how faithful they were.

Steven King was not a fan of Kubrick's The Shining.

And it still was a much more faithful adaptation than Foundation. Foundation is like a boomerang that was thrown three episodes ago, and hasn't come back yet to its source.

Not really. It feels very different from the book. It's more psychological and less supernatural even though there are elements of it from the book. If Kubrick was too faithful, it would not have been as scary.

Rosemary's Baby.

> what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it.

For God's sake.

It's screenplay writers work to adapt. One did a good job if they create a nice screen play. If that work is simplified by a solid foundation (pun intended), we'd expect at least not worse off from starting from scratch.

Look at what we get in this visual carnage of garbage.

It's very good visually, but mediocre plot-wise. The last few episodes look relatively low budget, so my guess is that they're preparing to end the season with more fistfights, a elaborate space war and the Invictus exploding like a Death Star.

If they had forgo the Foundation name and made their own universe, the fanbase would be more or less the same.

Few people are criticizing the show from deviating from books per se. It isn’t good on its own merits.

Of course they had to make some changes and flesh out some characters to adapt it for TV. They just made poor choices. Instead of going with chosen ones, heroes, and battles, they should have gone for politics in space.

Something like the political manouvering in A Song of Ice and Fire but in space.

You can make a lot of changes without pissing on its main themes. E.g. there are a lot of characters and scenes which were just sketched and the show could have filled them in instead of inventing whole new plots out of cloth. Also Hardin being a Chosen One and the producer insisting on reddit that "it's not really so, you'll see" but he could have just not made it look like it is so. Another thing would have been to compress everything until Bel Riose in the 1st season, since it's only afterwards that Asimov really matures as a writer.

It's not like I don't enjoy anything (the Empire plot is solid even though it's not at all from the books, proof that I'm not a purist or anything), but everything just shows a lack of interest in being faithful to the main ideas of the books.

> Also Hardin being a Chosen One and the producer insisting on reddit that "it's not really so

Almost all modern TV in the Scifi & Fantasy tropes relies on the the Hero's Journey. It is very hard not to use it especially if you want a large audience. To faithfully recreate Foundation for TV, you'd have to make a fake documentary and that just doesn't draw enough people to make the budget work

But if you want your show to be a success you have to take chances.

If they make just another derivative show they can’t be surprised by the poor reception.

(Besides I’m not sure I agree with the premise. Game of Thrones was a big success and it was much more complex than a simple Hero’s Journey.)

Arguably, framing Hardin as a "Hero's Journey" is the show taking chances versus the relatively much more dry source material. As Seldon says time and again, psychohistory can only predict the actions of large enough groups of people, it cannot predict the actions of individuals. From that perspective alone, I've found so far I mostly appreciate the twists the show is taking on the source material. Most of them seem to me to be individual actions within the overall predictions of psychohistory (treating the books as one prediction versus reality/timeline and the show as another).

Particularly since one of the two characters on the hero's journey for a majority of fans turned evil in the last two episodes. And that the one who ended up in the seat of power at the end had a different kind of journey.

GoT was also a Hero's Journey story. The difference is that it involved more than one character i.e. the Starks, etc...

Ignoring the lack of faith to the source material:

It's bad.. the dialogue, conflict, etc., are far below the levels we've come to expect in sci-fi shows like Expanse.

This is a complete waste of Jared Harris' talents. In the last episode, the resolution of his incomplete download was dramatized by a bit more screaming, then he was all good.

It doesn't feel elevated or sophisticated at all... it does look very pretty.

But it's not even representative of itself -- they keep talking about "trillions" of people here and there, and the new Book of Boba Fett does a better job of selling large population centers than Foundation ever does.

Also, my son made a point about the "unfilmable" books, which are a lot of dialogue: aren't most cop and lawyer shows mostly a lot of talk, usually in just a few common settings?

I agree.

