Apple Gives Us Our First Glimpse of Foundation, Adapted From Asimov Series (arstechnica.com) 198
Wargames shares the official trailer of Apple's upcoming new TV series, Foundation, adapted from Isaac Asimov's seminal Foundation series of novels. Ars Technica provides more details: The original trilogy centered on a mathematician named Hari Seldon, who has developed a mathematical approach to sociology he calls "psychohistory" that enables him to predict the future of large populations -- like the Galactic Empire, which incorporates all inhabitants of the Milky Way. Unfortunately, Seldon's theory predicts an imminent collapse of the empire -- well, in 500 years, which is certainly imminent on galactic time scales. This will usher in a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years, after which a second empire will arise. The news is not well received by the members of the Committee on Public Safety, who essentially rule the empire, and Seldon is forced to stand trial for treason, along with a brilliant young mathematical protege named Gaal.
In his defense, Seldon argues that he cannot stop the collapse, but there is a way to limit those Dark Ages to just 1,000 years. He proposes creating a Foundation, a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Rather than executing Seldon, the committee decides to exile him to a remote world called Terminus, along with the members of the new Foundation, where they can begin compiling the encyclopedia. Much of the first book in the trilogy follows the establishment of the colony on Terminus and the various political machinations that shape its early history, along with a startling revelation: unbeknownst to the committee, Seldon has established a second Foundation at the other end of the galaxy. It's unclear how closely the series will follow the novels, but one of the executive producers is Robyn Asimov, the novelist's daughter.
"Harris plays Seldon, with Pace co-starring as Brother Day, current Emperor of the Galaxy. Lou Llobell plays Gaal, Leah Harvey plays a gender-swapped Salvor, warden of Terminus, and Laura Birn plays Eto Demerzel, aide to Brother Day," adds Ars. "Other listed characters include Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), the ruling family's oldest living member, and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), the youngest member and heir apparent to Brother Day." Foundation is expected to debut on Apple TV Plus in 2021.
In his defense, Seldon argues that he cannot stop the collapse, but there is a way to limit those Dark Ages to just 1,000 years. He proposes creating a Foundation, a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Rather than executing Seldon, the committee decides to exile him to a remote world called Terminus, along with the members of the new Foundation, where they can begin compiling the encyclopedia. Much of the first book in the trilogy follows the establishment of the colony on Terminus and the various political machinations that shape its early history, along with a startling revelation: unbeknownst to the committee, Seldon has established a second Foundation at the other end of the galaxy. It's unclear how closely the series will follow the novels, but one of the executive producers is Robyn Asimov, the novelist's daughter.
"Harris plays Seldon, with Pace co-starring as Brother Day, current Emperor of the Galaxy. Lou Llobell plays Gaal, Leah Harvey plays a gender-swapped Salvor, warden of Terminus, and Laura Birn plays Eto Demerzel, aide to Brother Day," adds Ars. "Other listed characters include Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), the ruling family's oldest living member, and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton), the youngest member and heir apparent to Brother Day." Foundation is expected to debut on Apple TV Plus in 2021.
Yet another streaming service to sign up for (Score:4, Interesting)
Entertainment is becoming expensive with everything shattered around.
Re:Yet another streaming service to sign up for (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you expect? It's the free market at work. With everyone "cutting the cord" it was going to happen when you have people suddenly having an extra couple hundred bucks a month.
I don't know about you, but it doesn't take a genius to see that people will be looking to spend that extra money so why not set up a streaming service and tap into that money.
It's just pure capitalism at work - people have money, you have something to sell them, and heck, before you know it, you're spending more money after cutting the cord than you were before on cable. I don't think you'll find anyone coming up with a cogent argument on why this shouldn't happen.
Give it a few years and the problem will work itself out. But I would hazard to guess you'd be back to paying $200/month for cable or streaming services in the end as equilibrium is reached.
Re: Yet another streaming service to sign up for (Score:2, Troll)
"Free market".
Imaginary property is exactly the opposite of a free market. Artificial scarcity in a monopoly is exactly its point. No competition. Everyone has stuff with "exclusive rights", and you have to pay protection money to everyone.
There is no competition to do it for cheaper. They can ask literally whatever "the market" (you) can bear. Or more, if they are so greedy that they stop being smart about maximizing profit.
