News Foundation Adaptation Series Officially Ordered by Apple

[wayoung]

That's how the Foundation rises to galactic power once the traders take over. This is still the early days when the Encyclopedists have control.

It was the source of The Foundations power from the very start. Their advanced technology is what allowed Hardin to negotiate with Anacreon in the first crises, and allowed him to create the religious theocracy & general strikes that solved the second.

 

[GNDN18]

Do we know the Second Foundation isn't also preserving knowledge?

Spoiler: Speculation

The robots likely preserve it all anyway. I doubt only one survived. I'm guessing they help Gaal set up the Second Foundation.

As far as i remember the Second Foundation was the second ( d'oh ) part of Seldon's plan to finish the equation and react to anything that he didn't foresee or the equation didn't cover, such as the appearance of The Mule. So it didn't preserve knowledge, that was the job of the first Foundation or rather Seldon calculated that dropping all those engineers and scientists on a barren rock with lttle natural resources would force them to start developing new technologies and improve the knowledge base of mankind to cope with the lack of ressources, which was the reason the Empire failed because it stagnated in its development.

Spoiler: About that….

In Foundation and Empire, and later in Second Foundation we learn that considerable efforts were put forth to preserve the whole of human knowledge gained up to the point that the empire fell.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, a system with a single point of failure is not a great design - for example, the Great Library of Alexandria, which was destroyed piecemeal rather than in one huge fire as generally believed. Much, of course, has not survived to our day from antiquity - it's surprising that anything considered pagan was preserved by early Christians.

 

[yotsuya]

Do we know the Second Foundation isn't also preserving knowledge?

Spoiler: Speculation

The robots likely preserve it all anyway. I doubt only one survived. I'm guessing they help Gaal set up the Second Foundation.

If they follow Asimov, there is only one Robot. That one is older than the Empire and knows where Earth is and all the spacer worlds.

 

[yotsuya]

Yes, a system with a single point of failure is not a great design - for example, the Great Library of Alexandria, which was destroyed piecemeal rather than in one huge fire as generally believed. Much, of course, has not survived to our day from antiquity - it's surprising that anything considered pagan was preserved by early Christians.

They have found a library that was buried by Vesuvius. The scrolls are charred, but modern technology is letting them unroll them virtually and read them.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

They have found a library that was buried by Vesuvius. The scrolls are charred, but modern technology is letting them unroll them virtually and read them.

Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri (getty.edu)

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Unfortunately, only fragments are recoverable.

If they follow Asimov, there is only one Robot. That one is older than the Empire and knows where Earth is and all the spacer worlds.

I expect you are correct. It'll be interesting to see where Gaal turns up. Maybe we'll find out in the next episode.

 

[Brobdingnag]

If they follow Asimov, there is only one Robot. That one is older than the Empire and knows where Earth is and all the spacer worlds.

There's also Seldon's wife. So that's at least two robots and I suspect that Bliss is also a robot so it's likely that there are several robots other than Daneel to keep an eye on the Empire.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, I'd forgotten about Seldon's wife and the Gaians. I don't know how many of the latter were robots but some definitely were. The Gaians also weren't as reliant on space travel as the Second Foundation to exert their influence. Seldon's wife appears to be completely absent in the TV show as I think we're meant to accept at face value that Demerzel is the only one of eir kind remaining.

 

[yotsuya]

I finished re-watching episode 2. I didn't miss anything the first time but the pieces caught better on a second viewing. I think I know what was going on, but the lack of clear story telling or any completion to that section of the story makes it, in my opinion, a very bad episode. The episode shares a feeling of being too subtle with the Star Wars prequels. I was a failing for them and it is a failing in this episode. It needed more to aid us in understanding what was going on. I'm sure I'm not the only Foundation reader who is perplexed over how that episode ended and the purpose of everything that went on. It definitely did not play out like the books and in ways that are cloudy and obscure. Such a major change in the storyline should have had something deeper and more clear in the initial telling. Here is hoping we get some clarity later on.

 

[Marc]

I finished re-watching episode 2. I didn't miss anything the first time but the pieces caught better on a second viewing. I think I know what was going on, but the lack of clear story telling or any completion to that section of the story makes it, in my opinion, a very bad episode. The episode shares a feeling of being too subtle with the Star Wars prequels. I was a failing for them and it is a failing in this episode. It needed more to aid us in understanding what was going on. I'm sure I'm not the only Foundation reader who is perplexed over how that episode ended and the purpose of everything that went on. It definitely did not play out like the books and in ways that are cloudy and obscure. Such a major change in the storyline should have had something deeper and more clear in the initial telling. Here is hoping we get some clarity later on.

