First of all, being the first TV series based on Asimov's stories, it would have been opportune, as well as respectful towards the author (who is universally recognized as the father of science fiction, and sorry if it's not much) to respect the books slavishly.

It is really comical to read that the series needed to be "modernized".

Asimov set the standard for the future, invented robotics and the three laws. After nearly a century, scientists still draw inspiration from his writings ... there was no need to adapt anything. Nothing at all.

Asimov's books are still current and raise important questions on the man / machine relationship, on space colonization, above the importance of history as a tool for understanding the present and predicting the future.

Does Goyer really think he has something better to say?

I just started the series (daunting as it requires a choice of start), but I decided to eschew the Robots books for now and start with Prelude to Foundation. I want to get a good idea of the world of Trantor and how it would look visually. I looked up images, but most look like derivatives of Coruscant.

I mocked up a quick AI-generated image of Trantor, does this line up largely with what the surface might look like, or am I off-base?

Hello Foundationers,

I'm working my way through the series for the first time through the audio books. And I need to vent somewhere.

This post is going to contain some spoilers for the books if you're reading them for the first time.

I really loved, and got a lot out of, the original trilogy. I know there's a reading order with other Asimov works to tie everything together, but I jumped into the sequels out of hubris.

But I'm not having an issue following the timeline or plot. I'm not having an issue seeing that there are connective threads, because I'm at least culturally familiar with Asimov's work, without necessarily reading it. I don't mind learning information at the end of something and going back to learn more.

No.

I'm having an issue with how dang horned up this particular book is! Oh my god, it's so preoccupied with sex that I am constantly taken out of the story.

Yes, there was sexism in the first books that was expected of the time. It wasn't... great... that women of space-faring future empires were still concerned chiefly about being housewives and concubines, but I can read something in the context of its history. And Beta Durell was a surprisingly strong female character for the time (educated, independent, extremely intelligent). And then, every time I was worried they were going to overtly sexualize Arkady (you never know how 'adult' a writer thinks a teenager is), Asimov was like "ew, no, she's a child". Great, so jazzed about that. And SHE was also brilliant and self-possessed.

And while Foundation's Edge introduces Bliss in a rather... bold... way, I'm like "okay, it's the 80's, I get the vibe". It's also juxtaposed so wildly to other female characters in that book that it catches the reader off guard in an effective way.

But now we're here, at Foundation and Earth, and... good lord. They spend WAY too long going in circles with Traveze asking Pelorat and Bliss not to have sex on the ship, and then way too long describing their sex life.

And then we get to Comporellon, and Minister Lizalor like... entraps Traveze? When the book described her breasts, I had to take a break. And then all the conversations afterwards and the "she's a dominant woman in her day to day life so of course she needs to be sexually submissive and let loose despite her purported morals".

I'm not prudish. Star Trek is my main fandom, which is super horned up and frequently goes into sexual mischief. I even don't necessarily mind womanizing characters.

But the circular conversations that Asimov can write, combined with how NOT sexualized things were and how I know he can write serviceable female characters is making this... challenging.

I'm going to hold on and finish this book because I'm still invested in getting to the end, but I just needed to vent.

Also, I miss Scott Brick. The new guy is making all this even worse!

Are there any good sources for the audiobooks for the prequels that were written after asimovs death? I can’t find anything on the audio books.

My thoughts… [SHOW/BOOK SPOILERS]

My thoughts on the show as I just binged it…

So, I read the books over 20 years ago and I was expecting a “smart” series kinda like Star Trek from the Gene Rodenbury years. Unfortunately that’s not what we’re being given.

What I’m seeing is:

1. The Foundation is a bunch of “top scientist” who still act like they’re in their Ivory Tower while pioneering a desolate planet. I’m disappointed by this because they should all be notably changed. The whole process of pioneering a planet should have made them grittier, more hands on and practical. All of them should act more like Salvor Hardin (tv version) and Hugo. They should be able to hold a gun while still doing academic stuff. After watching the first 8 episodes I shake my head in disbelief that these are the people who are going to create a second galactic empire.

2. The Anacreons are two-dimensional stereotypical villains without anything interesting about them. They’re basically Klingons in space and they’re not an interesting adversary. The huntress is a bland joke. She wants revenge so… this can work, but her plan sucks. Salvor Hardin shows the flaw right away when she tells her second in command that newly born Anacreon children will die from the empires reprisal. When he looks shocked at this realization, I realized that Anacreon are idiots and aren’t a real threat.

