Tag: Foundation

Foundation, Season 1

Foundation, Season 1

(Apple TV+, 2021)

TV poster: “Foundation, Season 1” (Apple TV+, 2021)

A remarkable series that takes Asimov’s action-light scenario and dry-cornflake characters and adapts them into a highly visual, absorbing SF story (albeit still rather abstruse and slow to gain traction). The programme’s success stems from its reinterpretation of various protagonists as female.

Foundation (1951)

Foundation

by Isaac Asimov (Gnome Press, 1951); audiobook read by William Hope (HarperCollins, 2019)

Book cover: “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov (Gnome Press, 1951); audiobook read by William Hope (HarperCollins, 2019)

A collected sequence of SF novellas taking inspiration from the fall of the Roman Empire. Asimov’s ideas aren’t without interest but the prose is workmanlike and the characters little more than mouthpieces. The future, apparently, contains infinitely more expository speechmaking than women.

Prelude to Foundation

Prelude to Foundation

by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, 1988)

audiobook read by William Hope (HarperVoyager, 2023)

Book cover: “Prelude to Foundation” by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, 1988); audiobook read by William Hope (HarperVoyager, 2023)

Self-indulgent. Asimov trades on his name more than his ideas, with middling prose and revelatory twists that survive only through clumsy concealment beneath a glut of character-voiced speculation as to how future society might function. Hope’s Seldon accent is a brave choice.

Derelict Space Sheep