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Comment by rixrax | Hacker News Reader

While I want to be really excited about this, I am already terrified they'll give it a 'Foundation' treatment. E.g. take a great book, and then sort of re-write it while re-using some names and elements from the original. Or the Sho-Gun treatment, where you take another great book, and turn it into visually beautiful, but soulless pseudo-reproduction of the book that lacks exactly the depth that made the book great.

So please Apple, give it a Lord of the Rings treatment. Or even Hobbit. Pretty please!

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It makes me so so happy to hear someone else complain about what they've done with Foundation. Considering the ratings (both from critics and audiences) I've seen, I was starting to question if I actually read Foundation or something else because the show is NOTHING like the books. It's not all bad per se, but just give it another name because they have nothing in common.

I like the show but it is not like the books at all.

I was pretty bitterly disappointed until I realized I could just see the show as inspired by the books. The same way I’ve written stories. I just had the respect to file the serial numbers off in editing.

I’ve read 5 of the books, I’m fine with the adaptation. The books all but make it impossible to have continuity of characters in any real way, which would make for a weird show, IMO. This is fundamentally different than LOTR which does have continuity (and even the hobbit), so I feel like that explains the character smearing (Gaal, Hari, Cletus) and time compression.

The original books are great but honestly the characters aren’t even in the books long enough to really develop them beyond the crises at hand, it’s more like a collection of short stories (and I love short stories, but beyond Black Mirror I can’t think of any other sort of short stories series I like much).

Roald Dahl short stories are very fun, purposefully dark humor in several.

I'm with you here. I read the books so long ago I barely remember them, and I'm not that fond of Asimov as writer. But I've enjoyed the series so far.

Oh man, I would've loved an anthology version of Foundation. Each episode covering one of Asimov's airtight Foundation vignettes. Or, maybe, just don't try to adapt things that don't work for TV? There's plenty of other incredible stuff waiting to be written. Someone needs to hurry up and film Hyperion, it would be hard but more doable than Foundation.

Bradley Cooper is behind Hyperion, which he is supposedly an avid fan of and has been seeking to adapt since the 2010s. Hopefully with the success of Dune: Part Two and him wrapping up work with Maestro he can buckle down and finally make it.

Yes, Hyperion could be an amazing adaptation. So many of these execs making strange decisions when good shows are already written for them to be adapted.

I can’t think of any other sort of short stories series I like much

Not even the original The Twilight Zone (which Black Mirror basically is a copy of except with cell phones and social media)?

Ah yeah, I did love twilight zone. I was thinking more contemporary though. I tried to watch a few, like this PKD series on amazon, Oats studios things, some others.

> The original books are great but honestly the characters aren’t even in the books long enough to really develop them beyond the crises at hand, it’s more like a collection of short stories

The original three Foundation books are collections of short stories that Asimov originally wrote for magazines.

The books are a full of interesting ideas but as written would be terrible for television. You should just think of the TV show as an unrelated science fiction show which happens to share a name and a few plot elements.

Honestly I'm not sure it would be terrible for television; I'm just not sure they tried. I think it would be possible to convey the grand arc of history, retain the pre-recorded nature of the Vault, show the different approaches and cultural styles in each era. The dumbest approach would just be to have one mini-series per crisis, and I think even that could work. They don't need to have the same characters throughout the whole thing.

Yeah, sometimes you can just accept the differences and enjoy both. Like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" vs. "Blade Runner".

Sometimes the adaptations are better, or more approachable. Blade Runner, Game of Thrones, Man in the High Castle, I Am Legend spring to mind.

I tried reading Foundation when I was younger and could not get into it. I think they've done a pretty good job with the Apple Series.

> So please Apple, give it a Lord of the Rings treatment. Or even Hobbit. Pretty please!

The hobbit, imo, was the harbinger of high budget films rewritten for modern audiences into unrecognizable disasters.

I would be okay if they gave it the Peripheral treatment, which is to say it doesn't need to be 100% like the book. It would be better if Case's ono-sendai rig was something a little more modern than the original vision of essentially an Atari ST. It would be hilarious as hell if Wintermute started hallucinating like a GPT. The vision of Chiba City has been done a million times over; what if, instead of trying to just remake the street scenes of Blade Runner, we got something completely different? I'd be okay with that.

Shōgun just came out and is getting unanimous rave reviews. What don't you like about it?

I read the book three times, saw the original 1980 series twice, and saw the first ep. of the new series last night. I was impressed.

It all depends on the show runners. Looking at production studios is not a great metric for quality. It all depends on who is writing it and why.

Having just finished The Three Body Problem series, I am having similar feelings about Netflix's treatment of it.

Did you watch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Body ? It’s available on Amazon prime.

It is also available on Youtube on Tencent's channel. I'd assume the resolution may be higher on Amazon, but for watching on a phone screen the Youtube video was certainly good enough for me.

The Netflix series doesn't premiere until next month. The Chinese show produced by Tencent was not made by Netflix.

Had me with LotR, lost me on The Hobbit

Same with Silo. They changed it in unnecessary and outright stupid ways. I‘m on team "book is way better".

I've watched the series, but never read the books. How do they differ?

I love Neuromancer, but I feel like it's much more about the vibes than the plot per se. If you've got a good visual design and don't mess with the main characters and setting, it'll probably be good.

I mean I like the Space Rastafarians, but I'm not sure they're essential.

We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.

> I mean I like the Space Rastafarians, but I'm not sure they're essential.

It'd be a shame to lose one of the best stealth puns I've ever seen in literature.

Please elaborate ... As much as I loved the book, I don't really want to read that ending again.

They got so high that they ended up in space.

That's the current playbook. Take incredible IP, throw production values at it, the script is just a map to get from marketing image to marketing image.

>I am already terrified they'll give it a 'Foundation' treatment.

What does your heart tell you?

yea the whole Foundation thing makes me nervous about this!

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