Yeah that's what I'm hoping for. When they already gave him such direct and powerful telepathy it wouldn't be a stretch to have him remotely controll people, using their bodies as his own.
News Foundation Adaptation Series Officially Ordered by Apple
- Thread starter JD
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Yeah that's what I'm hoping for. When they already gave him such direct and powerful telepathy it wouldn't be a stretch to have him remotely controll people, using their bodies as his own.
I understand that the TV series does not follow the books at all but as a massive fan of science fiction, i do enjoy watching the show.
Not reading the books means that i am not disappointed with the adaptation as i have noting to compare to.
Regarding the the latest episode, i was really worried that Empire (Day) would have Bel Riose's husband murdered right in front of the famed Commander. Day is capable of that if you ask me.
Bel Riose, being the loyal commander that he is, goes on the mission to investigate the Foundation. Bel Rose versus the Foundation sounds so interesting. I can't wait for the next episode.
The newly introduced character of Hober Mallow looks interesting as well.
BTW, i am still waiting for the Second Foundation to be founded (pardon my pun).
Hari, Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin need to hurry up in their storyline.
Not reading the books means that i am not disappointed with the adaptation as i have noting to compare to.
Regarding the the latest episode, i was really worried that Empire (Day) would have Bel Riose's husband murdered right in front of the famed Commander. Day is capable of that if you ask me.
Bel Riose, being the loyal commander that he is, goes on the mission to investigate the Foundation. Bel Rose versus the Foundation sounds so interesting. I can't wait for the next episode.
The newly introduced character of Hober Mallow looks interesting as well.
BTW, i am still waiting for the Second Foundation to be founded (pardon my pun).
Hari, Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin need to hurry up in their storyline.
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If they follow the books it will be in the last place anyone will look.
How have people been enjoying this season so far?
I did a rewatch of Season 1 before I started Season 2 and I have to say that at least so far I feel a nosedive in quality. Everyone seems to be doing a lot more shouting and swearing than before and there's a lot of new characters being introduced in a way that doesn't feel very organic.
I've heard from reviews that the story starts to pick up as it goes along, but so far it feels pretty distant from the quite contemplative, complex show that it was in Season 1.
I did a rewatch of Season 1 before I started Season 2 and I have to say that at least so far I feel a nosedive in quality. Everyone seems to be doing a lot more shouting and swearing than before and there's a lot of new characters being introduced in a way that doesn't feel very organic.
I've heard from reviews that the story starts to pick up as it goes along, but so far it feels pretty distant from the quite contemplative, complex show that it was in Season 1.
I've seen an interview with the producers where they flat out stated that they intentionally upped the action part and that some huge space battles will happen in this season ( also glimpsed in the trailer). I understand this to a degree - this is an obviously very expensive show to make and action gets people to watch.
Personally i'm having a bit of a hard time separating the books from the show as the show has wildly veered off from the books and basically only kept the basic premise and some character names, that roughly do the same as in the books. As characters disappear from the books once they fulfill their purpose by solving each crisis the show keeps them through some convoluted ways because apparently you can't subject the audience to changing characters each season - i'm not sure i like it and would have preferred each season being devoted to a crisis with few characters like Cleon and Seldon making continous appearances to provide a sort of presence throughout the entire show.
However i still like the show for what it is, one just has to stop comparing it to the books and see where the show takes its story.
@FPAlpha
Maybe it helps I'm not so familiar with the books. I got through about three quarters of the first one a few years back, so I got as far as where they are now with Foundation 'Priests' passing off technology as magic to backwards worlds... But without meaning to sound like some kind of heretic, I'm not a massive fan of Asimov's writing. I'm more of a Herbert/Clarke fan.
So I don't feel that disconnect from the books... at least there's that. I just find I'm not really connecting with the show in the same way I did last season. Something of the grandness of it seems to have evaporated. At least for me.
But then, I enjoyed the first season far more on a rewatch, so no doubt I need to see the whole season out before I judge.
Actually, for all the 'more action' stuff, I found the first episode of S02 to be largely bereft of it. A lot of talking and exposition.
I don't know. I'm just not 'feeling' it like I did in Season 1.
Maybe it helps I'm not so familiar with the books. I got through about three quarters of the first one a few years back, so I got as far as where they are now with Foundation 'Priests' passing off technology as magic to backwards worlds... But without meaning to sound like some kind of heretic, I'm not a massive fan of Asimov's writing. I'm more of a Herbert/Clarke fan.
