Great, now explain why you chose to adapt a book and completely ignore everything that made the book great…
What are they ignoring in your view?
I have read the Foundation series many times.
The first three books are fantastic ideas but, honestly, the format of small vignettes spanning centuries with no recurring characters works in a novel but is terrible to adapt to the screen.
When I first heard of this adaptation, my reaction was “How are they going to make an engaging story for a TV audience out of them?”
While not perfect, after the first series I am impressed with what they have done.
The inclusion of following the emperors was a good idea that fleshes out the story, universe and gives a good counterpoint to the foundation.
A page perfect adaptation of the books would be visually boring to most people.
Avid fans of the novels must also realise that the show was made to draw in people who have never read the books. If they were to only attract people who have read the books, the show would be a failure as they would never have been able to justify the budget.
I thought the Foundation books were conceited and trite - I know that’s not going to make me popular here. The first ATV season was pretty damn good, building on the main themes that made the books so seminal, but adding a human dimension which helps to make the story feel as epic as people make it out to be.
My main problem with them is how the politics just drag on and on and how long winded some of the descriptions are.
I never made it through them reading them, it wasn’t until I went audiobook and just accepted that my brain would fall asleep for stretches of it that I made it through.
There’s some genius in there but it really takes some wading through the mud to get there.
The TV series is showing some promise that they will be able to wrangle this sprawling spaghetti into some sort of form that’s fit for TV. I will be very impressed if they pull it off.
The whole notion of having short stories spanning centuries with the only common thread or character being the Seldon recordings is the entire point.
Having a revolving cast of characters isn’t a problem, Walking Dead has done it for years.
is the entire point.
And it would be uninteresting to most people.
They did not make the show for you, me or other Asimov fans. They made it for a general audience who will only know the adaptation. A hologram that arrives at the end of each storyline with a deus ex machina to solve all the problems will not be engaging to the genera public.
Walking Dead has done it for years.
And the show, to me, was terrible. Slow, formulaic and boring once the first season ended. So it is not something I would use as an example.
And yet Walking Dead spawned 11 seasons and was wildly popular.
I stopped watching mid-season 2 and haven’t thought much about the show in the following decade.
What I like is not the same for everyone.
Now adopt that thought to what you are saying about the TV show. You don’t like that it is not word-perfect with the books. I am glad it isn’t.
If you don’t like where the show is going, stop watching as I did with the boring dead. The books still exist, and you can reread them anytime.
[cries in Wheel of Time]
Yeah I hated how they shrunk Lan’s shoulders and made him look soft.
Me too bud, I was looking forward to Jordan’s masterpiece getting an adaptation to the small screen but I couldn’t even make it through one episode. It’s like the showrunner took The Witcher’s terrible adaptation as a personal challenge to fuck over the source material in the most fuck you way possible and went at it with both boots.
cries in The Witcher
It is quite different, and I put off watching it out of fear of this until a few days ago, thinking I was going to hate it as I loved the books.
I remember thinking when they first announced making this, how the fuck are they going to make psychohistory and a relentlesly changing timespan into a TV show? Personally I thought what they’ve made is excellent scifi TV, I mostly binged it. Maybe they tried staying true to source material at first and realised it just doesn’t make for a compelling show?
As soon as they went off track I was like “If you didn’t want to use the material then why did you license it in the first place?”
Would be like if, I dunno, somebody wanted to make a Care Bears movie and made it about a group of mercenaries with colorfully painted body armor.
I’m not going to automatically say it’s awful, it’s just not the Care Bears. ;)
As soon as they went off track I was like “If you didn’t want to use the material then why did you license it in the first place?”
How do you feel about the ‘Three Body Problem’ being produced by the Game of Thrones guys? (˵ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°˵)
People give the Game of Thrones guys crap for the final few seasons, but you have to remember, they ran out of material to adapt, they were basically working off Martin’s Post-It-Notes at that point.
While they actually HAD material to adapt, they were OK. Trying to generate new content off a bare bones outline? Maybe not so much.
That’s a fair point, that I’d not considered. I’m trying not to pre-judge 3BP, but also trying not to get too excited for it… hype is a killer when it falls flat
I just finished watching the first season of Silo. It was good enough to make me get the book series and start reading it. I thought the tv show was a bit slow and got bogged down some. Now that I’m reading the book, yup, I can tell that it really is going much slower than the book.
It’s a shame, I think, that so much stuff is high budget and high risk production wise these days (where, as far as I understand, Hollywood is pressed to make profit now more than it used to). You can see it I think, this anxiety to get people hooked and watching but to also draw out as much as possible from them, and it’s only harming TV IMO.
Otherwise, I’ve had Silo recommended to me multiple times now … so I’ll guess I’ll give it a watch.
How did you find the show generally? And the books?
