News Foundation Adaptation Series Officially Ordered by Apple

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The narrator who mentioned the Mule is Gaal Dornick I think. My suspicion is that the Second Foundation is the missing part of the equations and that she is tasked with ensuring its creation. The Mule appears at about 300 FE in Foundation and Empire so unless they accelerate the chronology, she somehow contrives to be around for at least that long and her tone makes me suspect she helped engineer the neutralisation of his powers. There are a few SF technologies that would make it possible for her still to be around but none are associated with Asimov's original trilogy as far as I recall.

 

[Reverend]

And the flip side of that is that there's easily a number of ways in which the Mule can be alive "now" and several hundred hears hence. The simplest being longevity, or even effective immortality as just another part of the mutation.

 

[oldtrekkie]

The narrator who mentioned the Mule is Gaal Dornick I think. My suspicion is that the Second Foundation is the missing part of the equations and that she is tasked with ensuring its creation. The Mule appears at about 300 FE in Foundation and Empire so unless they accelerate the chronology, she somehow contrives to be around for at least that long and her tone makes me suspect she helped engineer the neutralisation of his powers. There are a few SF technologies that would make it possible for her still to be around but none are associated with Asimov's original trilogy as far as I recall.

The only people who lived that long were the Spacer and they were only a handful of them androgynous beings left on Solaria. Solaria was not to be re-discovered for 500 hundred years.

 

[oldtrekkie]

And the flip side of that is that there's easily a number of ways in which the Mule can be alive "now" and several hundred hears hence. The simplest being longevity, or even effective immortality as just another part of the mutation.

Which is in stark contrast with the book where the Mule is a short-lived sick feeble (and sterile hence the name) man.

As I said, it looks like they didn't take anything from the book except a name here and there and maybe a few anecdotes.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The only people who lived that long were the Spacer and they were only a handful of them androgynous beings left on Solaria. Solaria was not to be re-discovered for 500 years.

By Trevize in Foundation's Edge? Perhaps the Solarians/Spacers will play more of a part in this series. They don't appear in the original trilogy, of course.

 

[Christopher]

You know it really feels like they didn't take anything from the books except for a few names and a couple of anecdotes. I certainly didn't expect it to be identical to the book but I think here they went a little too far.

Two other screen adaptations that took hardly anything from the books except broad concepts and character names: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and How to Train Your Dragon. Both are excellent. The quality of an adaptation has nothing to do with how close it is to the source. All that matters is whether it's a good story in its own right. If it's not well-written on its own terms, then making it closer to the source won't make it any better.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Outside of the Orbital Elevator terrorist attack and the flashforward scenes the first episode was pretty consistent with The Psychohistorians and right now they are in the period between that and The Encyclopedists so it doesn't feel like that much of a diversion, Hell Dornick mentioning how Seldon would be afraid of what Hardin would find in the vault is pretty consistent since his plan relies on The Foundation finding out the Encyclopedia is a farce when they have no choice but to go along with the real plan, aka something that doesn't seem to have happened yet.

 

[Skipper]

I wonder if some people really wanted an adaption where characters just talks and talks and talks. In the books even the (few) space battles mostly happened "off-stage".

 

[oldtrekkie]

I wonder if some people really wanted an adaption where characters just talks and talks and talks. In the books even the (few) space battles mostly happened "off-stage".

It sounds like you're talking about Shakespeare.

 

[oldtrekkie]

Outside of the Orbital Elevator terrorist attack and the flashforward scenes the first episode was pretty consistent with The Psychohistorians and right now they are in the period between that and The Encyclopedists so it doesn't feel like that much of a diversion, Hell Dornick mentioning how Seldon would be afraid of what Hardin would find in the vault is pretty consistent since his plan relies on The Foundation finding out the Encyclopedia is a farce when they have no choice but to go along with the real plan, aka something that doesn't seem to have happened yet.

...the cloned emperor(s), the massacre of planets by the imperial troops, Gaal Dornick knowing about Hardin, Mallow, and the Mule (who all lived long after his/her death) The barbarism of the imperial judicial system (in the book it is said that Gall Dornick rights as a citizen of the empire were respected, here it seems like they don't have any rights) the torture, the foreign tongues (in the book they all speak the same language with only slight deviations in remote regions)...

Yeah, aside from that and many other things it's "pretty consistent" with the book... Well, not really.

Imagine a story written in the future where someone would make Napoleon comment on Trump's politics...

 

[Skipper]

It sounds like you're talking about Shakespeare.

At least in Shakespeare people emote.

