3 ms·

I will say they've done 'not a terrible job' with their Foundation series -- another hardcore SciFi book. I don't recommend it to people for viewing but I've en

by s_dev 3y ago

I will say they've done 'not a terrible job' with their Foundation series -- another hardcore SciFi book. I don't recommend it to people for viewing but I've enjoyed it myself.

lucianbr 3y ago
The Foundation tv show shares nothing but the name with Asimov's books. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it's a strange "adaptation". They should have called it something else. If they do this the same way, the name Neuromancer will just be there to get some brand recognition for an arbitrary new SF series.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  I'm a massive Foundation simp (it was a foundational - hehe - book for me and sparked my interest in econometrics and ML), and I found the Foundation show to be fairly acceptable. The Foundation trilogy in it's original form doesn't really lend itself well to television, as it was a serialized anthology, sort of like a semi-disjointed Canterbury Tales. When trying to convert that into a big budget prestige television show a la GoT, you will have to make some significant narrative changes. Honestly, I appreciate it as younger people like me who are derisively called "Normies" were largely turned off to Sci-Fi due to the negative perceptions of older Gen X and Millenial fans (that fat nerd character in Simpsons is sadly too close to the truth ime), and most of the criticism I've seen against the Foundation TV show is largely Gamergate-esque and annoyed that certain characters are women or not white (despite Asimov purposely writing his stories in a race agnostic manner due to his racist editor).
- lproven 3y ago
  > The Foundation tv show shares nothing but the name with Asimov's books It is closer to the source material than the film _I, Robot_ was to the short story. It retains at least some of the overall plot. I only watched the first episode, TBH, and didn't find it interesting enough to keep going. I'm pretty old (56) and I read my dad's original copies _Foundation_ as a little pre-teen kid, when it was already 30+ years old, and the sequel trilogy when they were newly released in the 1980s. It has not aged well, and the producers did well to modernise it, I think. But still...
  - dspillett 3y ago
    > It is closer to the source material than the film _I, Robot_ was to the short story. The film I Robot started out as an unrelated sci-fi who-dunnit that had bits of I Robot (the collection by that name, not the single short story of the same name it included) grafted in because the company had the rights for a limited time and needed to do something with them or lose them.
- dspillett 3y ago
  It is very definitely based on ideas from Asimov's books (along with a small pile of other inspirations – the clone emperors arguing amongst themselves reminds me a lot of Ann Leckie's Ancillary series). The adaptation is very lose, but to say it has nothing in common beyond names is unfair. I'm enjoying it (though not massively “wow”ed). A very accurate rendition of those works really would not make good TV, so I wasn't expecting it to be close to the original.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    I think the only "accurate" adaptation would have been a Ken Burns style documentary of mostly someone reading out Encyclopedia Galactica articles, personal letters, and long slow pans of paintings of events because any "footage" was lost. There's probably an audience for that. It's probably a smaller niche audience than the adaptation we are getting.
    - dspillett 3y ago
      That sounds oddly enthralling. Though I doubt it'd get a large audience. And it wouldn't offer much over the originals in audiobook form.

by s_dev 3y ago

I will say they've done 'not a terrible job' with their Foundation series -- another hardcore SciFi book. I don't recommend it to people for viewing but I've enjoyed it myself.

lucianbr 3y ago

The Foundation tv show shares nothing but the name with Asimov's books. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it's a strange "adaptation". They should have called it something else. If they do this the same way, the name Neuromancer will just be there to get some brand recognition for an arbitrary new SF series.

alephnerd 3y ago
I'm a massive Foundation simp (it was a foundational - hehe - book for me and sparked my interest in econometrics and ML), and I found the Foundation show to be fairly acceptable. The Foundation trilogy in it's original form doesn't really lend itself well to television, as it was a serialized anthology, sort of like a semi-disjointed Canterbury Tales. When trying to convert that into a big budget prestige television show a la GoT, you will have to make some significant narrative changes. Honestly, I appreciate it as younger people like me who are derisively called "Normies" were largely turned off to Sci-Fi due to the negative perceptions of older Gen X and Millenial fans (that fat nerd character in Simpsons is sadly too close to the truth ime), and most of the criticism I've seen against the Foundation TV show is largely Gamergate-esque and annoyed that certain characters are women or not white (despite Asimov purposely writing his stories in a race agnostic manner due to his racist editor).
lproven 3y ago
> The Foundation tv show shares nothing but the name with Asimov's books It is closer to the source material than the film _I, Robot_ was to the short story. It retains at least some of the overall plot. I only watched the first episode, TBH, and didn't find it interesting enough to keep going. I'm pretty old (56) and I read my dad's original copies _Foundation_ as a little pre-teen kid, when it was already 30+ years old, and the sequel trilogy when they were newly released in the 1980s. It has not aged well, and the producers did well to modernise it, I think. But still...
- dspillett 3y ago
  > It is closer to the source material than the film _I, Robot_ was to the short story. The film I Robot started out as an unrelated sci-fi who-dunnit that had bits of I Robot (the collection by that name, not the single short story of the same name it included) grafted in because the company had the rights for a limited time and needed to do something with them or lose them.
dspillett 3y ago
It is very definitely based on ideas from Asimov's books (along with a small pile of other inspirations – the clone emperors arguing amongst themselves reminds me a lot of Ann Leckie's Ancillary series). The adaptation is very lose, but to say it has nothing in common beyond names is unfair. I'm enjoying it (though not massively “wow”ed). A very accurate rendition of those works really would not make good TV, so I wasn't expecting it to be close to the original.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I think the only "accurate" adaptation would have been a Ken Burns style documentary of mostly someone reading out Encyclopedia Galactica articles, personal letters, and long slow pans of paintings of events because any "footage" was lost. There's probably an audience for that. It's probably a smaller niche audience than the adaptation we are getting.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    That sounds oddly enthralling. Though I doubt it'd get a large audience. And it wouldn't offer much over the originals in audiobook form.