Try that with your potatoes, dear farmer. :/)
(OK, Monsanto did.
It is easy being a c
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone has stuff with "exclusive rights", and you have to pay protection money to everyone.
Your main error is "have to." Besides spending money on taxes, shelter, food, and clothing, you don't *have* to spend money on anything. Besides, maybe, transportation, your spending gets pretty discretionary from there out. You *want* to spend money on Netflix to watch the new Marvel series, or whatever. This foundation series doesn't make me want to spend money on Apple Plus, though.
Re:Yet another streaming service to sign up for (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike linear TV you don't have to subscribe when the the show is first broadcast. If you can wait then you can just do one month of subscription and binge watch the whole series in one go. Apple tries to stop you doing it by releasing one episode a week so it's harder to avoid spoilers and the conversations other people are having about the latest episode, but especially now WFH is more common that's less of an issue.
Re:Yet another streaming service to sign up for (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why we are so lucky to have these community efforts that standardize and collect all the media in one place. What would the world be like without The Pirate Bay....
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
What would the world be like without The Pirate Bay?
Pretty similar but with more money in the pockets of "distributors" and less in the hands of the people who actually create stuff - you know, writers, actors etc...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The exact same except people would be compensated for the work they produced rather than having it stolen by people making excuses why they wouldn't have watched/listened to anyway but went out of their way to illegally acquire the product.
Entertaining statement.
Useful - perhaps - as an example of an extremist point of view, serving as a vehicle to kick of a more nuanced discussion, and about as related to reality as a spherical cow is to the finer details of quantum field theory.
There is of course the possibility, however absurd, that you might actually be serious and believe what you wrote, in which case I can only express my condolences.
Spoiler alert, maybe? (Score:2, Insightful)
So we've all read the books a hundred times or more but maybe there's someone out there who would like to enjoy the "startling revelation" in context?
Re: (Score:3)
Foundation was written 70 years ago. There is a statute of limitation on these things, especially on a site like Slashdot where the readership would have a higher than average interest in classic science fiction.
My personal take that other than the obvious opportunity for CGI sci-fi space scenery porn, Foundation does not lend itself well for TV series where you are expected to have a semi-stable main and recurring cast due to how these things are produced. It encompasses too long a time span and few cha
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My personal take that other than the obvious opportunity for CGI sci-fi space scenery porn, Foundation does not lend itself well for TV series where you are expected to have a semi-stable main and recurring cast due to how these things are produced. It encompasses too long a time span and few characters play major roles past a few chapters, Sheldon included. (Not to mention that, due to the time period of its writing, most of the main cast are male.)
Game Of Thrones killed off quite a few main characters
(but usually in the very last episode of a season, yes...)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder that too. A galaxy-spanning story taking place over centuries, compressed into bite-sized chunks of - what - maybe 40 actual minutes each? Each of which must - in classic American fashion - end with a cliffhanger? The result may be a good story, but it won't be Foundation.
The Foundation series itself: I always disliked the second book, about the Mule. Surely the failing empire itself would have provided enough story material, without tossing some co
Re: (Score:2)
If you didn't like Dune I seriously doubt you'd like Foundation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Edward Gibbon wrote the spoiler about 175 years before Asimov.
Re: (Score:2)
"So we've all read the books a hundred times or more but maybe there's someone out there who would like to enjoy the "startling revelation" in context?"
OK, I know where the Second Foundation REALLY is.
Looks gorgeous (Score:2)
I loved the books as a teenager, decades ago, and remember so little of them that I can see it fresh.
In general, it looks like Apple is not putting out tons of content on its service, but what they offer is mostly pretty good. I found Mythic Quest excellent, for example.
Cue the Gender Swaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've read the entire series last year. The experience was jarring. "Foundation" is set in the future, but many themes were so backwards it was painful. Completely unrealistic treating of women and such. Unfortunately, this was quite plausible when the books were written. But it's not fitting future society from our current vantage point. Unless we expect to recess greatly.
I'm all for modernisation and bringing more women and nonbinary characters. just to make it a bit more realistic.
Oh, and I'm middle aged
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And when compared to where his platform is to any platform before him, he is very progressive.
Re: (Score:2)
Read Lucifer's Hammer.....Talk about jarring. It's like stepping back into a caricature of a time when "Men were Men".
