Asimov's Foundation: Am I the only one who likes the show more?

[GTOM]

After i watched the first season that is based of Asimov's Foundation, i started to read the first Foundation book.
I stopped when i read, that they could simply resolve the conflict with Anakreon, because Terminus had nuclear technology... So Anakreon starships ran with gasoline or what??
Okay i restarted. Then Salvor Hardin said, that they trained Tech-Priests on Terminus. Okay they are cool in Warhammer40k universe, since there, demons and magic are real. But the first Foundation book didnt bother to tell anything, how rim worlds reached that level of anti-scientific, superstitous state.
The show had something: we could see how Synnax was destroyed by climate change, then smart people fled, stupid superstitous ones remained. There were an exact root of evil, the Genetic Dynasty, not just we have to accept, that humans only become more and more stupid except the ones in the Foundation.

 

[snorkack]

But the first Foundation book didnt bother to tell anything, how rim worlds reached that level of anti-scientific, superstitous state.
The show had something: we could see how Synnax was destroyed by climate change, then smart people fled, stupid superstitous ones remained. There were an exact root of evil, the Genetic Dynasty, not just we have to accept, that humans only become more and more stupid except the ones in the Foundation.

True. Original novels do limited amount of painting the world behind.
We have a bit of hints scattered, but it is not clear how the world around them goes. But some...

Anselm haut Rodric recognizes the smell of Vegan tobacco. And asks how Hardin could get it. Implying that Anselm now could not.
Anselm is Subprefect of Pluema. We hear that Anacreon itself is a prefecture. Most likely explanation is that Pluema is a planet and Anselm is a governor of a planet. We do hear of him in the capacity of envoy, and of a military commander, but it is historically common for regional governors to be sent to travel out of their bailiwick on missions like that.
Which means that Anselm is in charge of several hundreds of millions of people, one of a few tens of planetary governors (Bridle and Saddle gives the number of planets in Anacreon as roughly 32) and maybe a few tens of same rank people in central government - top hundred of Anacreon. And Anacreon can no longer import exotic luxury goods for his class. (While in his living memory, they still could).
In Bridle and Saddle, we hear of marker of the end of old good times - Zeon rebellion, then 190 years ago (160 years ago as of Foundation). We never hear if Zeon was a place or a person, but the result was that after it "Anacreon minded mostly their own affairs".
In the speech of Hari Seldon in Foundation, he says that he tricked the people of Foundation into staying until "their retreat had been cut off". The implication was that the normal reaction of people of Foundation to shrinking trade would have been to emigrate back to the inner Empire, like Trantor.
Chances are it happened to the smart people on Anacreon... over the extended period of decline.

Who leave, who stay?
Imagine that both Delicass and Anacreon are exporting cows to Trantor. A cow sells for 100 credits on Trantor. Carrying a cow by starship to Trantor costs 6 credits from Delicass, 60 credits from Anacreon on the rim.
In good times, both Delicass and Anacreon are earning. 94 credits for a cow on Delicass, 40 on Anacreon. Still a lot of money.
Now economic crisis happens on Trantor, so the cow only sells for 50 credits on Trantor. But the costs of interstellar travel are unaltered.
Trantor still gets cows, and Delicass still gets 44 credits per cow. But a cow on Anacreon is now worthless.
Even though the Vegan tobacco is low volume, high value compared to cows, so the transport costs of Vegan tobacco are low - say, a box of Vegan tobacco costs 100 credits on Trantor, 101 credits on Delicass and 110 credits on Anacreon - since Anacreon´s exports were low value high volume, they are now worthless, Anacreon has no credits at all and cannot afford any imports at all, not even high value low volume ones.

And there are more vital stuff than Vegan tobacco. Like, say, chloroform, iodoform, nuclear engines, trained specialists...

Who are prominent people at Pluema? Say... a baron and a surgeon.
When the trade is drying up, the baron´s cows lose value in hard currency.
He can still be a baron. He can still produce butter on Pluema and he can still command milkmaids. But he cannot get any credits for either cow, butter or milkmaid, and therefore he cannot import anything - not Vegan tobacco, and not chloroform.
Now, the surgeon also cannot do much useful work when he runs out of either chloroform or iodoform.
So the last ship comes, and the baron and the surgeon consider what to do with their last credits.

The thing is, the surgeon has an usable skill. If there is a starship visiting and he has the credits left for the one way ticket to Trantor, he can go to Trantor, get a job as a surgeon on Trantor and earn his living.

The milkmaid and the baron cannot. The milkmaid does not even have the credits for the ticket out of Pluema, nor a skill competitive on Trantor. The baron may have the credits left - but he also does not have a skill competitive on Trantor.

Which means that either milkmaid or baron, if they did get to Trantor, would not get a job and would die of hunger before hospital door.

If the surgeon has the choice to get on ship and go work on Trantor, or spend the rest of his life milking cows on Pluema because there will be no more chloroform imports, what would he choose?
If the baron has a choice to die of hunger on Trantor (because cows on Anacreon are worthless on Trantor and so are his skills) or of clogged arteries on Pluema (because the last medic took the last ship out), what would he choose?

 

[Rive]

Asimov's Foundation, am i the only one, who like the show more?

No.

