Foundation on Apple TV

[Al Jackson]

This came as a surprise to me two photos have appeared that are said to be from production shooting on Asimov's Foundation. Since it looks like a SF setting and I know that Jared Harris is to play Hari Seldon and I don't know of Harris being in any other SF show at the moment (well he is in The Expanse but that has a different setting), these are apparently pics from the set, which it is said is film in Berlin right now! Had not heard production had started even tho Apple green lighted it and the cast has been cast!
That is Harris in the first photo.

 

[Vince W]

Oh ho. Apple is playing this close to the chest. I like the aesthetic so far. I will be keenly interested to see the results.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Jared Harris?? I loved him in Chernobyl and Mad Men. Sign me up.

 

[svalbard]

Let's see what Ricky Gervais makes it of it first...or not.

 

[Al Jackson]

Oh ho. Apple is playing this close to the chest. I like the aesthetic so far. I will be keenly interested to see the results.

I read Foundation first in the 1950s, must have somewhere in the 70s, but did read it again about 20 years ago!
It is almost one big detective story.
Someone mentioned to me the first book was written in four parts between 1942 and 1944 and that a lot of the technology of 10,000 years in the future was klunky . I reread the first two parts yesterday. Whew, he was right. It is interesting how Asimov got nuclear power in , Asimov was at Columbia when he wrote those first parts so he knew more than most about that.... however from a 2020 point of view thinking 20 k into the future that almost seems like a steam engine! One does have FTL , jump drives... interstellar travel … but then a lot 20th century technology seem to pop in around the edges … to Hari Seldon does seem to appear as a hologram … it is going to take some imaginative fix up, it can be done.
Like a lot of science fiction in those days no advances in medical technology … long extended life times, (tho it did appear in Blish's SF).
Man there is talk, talk , talk... funny even Asimov , sort of, complained about this when he was convinced to write Forward the Foundation... he went back and read what he had written. In the background there is a lot of set up for action , we shall see , this is not a Star Wars story.

 

[Vince W]

I read Foundation around 1980 and I loved it. I think the fact that it's not a Star Wars story will work heavily in its favour. I need to have a little reread before this airs.

 

[Al Jackson]

I read Foundation around 1980 and I loved it. I think the fact that it's not a Star Wars story will work heavily in its favour. I need to have a little reread before this airs.

I read it first in 1954. John Campbell editing Astounding totally boke with pulp magazine science fiction of the 1930s. He published Robert Heinlein, Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp , Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore , Clifford Simak , Theodore Sturgeon, … the list is quite long... of extraordinary stories almost like no one had seen before (H G Wells and a few others had gotten there first). Foundation for all its talky-ness was big canvas space opera with more sophisticated underpinning than had been seen before. It still reads well if one allows for 1940s 'supersceince' consisting of a odd mix of anachronistic concepts many based on 'atomics' (I don't know if any writer had fusion in their stories then?).

A note on the TV series , found a news item that filming started in November …

 

[Vince W]

I read it first in 1954. John Campbell editing Astounding totally boke with pulp magazine science fiction of the 1930s. He published Robert Heinlein, Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp , Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore , Clifford Simak , Theodore Sturgeon, … the list is quite long... of extraordinary stories almost like no one had seen before (H G Wells and a few others had gotten there first). Foundation for all its talky-ness was big canvas space opera with more sophisticated underpinning than had been seen before. It still reads well if one allows for 1940s 'supersceince' consisting of a odd mix of anachronistic concepts many based on 'atomics' (I don't know if any writer had fusion in their stories then?).

A note on the TV series , found a news item that filming started in November …

1954, wow. You have a unique perspective on science fiction I'm sure. John Campbell seems to be persona non grata at the moment but he certainly dragged science fiction away from the pulps. I wonder where science fiction would be without his work.

I will say that it seems that Apple is doing far better with Foundation than BBC America is doing with Discworld.