I don't care about the books and stopped watching mid season. The production impressed me for the first episode and then it was very bland and boring. There is no drama, nothing that caught my attention. It feels like watching a boring documentary.

> Also, my son made a point about the "unfilmable" books, which are a lot of dialogue: aren't most cop and lawyer shows mostly a lot of talk, usually in just a few common settings?

Nah, consisting mostly of dialogue doesn't make something unfilmable. That description applies to tons of good movies. "Unfilmable" becomes a possibility when there's little way to show anything, other than having characters speak infodumps at the audience. Even dialog-heavy movies need to show you things, even if it's just the physical movement and reactions of characters during the dialogue, or items about the room.

> just the physical movement and reactions of characters during the dialogue

I love how old Spike Lee films would have people talk while "walking" down a street but they wouldn't really walk, just stand there and talk as the background moves by just like the way it feels to have a good conversation while walking.

https://www.andsoitbeginsfilms.com/2013/03/breaking-down-spi...

Not sure what we're disagreeing about -- shows like Suits and Billions are very much two people talking, one of those people talking to someone else, first two people talking again, expand...

Mandalorian has shown how little of a set is required to keep actors busy.

Ah, I misread that your son had claimed dialog-heavy things might be unfilmable and that you'd disagreed based on all the successful dialog-heavy filmed media the exists. The "nah" was a result of that misunderstanding, but was still intended to agree with you, if that makes sense. Sorry about that.

> my son made a point about the "unfilmable" books, which are a lot of dialogue

I'm still surprised about how slow they can make an hour-long episode. Between fistfights, face closeups and gratuitous sex scenes and drama, barely anything advances. It's following the Star Trek Discovery formula but in slow motion.

Exactly. There’s a lot of wishful thinking that the show is criticized because it deviates from the books.

No, the show simply isn’t good. It suffers from the Netflix Disease. High production quality, painfully mediocre writing.

I don't even remember the original books, other than that I liked them.

I do not like the show. It's a decent scifi environment, but the actual storytelling is pretty awful, IMO.

The only thing I like is the mysteries. I'm not very far in, but they're few and far between, and wading through all the crap to learn about them is tiring. I keep trying to force myself to watch the next episode, but it doesn't happen.

>I do not like the show. It's a decent scifi environment, but the actual storytelling is pretty awful, IMO.

IMHO, that matches the books.

The books at least advanced at a constant pace. Foundation seems stuck since three episodes ago. I'm surprised how an hour-long show can consist of mostly stalling. It will need a few seasons per book at that pace.

> So, is it a classic? No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. But IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :)

If you want to make an action-y television series, then choose action-y source material. There's so much good sci-fi (and fantasy) out there that can be used for that type of style. The Vorkosigan Saga for one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga

While it may be possible to adapt Waiting for Godot into a Die Hard-like movie, why would you do so?

Maybe?

I don't get the problem with Foundation. Like why can't they take the source material and create their own interpretation? What's so wrong with that? Maybe someone will go on and create a Vorkosigan Saga interpretation too?

I read the books. Loved them. Really enjoying the show too.

If my memory serves me right, Foundation was never about individuals but collectives. That's what psychohistory math was about. The show fails completely to transmit this idea which for me, is the core of the books. So if they don't even get that right, what's the point of making a show about it?

It’s fun and interesting. What other reason do they need? You’re latching on to the premise that a show or movie based on a book must strictly adhere to that book or else it’s not good. It doesn’t. It can be loosely coupled or tightly coupled.

You’re disappointed because you have set expectations on what they should do. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I got over the “it must follow strictly” mindset a long time ago.

It's bad for other reasons. What I'm criticizing is clamming to be an adaptation of the books when it doesn't even get the most fundamental thing of the book right.

> You’re disappointed because you have set expectations

They created those expectations by clamming it is an adaption of the books. Imagine if I claim that my show called "The lord of the rings" is based on the novels but the only thing in common is that the main character is named Frodo.

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.

