I enjoyed the first season of Foundation (you can read my review here). I loved Isaac Asimov’s trilogy when I was a kid. When I reread The Foundation Trilogy decades later, I was surprised by how chatty it was. The folks behind this TV series have transformed Asimov’s cerebral classic into more of an action series. The first season set up the galactic Empire setting and now in the second season, the Foundation has to deal with a mutant who can totally disrupt the Plan to spare humanity thousands of years of barbarism.
Hari Seldon’s (Jared Harris) entire Plan of Psychohistory to reset the Empire after an anticipated Dark Age is predicated on the movement of the masses, not on individuals. Nevertheless, that notion is challenged throughout season 2 when the Plan meets its second Crisis Point.
Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), Hari Seldon’s former student, becomes obsessed with stopping a threat from 150 years into the future called The Mule. Goal and Salvor (Leah Harvey) try to connect as recently united mother and daughter, even as they attempt to follow Seldon’s instructions for establishing a Second Foundation to stop the Plan from failure.
Llobell and Harvey are compelling as Gaal and Salvor as their characters’ journeys stress each of them. Hari Seldon gets a bigger role this season as the Plan is threatened. Harris engages the audience as more of Hari’s backstory is revealed. Hari Seldon struggles with the consequences his actions have on the people dedicating their lives to a future they’ll never see but only dream about.
I’ve watched the three episodes (of 10) that are available right now (new episodes drop on Fridays) but I’m totally hooked! GRADE: INCOMPLETE (but trending towards an A-)
The first season had very little to do with the novels which as you mentioned were a bit chatty. I liked it as a kid but couldn’t get through the books when I tried to reread them years later.
Steve, FOUNDATION is loosely based on the Asimov books. The books contain a lot of dialogue where the TV series is action-oriented.
The books seemed to have a large reputation when I first started reading science fiction as a kid but I confess that when I tried to read the trology a few years ago I couldn’t get through the first book. I’ve always found Asimov to be a clunky writer. I also recall reading that the whole future history nonsense was something influenced by L. Ron Hubbard who was a friend of Asimov’s at one point. The show looks like the kind of expensive streaming fare that has already begun to disappear as the streamers all wake up to the realization they will never make money this way and begin to tighten their belts.
Byron, the FOUNDATION TRILOGY got mass distribution as the Science Fiction Book Club gave away thousands of copies as a premium for joining. Asimov based FOUNDATION on the fall of the Roman Empire and the idea that mathematics can predict the Future. That was a Big Idea back in the 1940s.
Largely on Gibbons’s account of the empire and its contraction, at that.
Todd, the Roman Empire and Asimov’s Galactic Empire share some similarities: corruption, brutality, and arrogance.
No, L. Ron Hubbard did not in any way drive future histories in sf. His (possibly ghosted) endless sequelization of the BattlefieldMission Earth series was apparently written well after he had become a cult-leading recluse. Asimov and Hubbard were never good friends, and certainly not after HUbbard began building his cult…Asimov saw Hubbard’s influence on John W. Campbell as pernicious, at very best. If you could point us to that text, I would be interested…someone was writing from their fundament.
The outsized reputation of the FOUNDATION series has mostly been bolstered by the enthusiasm of those who read it at about age 12, and 12yos of all ages.
Todd, you’re right about the outsized reputation of the FOUNDATION trilogy. I was about 14 when I read it.
Just reading your synopsis I know I would find it too difficult to follow.
I read yesterday, TV execs are creating new shows that are the equivalent of background music so people can shuffle through their iphones while watching them. I have already reached that point, I fear.
Patti, Diane and I are getting more picky about which TV series to watch. No video wallpaper for us! The FOUNDATION series presents a lot of detail. It helps if the viewer has read Asimov’s books, but it’s not essential.
Well…that kind of programming has existed since the beginning of television…
I read the Foundation series and any other Asimov book that I could get while still in school in Germany. For that time they were really progressive imho.
Later I also bought his autobiographical books.
Today of course a lot of those 50s/60s books look dated and I probably wouldn’t pay to watch them on tv.
We’ve been disappointed too often by SF series on tv.
And all of the original FOUNDATION stories were written in the 1940s, when Asimov was in his 20s. He started writing sequels to the “trilogy” books, formed in the early ’50s from melding/editing together the shorter works up to and including a final serial in ASTOUNDING, in the ’80s, when it became clear there was a ready market for them.
Todd, I’ve read a few of the “sequels/prequels” Asimov wrote years after THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY was published. Not impressed.
Wolf, the production values of FOUNDATION on Apple TV+ is impressive.
I thought the first book was great but the quality fell off with each succeeding volume! I’ve never seen the movies or serials or whatever they are since I’m too poor/cheap to get streaming services!
Bob, welcome back! We missed you!
The Foundation Trilogy was one of the books I first got when I joined the SFBC in the early 60’s. Along with A two volume A Treasury of SF.
Steve, same here! I enjoyed that TREASURY OF SF AND Asimov’s TRILOGY especially since they were essentially free!