The original book was a very special kind of riddle even way back. As the author once said (at least, as I recall it was him) that even he had a weird feeling that something is completely missing: and later he found that it was - direct action. Everything what happened had been only just told by (Sorry. I hope I got that linguistics maze right...)
And that made it very challenging to turn it into a show.
Also, it made the number of people who could actually like it limited.

The show apparently filled up that gap and invented some action to build up the word around the story through that. I would say it's a wise choice (although I did like that book very much).

 

[Rive]

The show apparently filled up that gap and invented some action to build up the word

Just had some time for the second season, and ... well, it's just no longer the Foundation.

To be honest, it still could be a good series. The ideas they put in would be enough for that. But the changes - no, these are no longer just 'changes'. Would be a stretch to call it a 'rewrite', even

So whatever good could it be, I could not finish it as 'Foundation'.

 

[gmax137]

After i watched the first season that is based of Asimov's Foundation, i started to read the first Foundation book.

I don't think I even knew there was a show / film / series / ?? version. Anyway, this thread got me to dig out my paperback copy and start to re-read it again.

 

[pines-demon]

I think the additions for the TV series (like the three-headed emperor) are very interesting ideas! But I think that the series lacks on things that I liked from the book. This is a hard series of book to adapt because they want to create a continuous narrative.

All that said, I think the Foundation books have not aged well, the books all full of very doubtful nuclear technology and interstellar transportation. I think the robot series would be more impactful to revisit in today's AI boom.

Edit: I will skip some of your comments as I have not watched season 2.

 

[Rive]

All that said, I think the Foundation books have not aged well, the books all full of very doubtful nuclear technology and interstellar transportation.

On the contrary, I think it's still fine these days.
Regarding the nuclear tech and such - well, compared to the usual senseless word-salads of quantum and whatever from the books of the recent years, it's cute

 

[gmax137]

I think the Foundation books have not aged well

As I re-read the first book, what strikes me is the story is all men, who spend a lot of time smoking cigars.

interstellar transportation

I actually like the way Asimov explains it in two or three sentences. To paraphrase: hyperdrive allows instant travel around the galaxy, because otherwise interstellar travel is impossible.

I also like his Encyclopedia Galactica quotes, as a way of explaining things to the reader without having the characters talking.

An annoying habit is having the characters use "space" as a mild oath or swear: "Space knows when we'll get more Vegan tobacco!" ugh.

EDIT - per the forward in the first book, Asimov started writing Foundation in 1941, more than 80 years ago, and a busy 80 years at that.

 

[Vanadium 50]

as a way of explaining things to the reader without having the characters talking.

...any more than they already are.

 

[ohwilleke]

But the first Foundation book didnt bother to tell anything, how rim worlds reached that level of anti-scientific, superstitous state.

This has an explanation in the Foundation series. I don't recall when it is revealed.

Spoiler

The Second Foundation of psychohistorians devises/commisions a highly engineered brain virus bioweapon which infects almost all people of high IQ that impedes developments in civilization that screw up their plan.

 

[ohwilleke]

All that said, I think the Foundation books have not aged well, the books all full of very doubtful nuclear technology and interstellar transportation. I think the robot series would be more impactful to revisit in today's AI boom.

Two points:

1. The Robot series is eventually tied into the Foundation series.

2. The nuclear and interstellar space technologies are window dressing that aren't meant to be hard science. The Foundation series is mostly about the psychohistory part and was heavily influenced by Gibbon's multi-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is about how civilizations evolve and what drives the process and to what extent the process is theoretically possible to understand and under what conditions since social sciences create feedback loops.

All of the technologies are just toys inserted to present obstacles and means for the larger historical evolution and guidance of civilization story, not for their own sake (although I do like the very metal poor world as a device as that is a very real thing of which most people aren't aware).

Another cute techology that was very prescient is the voice recognition software that a young character uses to do her homework before going on a grand star crossing adventure.

 

[pines-demon]

Two points:

1. The Robot series is eventually tied into the Foundation series.

I never read that part of the series. How organic is the merging of the two series?

 

[ohwilleke]

I never read that part of the series. How organic is the merging of the two series?

It works quite well for what is basically a retcon. Most of each respective series takes place in different time periods, so aside from some key illuminating ways that they are linked, there isn't a whole lot of room for them to interfere with each other.

Spoiler

A key character who implements the psychohistorians' plans in the Foundation books is revealed to be a robot from the Robot books whose longevity makes its very long time frame of the plan more manageable. IIRC the motive for the robot to shorten the length of the dark ages is also motivated by the three laws of robotics.

 

[gmax137]

It works quite well for what is basically a retcon.

I first heard the term "retcon" just yesterday. Weird. OK, back to the thread...

 

[Dr Wu]

It's helpful to remember that the original Foundation novels are closer in time to those by H G Wells (indeed just shy of some of the more notable ones by Jules Verne: think "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" published 1869/70) than they are to our present time. Laden as they are with their many anachronisms, at least there's no "cavorite" in them. That counts as real progress. The point, of course, is that allowances should be made, given the milieu in which they were written. It's quite possible that someone of a certain mindset, and who came of age during the Edwardian era, would have found them outlandish, even incomprehensible - even allowing for all the palls of cigar smoke wafting through them. Times change.

PS. There's also the "Lensman" series by Doc E E Smith, among other SF writers of that period.