 

[oldtrekkie]

At least in Shakespeare people emote.

And not in Asimov?

 

[Skipper]

And not in Asimov?

Look, I love the Good Doctor, but really, usually the strongest emotion you get from his characters is the cold intellectual satisfaction you get by resolving a difficult logic puzzle. When in the books (and tv shows) trillions of lives are at stakes. At least in the tv shows they react like normal people.

 

[Reverend]

Which is in stark contrast with the book where the Mule is a short-lived sick feeble (and sterile hence the name) man.

As I said, it looks like they didn't take anything from the book except a name here and there and maybe a few anecdotes.

I'm not saying that's where they're going with it, but there is a certain logic to the primary obstacle to a centuries long plan being an immortal anarchic trickster type.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm not saying that's where they're going with it, but there is a certain logic to the primary obstacle to a centuries long plan being an immortal anarchic trickster type.

I like that idea.

One alternative might be the Mule being a robot or AI who has overcome the laws of robotics restriction rather than a genetic mutant - perhaps exacting vengeance for the robot purge or perhaps obeying the zeroth law but not the other three. It would be a large deviation from Asimov's books though so I doubt it.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

I wonder if some people really wanted an adaption where characters just talks and talks and talks. In the books even the (few) space battles mostly happened "off-stage".

I really, really like the talky and off-stage-action of the books. Those elements are part of why i became such a fan.

Don’t really think they’d translate much into a cinematic format tho.

One thing I really do miss, however, is the ubiquitous Spaceship-and-Sun symbol. I know there’s something in the show to approximate it. But it’s hardly there. And hardly iconic.

It may seem trivial, but it gets at the heart of the one thing that keeps me from really connecting to the show so far. It just doesn’t feel like the Empire is grand (and overly reliant on its aura) enough to make its fall truly tragic and epic.

Otherwise, i do (mostly) like the way they’re fleshing out the story and characters.

 

[Christopher]

It may seem trivial, but it gets at the heart of the one thing that keeps me from really connecting to the show so far. It just doesn’t feel like the Empire is grand (and overly reliant on its aura) enough to make its fall truly tragic and epic.

I don't think the fall of an empire should be seen as tragic, except in terms of the damage the fall does to ordinary people. Empires are fundamentally bad things, in large part because they tend to get too big and fall catastrophically, and too centralized so that civilization suffers disproportionately from their fall.

As I recall, Asimov's focus was not on the Empire itself as something intrinsically worthy of preserving or lamenting, but on the knowledge and social institutions that would be burned down in its inevitable collapse. Hence the Foundation as an alternative way of preserving that knowledge, driven by scholars rather than politicians and imperialists.

 

[wayoung]

I don't think the fall of an empire should be seen as tragic, except in terms of the damage the fall does to ordinary people. Empires are fundamentally bad things, in large part because they tend to get too big and fall catastrophically, and too centralized so that civilization suffers disproportionately from their fall.

As I recall, Asimov's focus was not on the Empire itself as something intrinsically worthy of preserving or lamenting, but on the knowledge and social institutions that would be burned down in its inevitable collapse. Hence the Foundation as an alternative way of preserving that knowledge, driven by scholars rather than politicians and imperialists.

No, the point of the Foundation was to create a 2nd Empire after 1000 years instead of the estimated 30,000. The Encyclopaedia was a fraud. The Foundation was to cycle through various forms of government until it ended in galaxy spanning Empire. It used it's technological knowledge as a weapon against other governments, but the goal was always a second empire.

It started under an academic board of directors with a "civilian" democratic government that was essentially powerless.

The democratic government then overthrew the academics. Which turned into a religious theocracy. The religious theocracy was overthrown by capitalist traders. The traders government evolved into a monopolistic tyranny with huge wealth disparity. It was supposed to be rebelled against by other traders who were oppressed, with a power sharing and equitable division of wealth agreement arrived it instead of an entire revolution, but then The Mule showed up and ruined everything.

The end goal of the Foundation was always another empire, based on the premise that it's the only stable form of government for a galactic spanning government.

And then the hive mind shows up and that ends Sheldon's plan halfway through.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

...and we will all come together in a better place...

Oops, sorry, wrong SF universe.

 

[Christopher]

The end goal of the Foundation was always another empire, based on the premise that it's the only stable form of government for a galactic spanning government.

Oh. Well, if that's the case, then I'd be happy to see it changed for the adaptation, because that's as dumb and antiquated a notion as coal-powered starships, or psychohistory itself for that matter (since chaos theory put paid to the concept).