Jonathan Nolan developing Asimov's Foundation to HBO
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Yeah, pretty standard behavior
"We need to depict a decadent Imperial citizens, what should we do?"
"I know! Lets dress them up like modern day Romans!"
"Brilliant!"
On the contrary: Inverse Relationship between Dead Soul Society and Fashion!
At least...plus, Rate of Fashion Change x Moral Decadence = Exponential Increase in Profit.
Too "Retro-Future" to abandon the Atomic Power angle...back is forward
Nerps
Can you say, "Eloi"
Not a sweat shop, but a super pretty Atomic Weapons Manufacturing Facility.
"Say Yes to the Nuke"
Ah, of course. I thought you might have been talking about the first Ferengi episode-- I seem to remember the Second Foundationers communicating through body language.
The Mule was a powerful mutant telepath who controlled half the galaxy through mental coercion and cowered the rest with military power until he could coerce them with his mind. When he made some his friends, servants and subjects, they stayed his friends, servants and subjects. The Mule didn't need to keep zapping the same brains over and over again. The fix was permanent.
The second Foundation were a colony of much weaker telepaths, who had a breeding program so that each generation was more powerful than the last, but still even collectively they were no match for the Mule in a fair fight (And no one knew who he was or where he was.). They were also pshychohistorians. Their lifestyle was to map several potential possible outcomes for the Foundation through psychohistoriacal projection, periodically argue amongst themself to pick the wisest course & outcome, and then use their telepathy to temper the galaxy if it starts acting out in an unforeseen manner. Hari Seldon's (original) plan was a living document open to amendment and embellishment as the years rolled on. If you think of the Second Foundation as "Academia" then it's safe to say that at any one time that there were thousands of versions of Seldons plan trying to make an impression on the second Foundation as a whole.
Closer to our era, R. Gisgard was a telepathic Robot in the Elijah Baily novels, who gave R. daniel Olivaw a telepathic patch, that would help him apply the Zeroeth law of Robotics (No robot shall harm Humanity or allow humanity to come to harm through inaction.) as he shepherded mankind for the next 12,000 years until he forms an alliance with Hari Seldon and uses his own gifts to locate (weak) Human telepaths and induct them into Hari's larger plan to save the Galaxy from a 30 thousand year long dark age.
The second Foundation were a colony of much weaker telepaths, who had a breeding program so that each generation was more powerful than the last, but still even collectively they were no match for the Mule in a fair fight (And no one knew who he was or where he was.). They were also pshychohistorians. Their lifestyle was to map several potential possible outcomes for the Foundation through psychohistoriacal projection, periodically argue amongst themself to pick the wisest course & outcome, and then use their telepathy to temper the galaxy if it starts acting out in an unforeseen manner. Hari Seldon's (original) plan was a living document open to amendment and embellishment as the years rolled on. If you think of the Second Foundation as "Academia" then it's safe to say that at any one time that there were thousands of versions of Seldons plan trying to make an impression on the second Foundation as a whole.
Closer to our era, R. Gisgard was a telepathic Robot in the Elijah Baily novels, who gave R. daniel Olivaw a telepathic patch, that would help him apply the Zeroeth law of Robotics (No robot shall harm Humanity or allow humanity to come to harm through inaction.) as he shepherded mankind for the next 12,000 years until he forms an alliance with Hari Seldon and uses his own gifts to locate (weak) Human telepaths and induct them into Hari's larger plan to save the Galaxy from a 30 thousand year long dark age.
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Daneel and Giskard, actually.
And I don't think Seldon's plan was too flexible-- he made those recordings, after all.
And I believe it was later revealed, or at least hinted, that the Mule was a refugee from Gaia.
And I don't think Seldon's plan was too flexible-- he made those recordings, after all.
And I believe it was later revealed, or at least hinted, that the Mule was a refugee from Gaia.
The recordings were intentionally vague.
I remember a scene were two psychohistorians near the end were arguing about interpretation and context about their different models. That wasn't me ad libbing. I also remember a minor junior psychohistorian given a unimportant area from Seldons original plan to fill in the blank slate that Seldon didn't think worth over examining.
I suppose considering how pissed the crowd was that Hari didn't have boo to say about the Mule that the vault recordings are fixed and the second Foundation can't tweak the material.
I remember a scene were two psychohistorians near the end were arguing about interpretation and context about their different models. That wasn't me ad libbing. I also remember a minor junior psychohistorian given a unimportant area from Seldons original plan to fill in the blank slate that Seldon didn't think worth over examining.
I suppose considering how pissed the crowd was that Hari didn't have boo to say about the Mule that the vault recordings are fixed and the second Foundation can't tweak the material.
Yeah, I remember thinking that the Seldon Plan was fixed and had to play out. And when it went off the rails, how huge that was and would be for the "future", then.