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cue the Gender Swaps (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's just part of updating the series for this century, the same as they will get rid of technology that is no obsolete like tapes or make the politics more believable and relatable by having a mix of genders that better reflects the real world.
It doesn't always work, Tauriel being a notable example. But it's also often essential. If Star Trek stuck strictly to canon it would have to feature planets made out of cardboard and a computer that speaks like a broken Speak and Spell.
Re: (Score:2)
If it takes communism to go beyond the Planet of Caves and the Plywood City then sign me up, capitalism has clearly failed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fairly sure communism had power, except that time Chernobyl exploded.
Soviet computers are actually kind of fascinating but the language barrier prevents me from really using them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on....who wouldn't rather watch Katee Sackoff instead of Dirk Benedict. :)
Re: (Score:2)
1. True
2. She was just a better Starbuck than he was. It's not quite fair to compare them; the series were pretty different in tone and narrative, but she was out and out a better actor.
Re: (Score:2)
What's so critically important about that character being a man? Or hewing exactly to the source material with no changes?
In general, most books and comics translate poorly enough to the screen that changes are absolutely necessary. Huge amounts of information are dropped or details changed because it makes the narrative more interesting or the visuals more appealing.
What specifically male thing did the now-female character do that hinged so absolutely on the character being a man? Does changing the charact
Re:Cue the Gender Swaps (Score:4, Funny)
I'd rephrase that as "What is even slightly important about that character being a man?"
Well, of course except for that critical part of the story where he was launching a cloaking satellite to keep the planet hidden but then, tragically, his dick got caught in one of the launch console's cable input jacks, thus aborting the launch. But they're probably modernizing the console to look like a 21st century touchscreen, so instead of the character's dick getting stuck in it, they're going to spill coffee on it instead, and even a woman can spill coffee nearly as believably as a man.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gender swapped Salvor? (Score:3)
I've been waiting so many years for this (and Forever War), but gender swapped Salvor Hardin? Oy vey...
Re: (Score:2)
I've been waiting so many years for this (and Forever War),
Is Forever War even still in development? Latest info I can find on it is from like 4-5 years ago. Great book though, and of course highly reflective of the Vietnam War but with themes that I imagine resonate with virtually any combat veteran returning home.
But give me a good film adaptation of Forever War, a new version of Starship Troopers with actual power armor, and maybe throw in some film adaptations of Old Man's War or the Lost Fleet series (yes, I know the space physics are wrong in those books an
Re: (Score:2)
Someone really should turn the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson into TV (its far too big for even multiple movies IMO).
Oh and lets turn Neuromancer into a movie (if done properly it would probably end up as the best cyberpunk movie of all time...)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, at least in the meantime season 5 of The Expanse wrapped earlier this year (right before covid hit) and should be released either late this year or early next.
Re: Gender swapped Salvor? (Score:2)
As for Foundation specifically, it was one of my favorites but never one that I've thought "this would make a great movie or series." There's plenty of Asimov far more suited to the screen, but then again maybe Apple got
Re: (Score:2)
Orphan Black is awesome. I guess technically it's an "almost all female cast", but more accurately it's an "almost all Tatiana Maslany cast" :-).
She's just there as a token. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's fashionable nowadays, to have somebody related to the original author or the original author "on board", to make people believe they can trust the producers.
And for no other reason.
She likely won't have enough of a say, and the others will do their crap anyway, with her contract banning her from leaving or publicly speaking out.
Remember Douglas Adams being "on board" when the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie was made? Remember how that turned out?
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of Terminator Genesys. How much did they pay Cameron to get "on board" and say that was a great movie?
Brother This-That-and-the-Other? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who are all these "Brothers"?
One of the interesting things about this part of the Foundation story was that the identity of the Emperor -- or indeed, if one even existed at all -- was irrelevant. The bureaucracy ruled the Empire, and that was one of many things that led to the inevitable Fall.
Re:Brother This-That-and-the-Other? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, there is much about the Foundations novels that isn't exactly timely. My bet is that the entire story will be significantly reworked in order to make it more palatable to present-day people and concerns. Nowadays we are more obsessed with the foolishness of particular figureheads than with the bureaucracy that surrounds them. People are more interested in blaming one idiotic president, for example, than in recognizing the systemic problems in society and culture.