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

Casino Royale is considered a prequel because Bond just gets his double-0 in it, while all the other ones he already had it.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is a prequel as well: it is set in the US Civil War, while the others are set after it.

The entire subgenre of military scifi or military space opera is full of stories that would translate well into a visual medium, with plenty of action. I've read many but haven't seen any adapted yet.

Agreed. The show may not follow the book, but it’s entertaining in its own right. Star Wars was essentially a “dumbed down” version of this, the show maintains some complexity - it can get corny at times but you still have to follow what’s going on or you could lose track of the story.

And the Brothers’ are some of the most intriguing sci fi characters that I’ve watched.

I never read Foundation, so maybe that's why I like the show so much.

The ideas are all new to me and I have no idea where the story is going.

I have read the books. The entire series a few times now actually. I enjoyed them immensely both for the story and some of the ideas that are played with throughout.

They'd make terrible, boring TV.

I'm glad they've not attempted a shot-for-shot remake of the books as a TV show, and instead chosen to adapt by taking some of the core ideas and (thusfar) general gist of of the stories and turn them into something. I'm glad I get to explore those ideas further and put my head in that world a bit more. I like that they've added some other interesting ideas to play with.

I think the moaning is just the same general thing that comes up any time anything is adapted to screen. There's a huge contingent of people that, for some reason, seem to treat the source material as some holy text that's never to be changed instead of just being happy that some of the good and interesting elements are being carried over into a new story.

Counterpoint: maybe people are getting jaded by the constant nostalgia baits Hollywood keeps producing. Personally, I'd prefer less remakes/prequels/lazy adaptations and more epics like LOTR, for example. LOTR also had adaptations, but they were well-thought and respectful to the source material.

If they had named the show anything but "Foundation", I think it would be a decent lure for Apple TV. Loosely basing it on the Foundation series, and naming it "Foundation" was more to generate hype than a love letter to fans of Asimov's work.

I read the books so long ago that I remember zero about them. So "lack of fidelity to the books" is hardly my issue.

The issue is: they're high-glitz Hollywood garbage: "We can't think of any new ideas, so we'll just make the actors more 'modern' and relatable, and spend a lot on the CGI."

It's interesting that I don't watch much sci-fi, but AppleTV is also running Invasion which I do find watchable. Even though those characters are also kinda cliched.

I'm really enjoying it, and I read the books so long ago that I almost don't remember much from them, so I don't have any problem with the story not being faithful to them.

I considered a re-read when I learned this was coming out, but now I'm glad I have three decades' distance from the books. I may re-read after the show concludes, but at this pace that could be some time yet...

I think they're really trying, but just slightly missing the mark. They're raising a lot of ideas that aren't in the book, but are actually relevant to the concept of psychohistory. Things like the group think exhibited in various factions, many of the characters grapple with the way society constrains their freedom of action. The identical genetics of the emperor/s raises the question of the relevance and nature of individual identity.

I think they actually do quite a good job of integrating all these themes of freedom, social constraint and inertia, personhood and destiny. The first book doesn't really do any of that, so in doing so the show is diverging dramatically from the story of the first book. Nevertheless given psychohistory they're all interesting questions. Later books do explore various implications of psychohistory, but I don't think it's viable for a show to wait x-many seasons before bringing in these themes.

The problem is the actual story is a bit sluggish, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because I can see what they are trying to do.

> No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all.

I would offer an even more contrarian take: the show actually is being relatively faithful to the books. At least of the most recent episode.

More concretely, while obviously there are important changes (the Cleons, how Seldon dies, the Anacreons invading rather than making diplomatic threats, nobody smoking, etc.) none of these are terribly unfaithful to the story. Most are small bits of harmless dramatic license. Others explore parts of history that the books simply panned away from (e.g., happenings on Trantor during the first Seldon crisis.)

What really worries me is that, as of the most recent episode, they seem to be introducing characters with some kind of superpower wherein they can see or alter the future. This is going to screw the story up completely.

