Ask Lemmy

I agree but a direct adaptation of the books would not make a good TV show.

The books are a series of vignettes spaced decades apart with no continuing characters and each is a separate short story. While they work in the written form, they would not on the screen.

I don’t have Apple TV, and I was irritated that I’d be missing Foundation. The more I hear about it, though, the less irritated I am.

They very much lampshade that with the whole outliers thing. Events spin off in wildly different directions.

If you want a direct translation of the books, no dice, but damn the shit they've pulled out of whole cloth with the Cleons is amazeballs.

See: Crucifying A Masterwork.

I don't get the people saying it'd never work, as written. How hard is it to show that every inflection point centered on an individual had multiple people who could have been that figure? It's an ironic rejection of great-man history. Yes, the world changed because of some particular nobody, in the right place at the right time, but the world at large wouldn't notice or remember how many nobodies wanted that role. They wouldn't even recognize one another, as they're doing it. Meanwhile, cocksure revolutionaries with a modicum of support are constantly rising against that tide and floundering out... or getting squashed.

In Asimov's view, these shifts require a polarizing figure, an unstoppable base of support, and a new equilibrium. Anything less will spiral back toward the status quo.

The episodic nature of the source material is obviously fine for an episodic televisionish format. It'd be great to show increasingly distant crises where a tiny 'we'll fix it later' problem metastasized into a society-threatening life-and-death matter. It'd also allow failure. There are times people expect a revolutionary change, and what actually happens is, they suffer irreversibly and run for their lives. A messianic figure can reach for a base that's not there, and their solution will not happen. A fundamental shift can go exactly as planned and still slide right back. Generations can lie in wait if no pivotal individual emerges... and lives.

It feels more like an addition than an adaptation (it isn't, but it's the only perspective in which the show can be good). I'm a big fan of the books, and I'm also enjoying the show so far.