So I don't feel that disconnect from the books... at least there's that. I just find I'm not really connecting with the show in the same way I did last season. Something of the grandness of it seems to have evaporated. At least for me.
But then, I enjoyed the first season far more on a rewatch, so no doubt I need to see the whole season out before I judge.
Actually, for all the 'more action' stuff, I found the first episode of S02 to be largely bereft of it. A lot of talking and exposition.
I don't know. I'm just not 'feeling' it like I did in Season 1.
The adaptation differs wildly from the original trilogy, which is understandable. Some of the changes are better than others. Psychohistory was basically Asimov combining Marxist historiography with statistical thermodynamics. However, developments in chaos theory demonstrate that small actions by an individual can have profound effects down the line. The average member of the audience is more interested in following the trials and tribulations of characters than in the philosophy of predicting vast historical flows driven by economic forces. Tolstoy realised this in Voyna i Mir long before Asimov penned the Foundation trilogy (which was originally a number of serialised stories). Asimov undermined and preserved psychohistory by the introduction of characters with psi powers - the Mule and the Second Foundationers. We're getting most of the basic themes in this series, but there seems either to be a lack of comprehension of Asimov's version of psychohistory or it is being reduced to snake oil sold to Empire by Hari Seldon, who actually has a secret agenda based on creating something like Galaxia from Asimov's later works. It does seem that the philosophical elements are very confused and downplayed and that more effort has been directed to creating a visually spectacular story.
Pshychohistory allows for the presence of exceptional people who usually have the same 5 jobs, so despite being amazing humans, they have the same powers/tools, because they have the same 5 jobs: Emperor, General, Politician, trillionaire and Revolutionary.
They pretended that mutant telepath Emperor General was an unforeseen eventuality that wrecked the model, however it was not unforeseen, it just wan't the first Foundation's job to take care of the Mule.
Asimov's psychohistory is just the MacGuffin that drives the story. The Second Foundation is the control mechanism. It doesn't just correct for the effects of mutant outliers like the Mule, but also the development of new technologies. IIRC, Asimov's final retrofit was that Galaxia was the goal all along. The Spacers were central to this plan, although they don't appear in the original trilogy as far as I recall. That they are prominent in this series suggests they will play an increasingly important role.
Real-world psychohistory is largely considered a pseudoscience by social scientists, historians and anthropologists. Perhaps its proponents need to start adding some mathematical methods from macro- and microeconomics. For example, the development of psychogenic modes is probably directly related to improvements in economic conditions. However, I doubt that modelling human populations using macroscopic variables would ever provide anything more than broad indicators of trends. Paradigm-shifting new technologies are always going to throw a spanner/wrench into the machinery of prediction.
Real-world psychohistory is largely considered a pseudoscience by social scientists, historians and anthropologists. Perhaps its proponents need to start adding some mathematical methods from macro- and microeconomics. For example, the development of psychogenic modes is probably directly related to improvements in economic conditions. However, I doubt that modelling human populations using macroscopic variables would ever provide anything more than broad indicators of trends. Paradigm-shifting new technologies are always going to throw a spanner/wrench into the machinery of prediction.
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Vox has a bit of a tradition of year-end retrospective articles based on predicting the future, with the premise that prediction is a skill one can develop, and the way to practice (in the sense of "improve") prediction is to write explicit predictions and how confident you are in them, and see which ones were right and which were wrong. It's way more holistic than pyschohistory is supposed to be, but there would be a lot of tricky stuff in real-world psychohistory, not the least of which that, as has been pointed out, you can't actually publicize your predictions without influencing what you're trying to predict and throwing them off.
The lack of innovation was one of the metrics that charted the decline of the empire.
Those rings around Trantor in the tv show are going to stop moving (do they move?) start flaking off, falling Trantorward, and finally not be there at all. In the books the final economy of Trantor was selling the metal from the lost/dilapidated cities to passing spacers.
Galaxia was not endgame for Hari Seldon, he gave both projects even odds and set them off with no clear favorite. 500 years later Golan Trevize, the hero of the last two books, a council man of Terminus, was asked to pick one over the other fairly, and he picked Galaxia... Which seems like the worst aspects of communism?