The most recent episode lost me. I think the biggest problem with filming the books is that the cast turns over every chapter. The genetic dynasty, Hari's hologram, Gaal going into extended hibernation are perfectly viable plot devices to keep the audience interested. So is jazzing up the action Making Gaal psychic really lost me. And so is the portrayal of Hari's forecasts as being a plan that hinges on specific people. That's really contrary to the book. The whole point of psychohistory is that cultural and society trends are nearly unavoidable and the individuals and their actions are nearly irrelevant except at the crisis moments where he would pop in to give relevant advice to whoever was around to listen. Magic people whose destiny is woven into the universe is completely anathema to that theme. That's just boring Star Wars.

I'm pretty sure the seeing the future thing is just how they're doing the second foundation.

Big but: Foundation never had clairvoyants, not even Gaia. This is a huge deviation from the books, since now we have people predicting the future on their own, without psychohistory.

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 minds. He wasn't a clairvoyant, he just altered people's feelings. The Second Foundation put the plan back on track thanks to their own mental abilities, but they also weren't clairvoyants. So far only psychohistory could predict the future. Later we have Golan Trevize, who also couldn't see the future, but had a gift for choosing right with incomplete information. Even Gaia had to rely on Trevize for its final decision.

Foundation's Gaal can see the future, and this is a world breaking ability. Hari Seldon and his psycohistory become obsolete since she can do that on her own, any action against the Foundation is moot, any deviation from the plan can be predicted, etc.

The only way to write Gaal out of that corner is making her clairvoyance work as reliable or unreliable as the plot needs (lazy writing), and judging from how she can predict and block micrometeorites now (which can puncture a ship's shield and hull, but not a tablet), it seems that's the route they will take. There was no need to introduce clairvoyance in the Foundation's universe.

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.

The show seems to be heavily leaning towards the idea that this capability is going very important to the plot. A significant portion of the last episode consists of Hari Seldon explaining to Gaal how significant her powers are, and demonstrating that they can clearly predict complicated near-future events. I hope you’re right that the show will place tight restrictions on this macguffin, but I’m definitely worried.

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.

Fingers crossed. Except that also they're giving this power to Salvor Hardin, who really shouldn't have it.

I'd agree that they needed a lot of reworking to make a TV series out of it, but some of it feels slightly gratuitous; the clone emperor thing feels like a pointless overcomplication, and I'm pretty sure they're going for some sort of Dune-esque guild navigator thing with the imperial starships.

I'm mostly quite enjoying it, but I think they could have been a _bit_ more restrained with their rewriting and lost nothing.

> everyone is smoking all the time, the hyper focus on nuclear power, the relative role of women

Also, newspapers! The original novels had paper newspapers, transmitted across the stars. At a certain age, science fiction tends to become accidentally a bit steampunk.

That's interesting to me because the brothers are one of my favorite parts of the show because of the new ideas they bring up in relation to the Empire. It gives the writers some really clever and interesting ways to discuss the problems with a long-standing continuity of ideas while giving those internal inconsistencies human faces to stand-in for something that would be much more nebulous and vague otherwise.

I feel like it kind of misses the point, though. Societies like that don't collapse because the leader is immortal, they do so because the _society_ is ossified.

I don't even think that's the point, though. I think it's more of a criticism of strict stubbornness. It's not the fact that he's immortal that's the problem, it's the fact that he/they continue to "lead" in the exact same manner, attempting to ossify a society that, on its insides, is changing. The only thing consistent is change, especially in society. Isn't the point of Foundation that, despite spectacular individuals, societies move on and change?

I feel it's the point they are trying to make with the cloned leader (I wouldn't exactly say immortal). They are saying the fall is faster because of an ossified leader, but nonetheless the fall will happen anyway, because it's not just the leader that is ossified, but the whole society.

