Discussion
Whilst watching The Terror I thought I'd look up Jared Harris on IMDB only to discover Foundation is due to be released this year.
I am a massive fan of the original Asimov books and short stories and am now desperate to see this series. Does anyone know when they are due to be released? IMDB says 2021 but isn't any more specific.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/?ref_=nm_flmg...
I am a massive fan of the original Asimov books and short stories and am now desperate to see this series. Does anyone know when they are due to be released? IMDB says 2021 but isn't any more specific.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/?ref_=nm_flmg...
I always used to regard Asimov books, especially the Foundation series, as basically unfilmable. They are all about ideas not action. A group of very smart people sit around discussing something mysterious until with impeccable logic they find the astonishing answer. There follows a brief flurry of activity during which they find they are completely wrong and it all starts again.
There is one sequence where a bunch hardened space warriors are discussing epic battles, who won them and how, until someone finally says 'but now to serious matters' and starts discussing political intrigue Which really sums up the difference between Foundation and Star Wars.
But I've seen some of what I'd call genuine science fiction on Netflix and Amazon. IE taking a 'what if' scientific idea and running with it as opposed to just having lots of spacecraft and robots in it, and they are pretty Asimovian. Coherence is one, Man from Earth is another. Few or no special effects, largely just people talking, but work really well.
There is one sequence where a bunch hardened space warriors are discussing epic battles, who won them and how, until someone finally says 'but now to serious matters' and starts discussing political intrigue Which really sums up the difference between Foundation and Star Wars.
But I've seen some of what I'd call genuine science fiction on Netflix and Amazon. IE taking a 'what if' scientific idea and running with it as opposed to just having lots of spacecraft and robots in it, and they are pretty Asimovian. Coherence is one, Man from Earth is another. Few or no special effects, largely just people talking, but work really well.
Guardian article - ‘Astronauts check our scripts!’: inside the new age of sumptuous sci-fi TV
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/...
98elise said:
I've read a lot of Asimov but didn't think much of Foundation. I was a much bigger fan of his Robots stories.
I should probably give them another go.
Hopefully not a spoiler but the robots, well R.Danell Olivaw, series is connected to Foundation if you read the whole lot. I should probably give them another go.
The books were awesome ... well, the first one was amazing and the rest were a bit up and down .. but on the whole still pretty good.
The core concept was really, really good and thought provoking .. though the actual fictional Universe and the tech/cultures within it were not as well fleshed out as I would have liked. I guess for the author it was more about the big picture and themes than intricate world building and storytelling.
Certainly a lot of possibility there for a great adaptation with modern CGI and wads of cash.
The core concept was really, really good and thought provoking .. though the actual fictional Universe and the tech/cultures within it were not as well fleshed out as I would have liked. I guess for the author it was more about the big picture and themes than intricate world building and storytelling.
Certainly a lot of possibility there for a great adaptation with modern CGI and wads of cash.
Gadgetmac said:
Watched the first episode and loved it. Clearly it cost a fortune to make and its all there on the screen.
Agreed. Looking good on the basis of last night's episode. Beautifully done and absorbing. I read the books as a teenager but don't remember a lot about them. Has the potential to be up there with For All Mankind.
And Invasion out in October also looks intriguing.
Makes up for the last two appalling episodes of Lasso which sadly seems to be rapidly running out of steam...
Gadgetmac said:
Watched the first episode and loved it. Clearly it cost a fortune to make and its all there on the screen.
Same here - it's very impressive. They have added a lot of their own stuff but that's fine, as I said in an earlier post the original books didn't do the sort of worldbuilding that we expect in modern Sci-Fi and Fantasy (especially if it's going to be turned into TV/movies) so there's plenty of space to flesh out the fictional universe. As long as they don't mess around too much with the basic themes and try to turn it into a more generic scifi show or some sort of space opera rival to Game of Thrones.I see that some reviews have criticised it for looking a bit like some other scifi but the fact is that many subsequent scifi books and movies took from the original Foundation story. Coruscant in Star Wars is basically a copy of Trantor, for example.
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