Meh, it doesn't take much to predict where humanity will be in the next couple centuries. If madmen don't hit the button on their way out, or the rise of facism doesn't plunge us into a cycle of genocide, economic collapse, and apocalyptic war, climate change is going to do us all anyway. Entirely possible a combo of all three.
Yeah, I don't recall the details about Galaxia. I wasn't a big fan of the later novels.
The solid rings around Trantor are inherently dynamically unstable and would require constant station keeping - just like Ringworld.
The solid rings around Trantor are inherently dynamically unstable and would require constant station keeping - just like Ringworld.
This, pretty much. I actually like it that the show is different from the books. The show being able to surprise me despite sort of already knowing what could happen next.
Yeah, I never read the books, but it's not like, say, "The Expanse," where I was pretty irritated whenever I saw someone talk about something from a yet-to-be-adapted novel or talk coyly about what to come, but I don't feel the same trepidation about people talking about the Mule or Hobor Mallow or whatever because the show is so embellished (and the style of the era was basically writing in outline, anyway). It's more like people talking about the original Battlestar Galactica when the reboot was on, it's interesting context for speculation, but it's not really a spoiler as such.
As a general rule with adaptations and remakes, I don’t like it when they follow the source material too closely. I like to be surprised, I don’t want to see something I’ve already seen before just in a different form. I want to see what they bring to the table that’s new.
I used to be a bit of an adaptation purist. When I first saw Starship Troopers, I thought the director had no idea what he was doing, that he just didn’t comprehend Heinlein’s genius and turned a science fiction masterpiece into a mindless action movie. I tried to revisit the book a while back and found that I just couldn’t make it past the first few chapters, but when I revisited the movie I enjoyed it so much more than I did the first time around. Paul Verhoeven understood the book just fine, he just went “pfft yeah right” and did his own thing, and the movie is so much better for it.
I used to be a bit of an adaptation purist. When I first saw Starship Troopers, I thought the director had no idea what he was doing, that he just didn’t comprehend Heinlein’s genius and turned a science fiction masterpiece into a mindless action movie. I tried to revisit the book a while back and found that I just couldn’t make it past the first few chapters, but when I revisited the movie I enjoyed it so much more than I did the first time around. Paul Verhoeven understood the book just fine, he just went “pfft yeah right” and did his own thing, and the movie is so much better for it.
Verhoeven's satire exposed the innate fascism of Heinlein's oeuvre. The humans' highly militarised society is the counterpoint of the bug's version. It's really a struggle for territory between two biological gestalt entities.
Something i didn't realize until a GOogle featured story pointed out to me -- Season 2 Hari is a clone, not that different from the Cleon clones.
That made me think, because at first it felt like to me that tehy were keeping Jared Harris far longer than his character ought to be there (like holding onto TOm Cavanugh in the FLash TV show or Brett Dalton in Agents of SHIELD).... granted, he's a great actor.... but i had doubts.
But the article made it make some sense.... i will be interested to see how this Hari reacts to having a church founded in his name.
Just wondering from those who read the books.... does having Hari come back diminish the idea that he was just ONE part of history, and bringing him and Gaal and Salvor into the future.... does it ruin the scope of FOundation (i.e. having it center on the same people, despite generations later)?
That made me think, because at first it felt like to me that tehy were keeping Jared Harris far longer than his character ought to be there (like holding onto TOm Cavanugh in the FLash TV show or Brett Dalton in Agents of SHIELD).... granted, he's a great actor.... but i had doubts.
But the article made it make some sense.... i will be interested to see how this Hari reacts to having a church founded in his name.
Just wondering from those who read the books.... does having Hari come back diminish the idea that he was just ONE part of history, and bringing him and Gaal and Salvor into the future.... does it ruin the scope of FOundation (i.e. having it center on the same people, despite generations later)?
Trying to solve the same problem as Rings of Power really - both stories are told over many hundreds of years. RoP chose to condense the time period enormously, so losing the critical dichotomy of human mortality versus elf immortality. Apple could have gone for an anthology approach like the BBC radio adaptation - a pretty straight adaptation of the original book trilogy - but instead chose to keep main characters around by various contrived means. I think this approach works pretty well for the most part. The description of the Empire was the weakest element of the original stories. The cloning of the Cleons is a good addition. I like to assume they got the idea by noticing Cleon is an anagram of clone. Asimov borrowed the name of an Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War, although the character of Cleon II is based on the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. However, none of the Foundation novels mentions cloning as far as I can recall.