> the clone emperor thing feels like a pointless overcomplication

This and other adaptations were made to keep the same actors for the thousand years of chaos. Some were ludicrous, like Gaal being forcefully put in hibernation for 30+ years, but the Cleon clones idea was well done in my opinion. It transmits that Cleon is the Empire. If only their interactions took less screen time...

If you proceed from the assumption that they had to adapt the Foundation novels into a serialized streaming show, then I guess I agree with you. Is there some new law that says you can't make up your own story anymore? You can even steal the things you like about Foundation, that's fine. It's not like all adaptations succeed, and all original IP fails, so I have no idea why they keep pretending that step 1 must be to buy the rights to something that already exists, even if it is structurally unfeasible to adapt.

> 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.

I will have to disagree here. While I don't mind deviating from the books, I do mind incredibly bad story telling, pandering, shitty acting, and just about everything else wrong with Apple's Foundation.

Its only redeeming qualities are certain aspects of the aesthetics and cinematography. Everything else makes it completely unwatchable, and not because it's unfaithful to the books.

> interesting enough to watch if you’re bored

is a terribly damning critique when a show costs as much as Foundation does. It's not Netflix faff, it's Apple's flagship.

Not really... most television needs to clear the bar of being something that you watch when you're bored and then get hooked into. Otherwise, you'd only have viewers that are familiar with the source and that's not a great way to grow viewership. It's how Game of Thrones grew so quickly for HBO. That show was a confusing mess with tons of characters but it was interesting to watch if you're bored because there was enough that you could pick up just from the costumes, locations, and acting.

Maybe this is just because of where I am in life, but between work, children, and hobbies, I don't have time to be bored. If I'm watching TV it's because I'm choosing to do it instead of something else I should be doing or want to do. I will only even try shows that receive high praise from people I trust or from a lot of reviewers. If a show's only function is to kill time it has negative value to me.

Sorry... to clarify, I'm not suggesting that that's the function of the show. I'm just saying that shows, nowadays, need to be simultaneously easy to get into to start but also in depth enough to keep people hooked. We're still early into the show so I think we're still in that "simple" stage.

It's good that HN is so rewarding!

It reminds me a lot about Star Trek Discovery, another high budget flagship meant to carry CBS's streaming service. Top of the line CGI, written like a soap opera Star Wars.

I could handle a reinterpreted Foundation story for TV. Easily.

The problem is that this is sooo bad. Dull, pretentions stories where nothing makes sense, and characters that are dull speaking boxes walking around saying script lines.

That's what I saw until falling asleep halfway through Episode 3. Perhaps it got better. Perhaps it's not "for me". But that's what I saw.

> Dull, pretentions stories where nothing makes sense, and characters that are dull speaking boxes walking around saying script lines.

That seems...faithful.

Maybe a good screenwriter could have fixed that, who knows?

> That's what I saw until falling asleep halfway through Episode 3. Perhaps it got better. Perhaps it's not "for me". But that's what I saw.

I have to skip some scenes because they become too boring: flirting, romance, sex? skip. Emotional scene that adds nothing to the plot? skip. Maybe I lost some important bit among that, but seeing the sluggish pace, I doubt it.

> characters that are dull speaking boxes walking around saying script lines.

You need to re-read the books. While the overall ideas and plot is good, the details and dialogue are terrible.

> Dull, pretentions stories where nothing makes sense...

That seems like a problem with you, not the story.

Exactly. I really like the show. I haven't read the books, so I couldn't be offended in the first place.

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.

> If you think of the series merely as “inspired by” them not “based on them,” then the show isn’t bad.

Then what is the point of using a license if you're just "inspired by"? The producers could just say it's inspired by sci-fi classics and do whatever they want, including not respecting the spirit of the original work, which should the primary goal in an adaptation.

It has some brilliant adaptations, like the Cleon clones, and some abysmal ones like the psychic supergenius self-taught mathematician from a backwards anti-intellectual hyper-religious civilization, that is destined to lead the Foundation. Way to pile on plot devices and clichés on a single character, a clear sign of weak writing.