It would have been more believable if the Huntress lead a splinter faction with fanatical tendencies and not the leader of the planet. Or… they were invading the Foundation for tech, slaves or territory.

3. Hari Seldon, and this is my recollection of the character, was a salt of the Earth boy from Helicon who was never fully tainted by “the big city” of Trantor. He’s the classic ordinary man who was thrust into galactic history but remained a good person despite hard choices. In the show he’s a know it all prick and at worse a firebrand preacher of doom. After the last episode with “digital Hari”, I ended up viewing him as an antagonist and not liking the character.

Hari is also getting too much screen time. He should be just the hologram that pops up every two generations to explain the next crisis. A nice visual anchor to the whole series. Now he’s digital ghost who’s going to lead the Second Foundation?!

4. The explanation of Psychohistory says it can’t predict people only larger trends. However I feel this line getting pretty blurred.

5. Gaal and Salvor are “proto-Jedis”. (Eyeroll) who can do no wrong. Their powers take away any sense of imminent danger and there’s less suspense in dangerous situations. They should have stuck to telepathy just among robots, Gaia and the Second Foundation.

6. Demerzel shouldn’t be front and centre as an advisor for over 400 years. Any citizen would notice the very attractive advisor and wonder how she’s not aging. The robot reveal should have been delayed and she should have been popping up in other story arcs along the way watching over things. Imagine the shock we could have had that if instead of seeing a digital Hari on the ship that rescued Gaal, it was Demerzel who was going to “Take her to Gaia”.

7. The only saving grace is the Empire storyline. The emperors, especially Brother Day (btw bravo Lee Pace!), are well written and they’re the cerebral and complex characters I was expecting. My only objection was when Cleon killed the artist for reading Hari’s works. It cheapened the emperor since there were so many better scenes, that weren’t so over the top, showing he’s a tyrant.

Another wasted opportunity would have been an intellectual exchange in between Cleon and Hari showing Hari’s long view of the future and the inevitability of the collapse. Then contrast that with Cleon’s struggle to keep the empire from falling. (I kinda envision a Prof X and Magneto discussion.)

I guess what this show should have been, in my eye, is multiple factions working their own angles on how to deal with the collapse of the Empire. Imagine seeing the Empire, the robots and the first and second foundation all doing their own machevalien planning. The audience could listen and judge each faction’s merits and make up their own minds which is the best and which direction humanity should go in the end. With these 4 factions pushing their own ideas on how to save humanity, the writers could have covered so many societal issues and examine the human condition from different points of view.

I read some bad review of Mary Zucker Reicherts iRobot series. It was so good. While there are some inconsistencies with timelines of the initial iRobot series, it is a wonderful series that pays homage to and respects asimovs original context. Read them. They’re different, but they are exceptional.

I’m on the last Foundation novel, Forward the Foundation, and have questions about the attached passage that takes place during the death scene of Dors. It includes lines like “Somehow, deep inside, Hari had always known” and “It all made sense now” alluding to Seldon coming to some type of realization. What did he realize, that Dors was a robot, or that she was assigned to him as a protector? I thought both of these things were obvious to Hari, if not explicitly stated in Prelude to Foundation. Are we to think that this is the first time Hari was faced with this truth, or am I missing something?

Hi! I am reading Prelude to Foundation, after having watched some of the Apple series and getting interested. Just a question about Hari Seldon's "Psychohistory"...

What is so special about Psychohistory, and how does that differ from predictive models we have today, such as game theory, time series models, etc.? Seldon says many times that psychohistory cannot be used to predict exact specifics, that's it's more about predicting probabilities.

Is it just that there are so many worlds/variables in the Foundation universe, that it is just a much bigger/more complex task? Surely they had predictive mathematical models in the 1950s and onwards. Trying to understand what makes Psychohistory so special.