I watched the show and then started reading the first book. From what I can tell so far a lot of the weird writing decisions that confused or annoyed me in the show are not present in the book, though there are other aspects of the show I liked a little bit more than the book like how some of the characters are portrayed.
Overall I’d say both versions are good with the book being slightly better. I would recommend the show whether you intend to read the book or not.
This is hired I felt too. I just finished the first book. The entire 10 episodes of the first season probably got 1/2 way through the book. There were frustrating moments in the series and a lot of drawn out plot points that were more nimbly handled in the book. The series kept some things vague and generated extra drama to keep you watching. The book focused on other things. Both were good. I enjoyed the series enough to want to read the books. But I liked the book a bit better.
I’m still baffled as to why of all of Asimov’s books these were the ones made into a show. The robot novels would’ve been much easier to adapt
I’ve read foundation and end of eternity, loved both, but never read one of robot books! I don’t know why … maybe I don’t know where to start or something, and so it just slipped out my reading.
I highly recommend them. They’re set in the same world as foundation but are crime novels focusing around a detective from earth and dealing with an increasing cultural differences between planets and issues of artificial intelligence and robots that pass for human. One of the things I love is how Earth is in many ways the most foreign planet to the reader.
Start with The Caves of Steel, then The Naked Sun, followed by The Robots of Dawn, and finally Robots and Empire which ties the setting into Foundation
Thanks!!
I found a few orders to read the books in on Reddit and chose to go with the chronological order. I’m currently on foundation and so far its worked pretty well. There were a few other orders that had their own benefits so might be worth a duck duck go. But here is the chronological order:
- I, Robot [ROBOTS]
- The Caves of Steel [ROBOTS]
- The Naked Sun [ROBOTS]
- Mirror Image (short story) [ROBOTS]
- The Robots of Dawn [ROBOTS]
- Robots and Empire [ROBOTS]
- The Stars, Like Dust-- [EMPIRE]
- The Currents of Space [EMPIRE]
- Pebble in the Sky [EMPIRE]
- Foundation [FOUNDATION]
- Foundation and Empire [FOUNDATION
- Second Foundation [FOUNDATION]
- Foundation’s Edge [FOUNDATION]
- Foundation and Earth [FOUNDATION]
- Prelude to Foundation [FOUNDATION]
- Forward the Foundation [FOUNDATION]
I, Robot and Bicentennial Man didn’t exactly ignite.
Yeah, the I robot movie has nothing to do with the I robot book. Similar ideas but different stories, etc… I was super surprised when I read I, Robot.
The Robot series by Asimov are a scifi detective novels centered around a humanoid robot named r. Daneel who works with a earthling detective.
I meant the R. Daneel novels. The whodunnit books about an earth detective dealing with robots.
I’ve watched the trailer and I’m not convinced (even though I’ll almost cetainly watch it).
- Not sure the broadening of the show is necessary or can work.
- Not sure focusing on carry over characters can work with the gravity of the story, though I thought the emperor clones thing was an excellent way to work in a perennial character that fits within the story and universe.
- I’m not even sure that slowing it down and doing it all over 8 seasons makes sense.
I have watched the first couple of episodes and it is painfully slow. I don’t know if I can bring myself to keep going.
You’re talking about season 1? That’s fair. From memory, it kinda picks up … a little. I’m not sure I can say you should keep going.
Have you read the books?
No, I haven’t read the books yet but so far the show does not make me want to either.
Oh no … I really wouldn’t judge the books by the show … very different feels, and the books are an old classic too. There are three books, and they’re pretty episodic in their structure, so you could give the first one a shot, read the first few chapters and decide from there. Even just reading the first book will let you know what they’re like. And from memory, they’re not long at all.
Everyone should read the books. As annother said the show is only inspired by the books.
The very basic premise of the books is, the individual is unimportant in face of large systemic forces. The show clearly has the opposite viewpoint. Because those kinds of stories are easier to write, therefore more common, and what people are used to. So it’s also easier to sell.
Just read the books. The show does an excellent job of completely butchering all the parts that made the books good. The show is in fact so bad that show spoilers don’t even count as book spoilers.
People have been talking about making the books into films or a TV show for ages, and somewhat like Dune, it was always thought difficult to do. It seems that that perception has given the writers permission to totally do their own thing … and I don’t think it’s working at all.
The emperor clone thing was clever, and they should have just gone for things like that all the way through, clever cheap ideas and structures that let them tell the Foundation story without going too big on the budget and making it easier to understand and follow in a TV format.
I hope they make it through to the end of all 3 books. It seems like a Herculean task to wrangle these books into something made for tv.
Yeah this guy is not qualified to comment on book adaptions since the series is essentially “inspired by” the books at best
I figured it was obvious: because big books also start slow.