> the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction

and this is why it's near impossible to translate Asimov's Foundation faithfully to TV. I don't understand why a lot of fans can't see this

I had the same idea of LOTR, with all their songs and heavy narrative, yet the Peter Jackson's adaptation was great, a love letter to Tolkien. He did show, not tell.

LOTR uses the same Hero's Journey pattern as StarWars. The main thing Jackson did was remove the songs and poetry. That's easy imo.

Perhaps a lot of fans never asked for Apple to do this?

You can't have your cake and eat it.

Apple made a ton of buzz around the TV show, and it took _because_ they use the Asimov work.

Apple did the Apple thing, they overhyped a product that they then designed according to their own rules, expecting everybody to just eat their crap and smile as usual.

But it turns out people liking classic SF books are not your average fanboy, and they don't like being lied to.

It's not just about marketing, it's about trust. It's about taking a dump on a legendary art piece to make money with a the Apple smug confidence. While Dune was a masterful yet humble demonstration of respect and love to the book.

Sure, it's was impossible to adapt the book as a show. By nature. Any reader would have told you that.

They didn't care. They wanted their poney.

It was never about making something for us.

Well, for once, I'm happy it back fired. They don't get to hear "no" often enough.

> Apple did the Apple thing, they overhyped a product that they then designed according to their own rules, expecting everybody to just eat their crap and smile as usual.

> But it turns out people liking classic SF books are not your average fanboy, and they don't like being lied to.

It’s a bit silly to imply that the intended market was people who like or have even heard of SF classics like the Foundation series. The intended audience is pretty clearly everyone who watches stuff. It’s one of many shows trying to spend their way into cultural ubiquity after the immense success of Game of Thrones. Even if previous Asimov fans were disappointed it would have been totally fine if the show took off (this was the case for many George R. R. Martin fans and the Game of Thrones TV series).

Sure, but in that case you can't expect to benefit from the hype produced by the fans community, and any backslash is on you.

Turns that those people make a lot of noise for their small number. The screeching voices and all that.

Right, and that’s precisely what I’m saying: that it’s silly to claim that Apple’s plan was to make a mediocre show and rely on generating hype with nothing more than the name recognition of Asimov and the Foundation series.

Apple TV is at this point, the underdog that most people don't know about. Probably 1 out 50 persons even know it exists around me.

So I wager they wanted very hard that the name of Asimov created a fan base that would carry their own PR.

Otherwise, why chose the book at all ? After all, as you said, it's almost impossible to adapt, so they didn't buy the rights for the writing.

> Otherwise, why chose the book at all ? After all, as you said, it's almost impossible to adapt, so they didn't buy the rights for the writing.

I mean, Apple bought the show from a production company that was able to get adaptation rights from the Asimov estate, and presumably that production company had creative people who liked the series and were motivated to adapt it. It's not like there was some white label series already in development and Apple went searching for some famous book series brand to attach to it.

The series has generally positive reviews (70% on Rotten Tomatoes). It was recently renewed for a second season already. I think it's a success for them.

For God's sake, Apple didn't "design [the Foundation TV show] according to their own rules". Apple bought the rights to a TV show created, developed, produced, and run by people who do not work for Apple. Yes, Apple is signing checks, yes, that I get that means they have some influence -- but that doesn't make the show into an "Apple product" the way an iPhone or a MacBook is. It just doesn't. There is no one at Apple saying "I think this show should be 'designed' this way" for this or any of their shows. Apple TV+ is developing a reputation for being relatively hands-off and creator friendly, largely thanks to the staff they hired to actually run things, which includes former top executives at Sony and HBO. The main thing that Apple brings to the table is money. Lots and lots of money.