Likewise, the novels (if I recall correctly) were really post-collapse in focus, and they were so interested in exploring Asimov's ideals that they were less concerned about strong, central characters. After all, the original thesis is that history functions largely on the whole, not so much as something shaped by mere individuals; a single person was powerless to stop the collapse. This thesis starts to unravel a bit as Asimov proceeds, however, less because Seldon did actually accomplish something and more because of the rise of an antagonist who, as an individual, still seems capable of something profound. But ultimately it does seem that an individual is more capable of destroying than of building up. This makes the story again less palatable to today's audience because we expect strong characters who drive the action of the story through their sheer strength of character. Hence it sounds like Apple has reworked the story to focus more pre-collapse on Seldon himself in order to build him into a strong, central, and driving character.
Lastly, I'm guessing by the whole "Brother" thing that religion is going to become the big bad guy again--as is typical in media--in order to form a whole science vs. religion narrative. I'd even wager that Seldon will still appeal to some vague and stupid "faith" against the organized "religion" of his detractors. That kind of narrative is also typical. But religion in the novels is approached in an odd way; Seldon's colony actually creates their own organized religion in order to preserve their scientific knowledge as by a command from on high. It's similar to the way in which Immanuel Kant sees God's primary function as grounding the moral order. So religion in Foundation is not strictly negative but a kind of artificial tool that can be used in favor of the preservation of knowledge.
Re: (Score:2)
Lastly, I'm guessing by the whole "Brother" thing that religion is going to become the big bad guy again--as is typical in media--in order to form a whole science vs. religion narrative. I'd even wager that Seldon will still appeal to some vague and stupid "faith" against the organized "religion" of his detractors. That kind of narrative is also typical.
You're most likely right, but not necessarily so. The term "Brother" could be being used not in a religious order sense, but rather in a familial or kinship sense. The leadership might adopt the honorific "Brother"(or theoretically "Sister") to project an air of being an equal, or one of the common citizens, to lend legitimacy to their rule. Essentially, it would provide a thin veil of understanding, caring, and working for the common good hiding what is likely a rotten, autocratic core. Which is of cou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Getting access (Score:2, Funny)
I look forward to pirating this when it comes out.
3 gender swaps out of the first 5 characters (Score:4, Informative)
Hari Seldon - remains male
Cleon I - gets renamed to "Brother Day"
Gaal - changes to a woman
Salvor Hardin - changes to a woman
Eto Demerzel - changes to a woman
Brother Dawn and Brother Dusk appear to be made-up relatives of Brother Day (Cleon I).
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have a problem with the gender swaps. They'll need to change a lot more than just gender to make the characters more interesting than the plastic characters Asimov wrote.
There's a looming problem for this series, which is that Asimov was a sexually-harrassing creep who would totally be canceled today, and deserve it. Maybe the gender swaps will help them dodge that.
Re: (Score:3)
Even in the 1920s people knew that it was wrong to chase women around a desk because you want to have sex with them.
You don't know me at all so no need to bother with the wild accusations.
Looking forward to it (Score:3)
I'm REALLY looking forward to this series. I devoured the books as a youth, multiple times. If it's not too much to ask, I'd also love to see a series out of the old-fashioned science fiction from A.E. van Vogt, like The World of Null-A. If you haven't read it, it's definitely worth it -- not too long of a book either.
Re: (Score:2)
I had trouble getting in to The World of Null-A, maybe because I was on a plane... I should try again. It seemed kinda abstract but they have got a lot better at doing shows like that in the last few years.
I'm still hoping they can do something with Rendezvous with Rama one day. The Light of Other Days would make a great mini-series too.
Re: (Score:2)
Spagetti meets the wall (Score:3)
Consumer fatigue is the main enemy of the new content released today.
Instead of admitting that, the new entrants pile more content on an audience that has already tuned out.
I read the Foundation books and they have enough material to make this another Star Trek.
It would be a shame if the whole thing fizzles out just because the material is released in a saturated market.
Doubts (Score:2)
I loved the books back when I was young, but I've become less forgiving since then. Today I like the idea of psychohistory as developed by Lloyd deMause, but there is no way statistical analysis of behaviour could predict societal changes in the far future any more than a single neuron in a positronic brain (if there was such a thing as a positronic brain) could reconstruct that brain including its connections and memories, which is one of the problems I had with StarTrek Picard right from the beginning...