I guess they need away to move Seldon off the board as the saying go.

In the books, he stayed on Trantor and dies shortly after the encyclopediast leave for Terminus (Prelude to Foundation).

Though they could have just had him die from natural causes but where's the story telling in that?

Thought they would have stripped more off the slow ship but maybe they're leaving it there for reserves or shelter. The normal scifi troupe is to land the ship and build around it.

Also wonder if they plan (renewals allowing) to go beyond the core trilogy?

Oh and the time jumps don't seem to track between Terminus and Trantor.

We start 19 years after the skybridge was brought down (which was how long before the exile?) with Brother Dusk's final days then we have another jump of 17 years (the point at which the art work is being erased).

But how long has passed on Terminus?

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Its been renewed
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715363/foundation-renewed-second-season-apple-tv-plus

 

[wayoung]

Must be getting some good numbers then. Apple just cancelled some other shows didn't they?

It has been getting a ton of press though, unlike the others. I hadn't even heard of the Joseph Gordon Levitt one.

 

[David cgc]

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it the second season was actually ordered back in 2019, they're just announcing it today. Which makes sense, with a production lead-time as long as a show this expensive-looking must have, you don't want to be sitting around for a year or two after shooting waiting for the official numbers. Though if it was bombing, I suspect the tone of the renewal announcement would be a bit different.

 

[Skipper]

Must be getting some good numbers then. Apple just cancelled some other shows didn't they?

The only other Apple's shows people talk about are Ted Lasso and For All Mankind. And the former is the only one really well known, considering the awards it has won.

 

[EmoBorg]

I am watching the Foundation series and i just saw Dune at the cinemas and both stories could easily be set in the same universe in terms of tone.

 

[wayoung]

I am watching the Foundation series and i just saw Dune at the cinemas and both stories could easily be set in the same universe in terms of tone.

A lot of people have made the argument that Dune is the Anti-Foundation, there being some famous quote by a critic or scholar that "Dune is Foundation if The Mule won". But I find that a pretty shallow reading of both. I'd you look a little deeper they both tend to argue the same thing.

Paul isn't the one in charge. He's the tool the unconscious desires of our human genes use to end their stagnation. Humanities mass controls the future, not him, he's just an individual who tries to steer the ship through less destructive waves.

Psychohistory is the same, history is determined by the mass of humanity, and Sheldon is just using the science to pick the best path to cause humanity the least pain in the Empires fall.

Then in the 80's both series reject that earlier assumption, although in different paths. Leto does force humanity down the path he wants and in doing so also breaks the power of prescience by breeding people who are invisible to it, so people are individually free. Psychohistory is flawed, let's go with a hive mind.

 

[Brobdingnag]

Well, at least we don't know what to expect, almost nothing from this last episode was in the book and vice versa.

 

[Reverend]

The thing that always bothered me about the way psychohistory was used in the books was that it all seemed to stem from Seldon's original calculations, so as history went on, errors and statistical anomalies crept in making it less and less accurate. All of which could have been solved simply by having the Foundation recalculate at certain intervals based on new data. As complex and as difficult as it might be for anyone but him, he had come up the equations himself had he not? So surely it's just a matter of leaving behind a set of instructions as to what numbers to plug into what equations and at least a basic way to interpret the results? That's kind of the whole thing about equations; once someone has cracked it, nobody else needs to understand why it works, just that it does. You don't have to be Einstein to calculate E=mc².

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I am watching the Foundation series and i just saw Dune at the cinemas and both stories could easily be set in the same universe in terms of tone.

Well when you have Baron Harkonnen as the head math guy...

 

[Brobdingnag]

The thing that always bothered me about the way psychohistory was used in the books was that it all seemed to stem from Seldon's original calculations, so as history went on, errors and statistical anomalies crept in making it less and less accurate. All of which could have been solved simply by having the Foundation recalculate at certain intervals based on new data. As complex and as difficult as it might be for anyone but him, he had come up the equations himself had he not? So surely it's just a matter of leaving behind a set of instructions as to what numbers to plug into what equations and at least a basic way to interpret the results? That's kind of the whole thing about equations; once someone has cracked it, nobody else needs to understand why it works, just that it does. You don't have to be Einstein to calculate E=mc².

The way I understand it is that the Seldon plan as time went by was less and less likely to succeed on its own so the Second Foundation was indispensable to keep it on track (by making small corrections along the way). Plus it was vital in case of catastrophic changes like when the Mule appeared and almost destroyed everything.