4 ms·

I'm a huge sci fi fan (anyone on HN who is not?) and gave Foundation a go, and found it to have flashes of brilliance but overall to be lifeless and frankly pre

I'm a huge sci fi fan (anyone on HN who is not?) and gave Foundation a go, and found it to have flashes of brilliance but overall to be lifeless and frankly pretty boring. It's hard to describe but the stories seemed to be not more than sketches without richness or detail, and many of the potentially interesting ideas were never fully explored. To be fair, there was something strangely appealing about it, and by the end I found I quite liked it even with its flaws - probably because there were some really imaginative concepts underneath (the Foundation I suppose).

sdrothrock 9y ago
> It's hard to describe but the stories seemed to be not more than sketches without richness or detail, and many of the potentially interesting ideas were never fully explored. This could probably be attributed to its pulp origins -- it wasn't originally a set of novels, but a bunch of pulp serials that were in the same universe.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  Yeah. It can't really be compared to something like Dune. It's a different format. Although I love Dune, I read most of my science fiction in short story format, so Foundation seems normal to me.
cwingrav 9y ago
I remember an interview where Asimov had a fan tell him all the interesting parts of his stories were glossed over. And it's true for action scenes. He always does all the backstory and intrigue, then the action starts and he tends to skip to the conclusion of the event. I think given this, that Asimov was about drama an the unfolding, in a SF backdrop; TV is a very good venue.
dingo_bat 9y ago
I find Asimov's language to be very un decorative, or as you put it, boring. What I enjoy in his writing is the ideas, story and characters.
duggan 9y ago
I read the series as a twelve or thirteen year old and loved it, but when I tried rereading it a few years ago I came to the same conclusion. As mentioned in another comment, it began as a serialized work, and it never really escapes Asimov's "make it up as you go along" style, resulting in quite a meandering series. I think it would have to be a very loose adaptation to make it interesting.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
I agree with that assessment, and it's pretty much Asimov's style. I don't really get why Foundation is considered by so many to be he best work. Personally, of the stuff I've read anyway, I think it's The Gods Themselves.
truculation 9y ago
>the stories seemed to be not more than sketches without richness or detail But that's part of the unique strength of the early Foundation books. What makes the experience powerful is that the reader's imagination is left to fill in the gaps. The trick was to write a sufficiently epic framework, which succeeded because inspiration was drawn from Gibbon's famous account of the decline and fall of Rome. A TV series faces a different logic. Little is left to the visual imagination and one is left trying to imagine what the characters are thinking, yet as deng pointed out there aren't any main characters in Foundation (apart from Seldon, who's mostly a sort of narrator in any case).

sdrothrock 9y ago

> It's hard to describe but the stories seemed to be not more than sketches without richness or detail, and many of the potentially interesting ideas were never fully explored. This could probably be attributed to its pulp origins -- it wasn't originally a set of novels, but a bunch of pulp serials that were in the same universe.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
Yeah. It can't really be compared to something like Dune. It's a different format. Although I love Dune, I read most of my science fiction in short story format, so Foundation seems normal to me.

cwingrav 9y ago

I remember an interview where Asimov had a fan tell him all the interesting parts of his stories were glossed over. And it's true for action scenes. He always does all the backstory and intrigue, then the action starts and he tends to skip to the conclusion of the event. I think given this, that Asimov was about drama an the unfolding, in a SF backdrop; TV is a very good venue.

dingo_bat 9y ago

I find Asimov's language to be very un decorative, or as you put it, boring. What I enjoy in his writing is the ideas, story and characters.

duggan 9y ago

I read the series as a twelve or thirteen year old and loved it, but when I tried rereading it a few years ago I came to the same conclusion. As mentioned in another comment, it began as a serialized work, and it never really escapes Asimov's "make it up as you go along" style, resulting in quite a meandering series. I think it would have to be a very loose adaptation to make it interesting.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

I agree with that assessment, and it's pretty much Asimov's style. I don't really get why Foundation is considered by so many to be he best work. Personally, of the stuff I've read anyway, I think it's The Gods Themselves.

truculation 9y ago

>the stories seemed to be not more than sketches without richness or detail But that's part of the unique strength of the early Foundation books. What makes the experience powerful is that the reader's imagination is left to fill in the gaps. The trick was to write a sufficiently epic framework, which succeeded because inspiration was drawn from Gibbon's famous account of the decline and fall of Rome. A TV series faces a different logic. Little is left to the visual imagination and one is left trying to imagine what the characters are thinking, yet as deng pointed out there aren't any main characters in Foundation (apart from Seldon, who's mostly a sort of narrator in any case).