W
The summary does not fill me with hope (Score:5, Informative)
"The original trilogy centered on a mathematician named Hari Seldon,"
No, it doesn't. It really, really doesn't. Seldon appears in a prolog at the very beginning and then he's dead. The triology centers on the lives and actions of those who then have to find their way in the Plan he established.
How about the 90% of us? (Score:2)
Although there are a lot of Apple users in the USA, this is not so in the remaining 95% of humanity. Here on Earth, before the pandemic anyway, about 10% of phone sales are Apple. When will this be on a distributor that the vast majority of us can use?
Yeah, because Hollywood and sci-fi doesn't work (Score:2)
Remember "Dune"? It is an incredible novel where almost everyone in the book is secretly scheming. For example from the very beginning a wife who loves her husband but knows he will be killed soon, and she can't tell him. She loves her son but will guard the door while he is tortured in a test.
The movie however was a disaster.
Remember "I, Robot" (also by Asimov)? Asimov made it a point in all his books that a robot could not harm humans, except when some humans mucked in the code in "Little Lost Robot" (an
This may be the first apple product I ever pay for (Score:2)
Re:how much ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will certainly watch it. I took a science fiction class in high school instead of the "normal" English class and we read the entire trilogy.
The "Encyclopedia Galactica" impressed me. It seemed wonderful to have an encyclopedia of human knowledge accessible to everyone. Yet today, we have Wikipedia, so that was one prediction that came true.
But the main thesis, that mathematical formulae could predict the precise course of human history, seemed implausible to me when I was a teenager and even more implausible today. There are too many butterflies and too many black swans for that to work.
Re: (Score:3)
Kind of skips the whole point of psychohistory and the intent of the story. Hari Seldon only tells them about the upcoming collapse in order to shape the collapse and to allow the formation of the second foundation in secret, hidden behind the illusion of the first foundation, which the second foundation continued to use to, "insert the right idea at the right time at the right location in order to alter the course of future history as based upon the predictive nature of applying the psychology of individua
Re: how much ? (Score:5, Interesting)
So what the CIA, FSB, Mossad etc do every day?
I read a CIA handbook from the 50s that already had instructions for replacing the mayor of a town with that very method. Talk to certain people in the town bar for a bit. Do a small thing here, a small thing there, and in the end, he'd have to resign, and they'd have to go with your candidate.
I don't know about the FSB, which certainly are smart sneaky psychos, and doubt it is very different, but with the CIA it seems to go bad surprisingly often.
Like, two CIA officers bragged in the Washington Post how they got Yeltsin elected by funneling $500 million to his camapign, while trolling his opponent who had only $3 million, and often had his hotel room countermanded or other silly but effective stuff like that. :D
Yeltsin was known for basically being a complete failure and heavy alcoholic, and had been seen running around Berlin in his underpants once, to give you a picture.
But he did one key thing: Put Putin in charge.
So if Putin got Trump elected...
And the entire "yellow revolution" in Ukraine was both Russia and the US playing that game in the same country. Both candidates were foreign puppets. Pick your poison. Ain't it great to be able to vote democratically? ;))
I also know that the money the CIA gave Pakistan "to fight the terrorists", went to those very terror camps the 9/11 terrorists came from. Because Pakistan's definition of "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" was reversed. :D
And then it happened a second time...
I'd say every big intelligence agency and lobbyist think tank group (Like the Mont Pèlerin Society) uses the Foundation series as an instruction manual, and implements the realistic parts. But it doesn't always go as expected.
And frankly, therefore I don't think it is psychologically possible to do this in a non-evil way, regardless of your intentions. The only morally acceptable way is not to play, and stop others from playing too *without starting to play yourself*... Which is hardly possible.
Re: how much ? (Score:5, Funny)
I read a CIA handbook from the 50s that already had instructions for replacing the mayor of a town with that very method.
Exactly. The CIA are experts at this. Their ability to replace the leaders of Vietnamese towns and villages with people sympathetic to America is why we won the war there so easily. The CIA's expertise at manipulating politics also explains why Iraq and Afghanistan were cakewalks.
Re: (Score:2)
And can you imagine if Cuba had remained a Communist stronghold and perennial thorn in America's side for decades and decades?
That said, the US does have a long and storied history of 'successful' regime change, inevitably biting them in the ass, of course, Iran being a prime example.
