The older I get, the weirder my early reading habits look in retrospect.
I read the Foundation series just before the Dune series, at age 12. I enjoyed both immensely.
Still hoping for a Lynchian kind of interpretation for Foundation. I don’t think that will be this.
This is going to be very difficult to adapt, as Foundation, like most of Asimov’s work, was a story about Ideas, not a story about characters. Adapting this to the small screen is a bit like making The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire- The mini-series
That’s pretty much literally what Asimov was going for – a SF Gibbon, for better or worse.
I wanna see the Jorodowskyan interpretation!
So, Ron Perlman you say?
Of course the recent season of Westworld used that as the revolutionaries leak the predictions of “Rehoboam”, a corporate AI whose job was to predict the masses in order to control them.
The cringe poisoned the rest of the trailer for me. Nope. Fuck Apple. Fuck corp wanking.
I loved reading the robot series, but to me each story was like a mathematical proof of some robotics rule concept, and the stories and characters were secondary. I’ve always imagined that Foundation was similar in purpose, but with the operative concepts being something else than robotics. Not that a compelling series could not be made from being expositional about ideas that way, but turning them into character driven stories always seems like an exercise in filling in. We saw how the iRobot movie filled in with a drab generic action movie. It was mediocre despite its great pedigree. What are the chances of infilling a worthwhile epic here?
I also gave up, after one book just like with Dune - just not my kind of SF.
However what I absolutely loved by Asimov were the short stories, even the non SF ones like “The tales of the Black Widowers” and “The Union Club mysteries”, and his science articles. Pretty much I liked everything by him except long novels, and although it may seem outrageous, I found other people sharing my impressions.
Asimov aside, there are probably over a hundred novels from the 50s-80s, not necessarily by very popular writers, which could become awesome movies/series with the obvious adaptations here and there.
A few titles I read as a youngster and still remember come to mind:
Cities in flight, by James Blish
The year of the quiet sun, by Wilson Tucker
Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson
Strange invasion, by Murray Leinster
Lest darkness fall, by L. Sprague de Camp
Mission to Universe, by Gordon L. Dickson
Bound in time, by D.F. Jones
The many colored land, by Julian May
Those gentle voices, by George Alec Effinger
And many others.
Pie Guy!
[Apparently he’s had other roles in the past dozen years, according to IMDB, but he’ll always be pie guy to me.]
The Mule is supposed to be very non-threatening and whimsical, playing his musical instrument and jumping around enthusiastically, and I don’t know that Ron Perlman can pull that off. Maybe Joe Lo Truglio?
They might go for DJ Qualls. He’s a good actor but he’d be a bit too on-the-nose. I’d rather they surprise us with a more unexpected choice.
Glad to see Legasov is still speaking truth to power.
I may be misremembering, but I thought that Asimov, writing about his career start, at 17(?), wrote some early Foundation in his early 20s, and admitted that there’s a love scene of sorts written by a guy who had never kissed a girl.
But, hey, even total ineptness can have some serendipity. I think Asimov also mentioned getting letters from young women who were totally impressed with his creation of teenage female hero, Arkady Darrell…again, by a guy with no serious relationship with same in his experience.
But as best as I could remember Arkady, she’s your basic teen adventure story hero, who has an adventure and handles it with reasonable brains and courage and is focused on the plot at all times. In other words, the only difference from a male character was her being described as a woman. Her conversations with other women (found two) passed the Bechdel Test.
If your competing young ladies stories in 1964 are about cheerleaders and dating issues, it might have been pretty cool.
Still Lee Pace’s best role, IMO.
Nobody wears a serious expression like Lee Pace. Big fan.
Without the Foundation stories, we wouldn’t have Iain Banks’ Culture series, which is some of the best sci-fi ever written. We wouldn’t have Dune. We wouldn’t have Hitchhiker’s Guide. The sci-if landscape would be poorer. And I just like the way Asimov writes.
The lights went dim!
They didn’t go out, but merely yellowed and sank with a suddenness that made Hardin jump. He had lifted his eyes to the ceiling lights in startled fashion, and when he brought them down the glass cubicle was no longer empty.
A figure occupied it—a figure in a wheelchair!
It said nothing for a few moments, but it closed the book upon its lap and fingered it idly. And then it smiled, and the face seemed all alive.
It said, “I am Hari Seldon.” The voice was old and soft.
Hardin almost rose to acknowledge the introduction and stopped himself in the act…
Sounds like an old radio show, or a story being told around a campfire. It’s great.
“Candy might be sweet, but it’s a traveling carnival blowing through town. Pie is home. People always come home.”
What does the Tiger have to do with this? I don’t remember a tiger in the series.
I was thinking Name of the Rose version of Ron Perlman and not Big Red Guy with Horns version. It is from fairly early in his career in 1986; his third movie. Linked above is a short clip.
That’s pretty accurate. They all seem to be predicated on the idea that, given the Laws of Robotics, how do you get round them and what are the consequences?