 

[BAYLOR]

I read it first in 1954. John Campbell editing Astounding totally boke with pulp magazine science fiction of the 1930s. He published Robert Heinlein, Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp , Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore , Clifford Simak , Theodore Sturgeon, … the list is quite long... of extraordinary stories almost like no one had seen before (H G Wells and a few others had gotten there first). Foundation for all its talky-ness was big canvas space opera with more sophisticated underpinning than had been seen before. It still reads well if one allows for 1940s 'supersceince' consisting of a odd mix of anachronistic concepts many based on 'atomics' (I don't know if any writer had fusion in their stories then?).

A note on the TV series , found a news item that filming started in November …

1954, wow. You have a unique perspective on science fiction I'm sure. John Campbell seems to be persona non grata at the moment but he certainly dragged science fiction away from the pulps. I wonder where science fiction would be without his work.

I will say that it seems that Apple is doing far better with Foundation than BBC America is doing with Discworld.

There are alot of negatives about John W Campbell . In the present era a man with his and prejudices could not exist in mainstream publishing . That said , his contributions to science fiction and fantasy were considerable . Without him , Imagine how little we would have to read .

I read first First Three Foundation books long, long ago. It was the epic Science fction series Id ever read and tat time , I remembered being impressed by the scope and she story telling. Asimov knew how a spin a great saga .

 

[Al Jackson]

1954, wow. You have a unique perspective on science fiction I'm sure. John Campbell seems to be persona non grata at the moment but he certainly dragged science fiction away from the pulps. I wonder where science fiction would be without his work.

I will say that it seems that Apple is doing far better with Foundation than BBC America is doing with Discworld.

A friend of mine had the ACE double paperbacks of Foundation and Foundation and Empire.... which were not called that... The 1000 Year Plan and The Man Who Upset the Universe …. odd titles.... I quickly learned that the first novel was missing a whole 4th 'book'.... so I went to the library and found the Gnome editions and read the missing section.... as awful as the covers were ACE did help Asimov get a wider audience.

 

[Vince W]

I never knew about those alternate titles @Al Jackson. Just goes to show you, you can be surprised at how little one 'knows'. ACE did a lot to further the genre of science fiction. There are many authors that would be forgotten or unknown if it weren't for ACE.

 

[Al Jackson]

This month is Asimov's 100 birthday.
When Gnome collected the parts in 1951 Asimov wrote a story introduction that was never in Astounding.
The very first appearance of Foundation was a story in the May 1942 Issue of Astounding. For the first novel Asimov wrote a new front end... "The Psychohistorians" in 1951... in the May 1942 issue of ASF "The Encyclopedists" appeared under the name Foundation. Asimov did not make the cover. The story is listed in t e table of contents.

 

[Al Jackson]

The end of the Foundation series , Second Foundation, appeared in Jan. 1948 and Nov. 1949 as "Now You See It" and "... Now You Don't", actually pretty clever titles not used in the non-magazine publications. Both cover were by Rogers the only the second one deals directly with the story... in fact the Nov. 49 cover is the best illustration for Astounding within the Astounding appearances … to me all the interior illos for the stories are a bit second rate.

 

[Al Jackson]

I can't really say there have been outstanding illustrations for Foundation... the best that I know of are by Micheal Whelan.

 

[Vince W]

Those are good illustrations. Foundation doesn't lend itself to 'action' covers. That still hasn't seemed to harm it any.

 

[Al Jackson]

Those are good illustrations. Foundation doesn't lend itself to 'action' covers. That still hasn't seemed to harm it any.

We only have those two still for production design from the series... there is a lot of room for concepts that Asimov hints at but does not describe much , Trantor for one.

 

[Vince W]

I would hope to see some new designs that aren't too closely modelled on Star Wars. That would be a letdown.

 

[Al Jackson]

New item , found out production started in November 2019 on Foundation.
Found no new pics or information. I think production ends in the spring... so fall of 2020?

Read the novels again. Whew! So much talk! A lot is described that is off stage that would be Big Canvas if brought on stage.
Novels 2 and 3 are more interesting that novel 1.

 

[Vince W]

Autumn seems reasonable. They might try for summer but then the end product would probably suffer.

 

[Al Jackson]

News recently is that principal photography will be done in Ireland (not Northern Ireland) , they must have filmed in Berlin only briefly if they started in November, filming must have already been going on in Jan.