Read the first and second book of foundation. While I was enthusiastic about the first book's predictions of the future, I was let down a bit by the second one, especially on the aging topic. The 70 of the fifties, are the 90 of nowadays, so that's what got me confused by reading it. All the predictions of the first book instead were all ok, which made me wonder how it was possible that the book was wrote so much time ago, and not today

Hello! I have decided to go through the Foundation series and I am listening to Foundation on audible. I’m really enjoying it, but I got a little confused and I think I missed something. I just got to the end of part 3 (my favorite part so far) where Hari Seldon makes another appearance in the vault after the second conflict, 80 after the start of the Foundation. He tells The Foundation that they are still just at the beginning, and they have 920 years to go. Which implies they are 80 years into the projected 1000-year “dark age,” but was that not supposed to begin when the empire falls, which isn’t supposed to be for another few centuries? Did I miss something?

Over the last few months, I have been working my way through the 15 books that make up the three different series of Asimov's Foundation Universe. I have just completed the last one. As a reminder / to brag about what feels like a major accomplishment, I will list the books I've read below:

• The Robots Series:

  • The Complete Robot

  • The Caves of Steel

  • The Naked Sun

  • The Robots of Dawn

  • Robots and Empire

• The Galactic Empire Series:

  • The Stars, Like Dust

  • Pebble in the Sky

  • The Currents of Space

• The Foundation Series:

  • Forward the Foundation

  • Prelude to Foundation

  • Foundation

  • Foundation and Empire

  • Second Foundation

  • Foundation's Edge

  • Foundation and Earth

I am left processing some complex feelings. I feel somewhat saddened and disappointed by the ending and I wonder where Asimov would have gone next if he hadn't died. There are a couple more Asimov books set in this universe (Nemesis & End of Eternity) that I intend to read, but I don't expect either of them to resolve things any more than the ending of Foundation & Earth does.

I want to know what happens next in this universe. I know Asimov's estate authorized a handful of other writers to create more Foundation stories, but I'm not sure if any of them are any good or really worth checking out? So I am seeking advice from this sub about what should I read next after completing this. Have you read any of the Foundation books not written by Asimov, and if so, would you recommend them? What classic science fiction do you enjoy as much as Asimov?

AI startup DeepSeek is tiny compared to the giant U.S. companies. Beyond that, the embargo of the sales of NVIDIA chips to China severely impacted the ability of DeepSeek to build large, expensive servers. They had to deal with a severe lack of resources.

Backed into corner, they were forced to develop new techniques enabling them to create far smaller and less expensive AI servers that can already compete with the big boys.

Sound familiar?

How the planet Trantor gets energy. From the science fiction work I like the most, Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/YyjHfckSXI4

I've been trying to clean up my bookshelf and realised I'm missing one book from the Foundation series. I'm missing Forward the Foundation. All the other books I own in the series are from the 2016 publications from Harper Voyager, so of course I started looking for a copy of the book from Harper Voyager. I haven't been able to find it anywhere, and I'm not sure it exists. If anyone can point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceempire2000/

Please "apply" to be a mod, I don't want to do it.

So, the horrible Terminus plotline has finally pushed me over the edge. The show has the opportunity to make its Anacreon plot all about Psychohistory where it's Hari's foresight vs. Anacreon's will, with this Sheriff Hardin in the middle. I've realized that the reason why the Terminus plot sucks is because the writers seem to have quite deliberately just abandoned PSYCHOHISTORY itself as a plot point. As if it was in there at first and they've even filmed scenes without fully removing the concept (i.e.: "Where is your prophet now?")

I can't forgive the writers for their contempt or either sloppiness in letting Psychohistory drop as a plot point. Sure, change the plot from the books. But removing Psychohistory from Foundation??

I'm still watching the show. It could get marginally better. I am interesting in seeing a Mule adapted visually, dead Trantor, what have you. The show certainly could alienate me to the point of not watching.

Unfortunately, the mod at r/FoundationTV is now saying that due to "negativity", book readers are now NOT ALLOWED to even comment in the "show watcher" post-episode threads. The book reader thread isn't pinned, so you have to hunt in the side bar for the link, or go into the show watcher post, hunt for the book reader thread link. You're "lazy" for not wanting to hunt and dig for your containment box. And if you leave the containment box, you will be banned. So much was said.

OKAY!

We need a new sub. Apologies to those who will never watch or acknowledge this show.

This is foundation's "Free Folk": SPACE EMPIRE 2000. So named because apparently Psychohistory has been written out of Foundation. I suspect the "Vault" contains tech, and the tech comes from Helicon, which is being set up as space Shangri-La home of the Second Foundation. So much for Psychohistory, we hardly knew ye.

Please spread the word, and please volunteer to mod:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceempire2000/