FUCK, I cannot wait for the movie! PLEASE get it done in my lifetime.
Guy, your prècise of that part of the Foundation was excellent and well-said!
May I also say! I absolutely LOVED how you said, "...I remember a scene where..."
Absolutely God Damned Right! We do remember "reading it" while "seeing it." All due respect to Christopher, and I did hear him about number of people who would see a movie vs. what people who read the book would expect in a movie, but I am playing the movie in my head!!! And, clearly, so are others I have come to respect.
FUCK, I cannot wait for the movie! PLEASE get it done in my lifetime.
Guy, your prècise of that part of the Foundation was excellent and well-said!
May I also say! I absolutely LOVED how you said, "...I remember a scene where..."
Absolutely God Damned Right! We do remember "reading it" while "seeing it." All due respect to Christopher, and I did hear him about number of people who would see a movie vs. what people who read the book would expect in a movie, but I am playing the movie in my head!!! And, clearly, so are others I have come to respect.
^Movie? This is an HBO TV series, isn't it?
Yeah, and that is my bad, seeing it and referring to it as a movie. But as an HBO production, it will certainly feel like more than a TV show.
Actually the head of the Second Foundation "broke" the Mule in just a few moments.
I'd argue that it was more than just a few moments. The Second Foundation had been running a years-long psyop on the Mule, to get him to believe things that weren't true. The Mule was already worn down by the time the Second Foundation engaged him directly.
The direct confrontation was short. I don't recall the Mule as being a special protege that was more powerful than the Second Foundation, but perhaps my memory is fuzzy.
I agree the direct confrontation was short. I was only arguing that the Second Foundation worked for a long time to get him into a position where, mentally, all they needed to make was a surgical strike. They chose the field of battle, and they were in control once they had him in position.
My one problem with the revelation in Foundation's Edge that the Mule was a renegade Gaian is that the Second Foundation was completely in the dark about Gaia's existence in FE. It seems to me that their confrontation with the Mule would have led them to the discovery of Gaia before the events of FE. In short, I don't really accept the retcon of the Mule's origins; I prefer the original, which was that the Mule was simply a mutant with extreme telepathic powers.
I don't know if it is possible to reject the retcon, but I don't like it either. The concept of Galaxia was just weird, and felt like Asimov was on something "special" that day.
I've actually heard that they want to stick to the original trilogy, which somewhat makes me nervous now. In a way, it's fine because that's largely what is known, but if I were making a TV series, I wouldn't stop there. I'd take all I can from all books to make a cohesive amount of content enough to fill a TV series.
The prequels and sequels to the "original" trilogy are fanfiction.
Just like the last 15 albums/boxsets/singles by the Rolling Stones were made by a coverband.
It's really a question if HBO's desire is in and out with a high quality product that gets all the praise and awards, or something almost immortal which they can milk for nine seasons plus to prop up their line up?
Just like the last 15 albums/boxsets/singles by the Rolling Stones were made by a coverband.
It's really a question if HBO's desire is in and out with a high quality product that gets all the praise and awards, or something almost immortal which they can milk for nine seasons plus to prop up their line up?
Don't know how you can really say that when they were all written by Asimov himself. They were expansions on his original ideas. I could understand it more if the others were written by other authors, but that isn't the case. Not asking them to milk it, I'm talking more about building a solid 'foundation' as it were, by not being afraid of implementing elements from all of it, and not just the core trilogy.
Asimov in 1950 is not the same person as Asimov in 1990.
The machine behind Asimov, his agents and editors and forces driving him to write for an audience local to two distant points of the 20th century, where their collective knowledge of psychology and technology where like chalk and cheese.
Isaac had grown, matured, and changed.
If Asimov had tried to write the sequels and prequels in he 1950s, it would have been for a 1950s audience and therefore completely different books, so he might as well be a different person to do what he did when he did. Similar, very similar but also very different.
I also said that Mick Jagger 2005 was in a cover band of the Rolling Stones 1967.
The machine behind Asimov, his agents and editors and forces driving him to write for an audience local to two distant points of the 20th century, where their collective knowledge of psychology and technology where like chalk and cheese.
Isaac had grown, matured, and changed.
If Asimov had tried to write the sequels and prequels in he 1950s, it would have been for a 1950s audience and therefore completely different books, so he might as well be a different person to do what he did when he did. Similar, very similar but also very different.
I also said that Mick Jagger 2005 was in a cover band of the Rolling Stones 1967.
But you can say that about any artist who makes art over a long enough period of their life--and artists will be the first to acknowledge it.
This is why we often refer to early/middle/late periods of an artist's career be it a painter, musician, writer, actor or whatever. Beethoven's Ninth symphony comes from a distinctly different personality than his second symphony for example.
The exception being Leonard Cohen who was always writing as an old man and needed decades to grow into the songs he wrote on his early albums.