If you don't like the Foundation show, that's fine, but this "oh, this is the hubris of Apple and I am glad they failed and everything they do is terrible and Tim Cook personally beat my cat to death" narrative isn't just tired, it's utterly irrelevant. What you don't like is David S. Goyer's take on Foundation. If you really don't like that take, then you wouldn't like it if it were running on Netflix or Amazon Prime or HBO Max, either, and it would have been just the same on one of those services -- albeit probably with a smaller special effects budget.

And the thing is, a "faithful translation" of the first books would be deathly boring. It's full of great ideas, but also full of flat characters, stilted dialogue, droning monologues, and very little in the way of actual plot. It's a story that hinges on the fall of a giant galactic empire yet lets that fall happen entirely off camera. One reviewer in 1982 described it this way:

> I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, nearly a quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and conversation. No action. No physical suspense.

That "reviewer" was Isaac Asimov, when he re-read his own work before commencing the fourth book. Foundation started as a series of short stories patched together, then became a novel series full of retcons: it was all predicted by math! Wait, it was really the Second Foundation and Mentalics! Something something The Mule(tm)! Hold on, it was the robot from this other series entirely what the hell, Isaac!

Goyer has the disadvantage of trying to take what starts out as basically a future history sourcebook and turning it into a story, but the advantage of not having to retcon anything. There are already references to Foundation and Earth in the show.

Do I love the show? No, but I like the show. Is it turning a cerebral almost action-free book series into an action epic? Yes, but so far it's been a smart action epic, and I'm okay with that. Is it arguably Foundation fanfic? Maybe, but fanfic is usually "what if we shipped these two characters"; Foundation is fanfic of its source material in the sense of asking "what if Asimov created characters anyone would ever consider shipping in the first place."

Well said.

> Is it turning a cerebral almost action-free book series into an action epic?

This pretty much has to be expected. Text and film are wildly different formats and have different strengths and constraints.

I can understand people giving it a thumbs down, but the responses that sound almost angry baffle me.

I don't understand why more "unfilmable" books don't get launched as an animated series. Maybe execs think adults wouldn't watch it?

"Unfilmable" just means impossible to translate into a sequence of scenes, with characters and a coherent story. For example, long internal monologues about the design of space ships, etc.

You could try, but it wouldn't be entertaining in a classical sense without deviating strongly from the source material. Animated shows would have the same problem.

You have to see this from the big picture view as a way to draw mainstream audiences for a paid streaming service. Without major drastic changes, a faithful translation of Foundation would be unwatchable for most people (most people are not into documentaries let alone fake ones), and it doesn't serve Apple's goal of getting more subscribers.

>IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :)

Is it still a somewhat hard sci-fi or has it been turned into a fantasy flick?

In the span of ten minutes they restore the artificial gravity on a derelict spacecraft then they walk into a room on that same ship that has large open vats of some dangerous liquid that people fall into and die.

Or Salvor's boyfriend who says his propulsor doesn't work and gently floats away, feet away from several people equipped with functioning propulsors, including Salvor.

The lava floor strongly reminded me of Galaxy Quest's chompers. Come on, Apple.

Would an entirely new branch of mathematics that predicts the future count as hard science fiction?

Barely, since neither Asimov nor the TV show writers, have spent 60% of the material on explaining how it actually works.

Feels way too fantasy to me. Though only the first book didn't have fantasy parts (imo. and I don't feel like it was required). And possibly, most of the fantasy parts will be explained in the tv show, and we'll end very small fantasy elements, but I'm expecting to be disappointed there.

I would say it's as hard as the original novel, which has FTL travel and psychic powers.

The emperor storyline is really the only thing worth watching. The rest is just boring, low-quality sci-fi.

Feels like they started writing Cleo's arc and hastily added Hardin's because it didn't check all the boxes.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

And maybe it will inspire someone to go read the books. Adaptations often do that.

i completely agree. it isn't bad sci-fi tv. nowhere near the expanse, but that doesn't say much, since for me nothing really comes close to the expanse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com