Re: (Score:2)
The reasons why the CIA fail so often is obvious to many people outside the organization; their recruiting sucks. Most of the people who do anything of any real responsibility in the CIA are Ivy League frat boys from wealthy privileged families. They've been isolated from the reality of life as it is lived by normal people for their entire lives, and firmly believe that anyone worth considering thinks just like they do. "Why, of course everyone hates communism, so if we invade with some mercenaries at th
Spoiler alert. (Score:4, Funny)
But the main thesis, that mathematical formulae could predict the precise course of human history, seemed implausible to me when I was a teenager and even more implausible today. There are too many butterflies and too many black swans for that to work.
Oh, come on! At least put a spoilert alert if you're going to reveal the whole Mule subplot [wikipedia.org] of the Foundation cycle~~~
:-D
Re: (Score:2)
Or for that matter, the Gaia hypothesis.
Re: (Score:2)
What about the tilling issue?
Re: (Score:2)
I'll give it a watch, always interesting to see a different take on something like this.
The trailer is pretty bad though. Maybe it's just whoever assembled it trying to make it look like there is more action in the show but there were a few glimpses of what could possible be a good series in there.
All the Apple stuff so far has been quite slick. For All Mankind was enjoyable but could have covered the technical stuff a bit more. See was just bad, interesting concept and they put a lot of effort into portray
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The trailer is politically correct. Which is what matters today, especially for a woke company such as Apple.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't see any political correctness in there. Can you point it out?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:how much ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly want to watch this, but as all Apple equipment and service are strictly banned in my house - due to the vendor lock-in - this will probably be obtained over torrent.
Re: (Score:3)
Wait, who banned the torrents?
Re:how much ? (Score:5, Funny)
The "Encyclopedia Galactica" impressed me. It seemed wonderful to have an encyclopedia of human knowledge accessible to everyone. Yet today, we have Wikipedia, so that was one prediction that came true.
I have to disagree with you there. The "Encyclopedia Galactica" was created by ...
... a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica.
That does not sound like most of the authors of Wikipedia articles.
Re: (Score:2)
(Yeah yeah, so wrong milieu. So sue me. Or better still, sue the editors of the Guide)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with the Encyclopedia Galactica is that the cover was so enormous that the cost was too high to print the words 'Don't Panic' on it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Psychohistory was supposed to get around the obvious problems in calculating behavior by working on a scale that rendered individual behavior irrel
Re:how much ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the Foundation Series, in particular the first three novels. But I don't see how a film adaptation would work. The vast bulk of Asimov's storytelling is essentially dialog. There's actually precious little action; few visuals or battles. Most of it usually two or three characters at a time talking.
Re: (Score:2)
" There's actually precious little action; few visuals or battles. Most of it usually two or three characters at a time talking."
I would like that, science fiction does not have to be all about space battles.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I believe Asimov lived long enough to see and admit chaos theory totally wrecked his central thesis of the story, that at the ultra large scale of the galaxy, future history could be mathematically predicted.
Of course, that empires become sclerotic and more concerned about ruling over and preserving the kleptocracy than keeping the trade routes open, allowing a new center of empire to form on the outskirts, is a reliable takeaway from actual history.
Re: (Score:3)
But the main thesis, that mathematical formulae could predict the precise course of human history, seemed implausible to me when I was a teenager and even more implausible today. There are too many butterflies and too many black swans for that to work.
Incidentally, I reread the first book last week, and I don't think the thesis is to predict it precisely, but to predict tendencies of the systems underlying society and the most likely outcomes of that. Over large time scales things even out.
Maybe I'm biased because I was taught history this way in high school, but I think there's something to be said for the idea. For instance, WW2: take the relatively young nation of Germany with a fragile post-empire government system, put it under high stress from the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Does it really count as advertisement?
I read the early books in the 80s, and I liked them. I tried rereading them a few years back... and they have not aged so well.
But even if they had, I do not see how you can get an exciting TV series out of them. I would love to be proven wrong, of course.
The only way Amazon can really turn this into something marketable would be to totally rewrite the books. And probably totally trample Asimov's sensibilities, too. If I remember correctly, one of the novels' climax
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
did apple pay for this advertisement to the nerdy crowd of slashdot?
No, this story is click-bait for Apple haters. Thought you guys would have figured that out by now.