I agree with you. It took me a while to get my head around the approach they were taking (I re-read the whole series prior to it airing) but what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it. Even just getting rid of the 1950s stereotype gender roles - which is the obvious place to start - doesn’t change the long arcs of obvious dialogue.
It’s a really grand scope for a universe - but I’m enjoying the series so far and it will be interesting to see where they go with it. Basically I’m just hungry for more space and since it’s visually very appealing and the universe is compelling, I think it deserves a chance.
>what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it
Agreed.
The inspiration behind the Foundation series, setting out to shorten the Dark Ages after the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is great.
However, if you try reading those short stories again today, you're quickly reminded that early in his career, Asimov was already great at world building, but terrible with characters and dialog.
Add in the mismatch between the cultural norms of the 1940's (when the early Foundation stories were written) and the cultural norms today, and a rewrite was always going to be required.
Asimov's first real published story was in 1939 (his high school "published" a story earlier).
The Foundation stories were written in 1941-1950. In 1951 Asimov stopped writing fiction for thirty years.
So it's not "early Asimov" by any means.
When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved.
Asimov was always an author only of ideas. His best dialog was the terrible and deliberately corny dialog in the Azazel fantasy-comedy stories, very much done in imitation of P.G. Wodehouse's cleverer banter.
Excerpt from one of the 80's foundation books:
“Is not all this an extraordinary concatenation of coincidence ?” Pelorat said, “If you list it like that.”
“List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”
I agree that Asimov, late or early, lives or dies on his ideas, and never was a great writer - he doesn't do lovely prose, naturalistic dialog, or vivid, multi-dimensional characters. But I don't see anything particularly bad about the dialog you've quoted.
> When he came back to write Foundation sequels his characters and dialog hadn't improved.
OK, great, it's not just me. I was about to respond, "wait, did he ever get good at characters and dialog? I've read a lot of Asimov, and at no point have those ever not been distractingly bad."
I think the OP would agree that it was "early Asimov" but you can't blame the writing on that. The OP was making the point that his writing never improved.
Having said that there were cringeworthy aspects of the first Foundation book that improved over the subsequent books. I recently reread the series and came to the shocking conclusion that he must have been a virgin (or at least not exposed to women) in the first book.
"Search by the Second Foundation" (the second half of the book "Second Foundation") was one of the very last science fiction stories he wrote, apart from the spate of novels in the 80's.
It gets confusing because once he was famous, magazines would call him up asking for a story and he'd give them one that he'd written between 1939-1951 that had been rejected. They'd accept it because he was now a legend.
So Second Foundation, at least, is not early Asimov. It's arguably late Asimov. And it's exactly as wooden as the other parts of the original trilogy.
That said, I've read every bit of fiction he ever wrote and loved most of it, so...
I read the first 5ish foundation books fairly recently and they were great, especially the odd numbered ones. Asimov never did become a genius of dialogue and character, but the characters and dialogue in foundation 1 are both very good and I don’t understand why some people in this thread dismiss it. The first foundation book is one of the best
Look, Foundation has great concepts, but if you think it has even good characters and dialogue, you...need to read fiction with good characters and dialogue.
Literally anything? Never let me go? The wizard of Earthsea? I have a hard time seeing how can anyone not agree with the parent's assessment. Foundation is interesting because of the idea/plot it presents. But the characters themselves bring little to the table. In a way the Foundation series is a good piece of conceptual art, but sci-fi novels.
I would argue that 1Q84 (don't read it!, it sucks) is the exact opposite. Interesting characters but lacking an overarching setting/plot.
I just couldn't find myself to care about any of the actual characters.
I felt the only actual 'character' you where supposed to care about was Civilization itself. Everybody and everything else where bit players and side characters who's fates only mattered to the extend they helped or hindered Civilization.
> I think the same story, but where at least some of the characters are truly immortal (reasonable for far future sci-fi), would be better.
The Empire changes/storyline in the show are potentially setting up Demerzel at least to overtly be in some interesting places across the timeline. [1] They've also taken a fun path to play Lee Pace across most of the Fall, though not directly as an immortal.
[1] Plus, lots of fun debate to be had over which Robot Demerzel "really is" and/or how much in communication Demerzel is in with any/all of the rest of Asimov's most famous Robots that we know survived to (and were observing) the Foundation era.
I agree; it really could make a surpassingly excellent show.
All the possession contagion dovetails with our COVID concerns, yet is so different as to allow exploration by metaphor.
The instagramish phenomenon Kiera Nightly convinces youths to travel to a remote place where they are tortured until they yield to possession: Reminds me of fyrefest.
The large amount of hilarious dark humor should translate very well. For example, the sadistic edenist who overcomes possession by being the mentally strongest edenist. And the plain sadist who re-possesses his body from his possessor by being more screwed-up than a soul that had endured what amounts to hell.
I just finished this recently after dropping it halfway through because my eyes were in danger of rolling out of the back of my head due to the Capone stuff.
Re-characterising Al leaves quite the role to complete. You can't leave us hanging without suggesting what other /newly/ historical figure could replace them.
It's been a while, but I remember Asimov leaving a lot out of the books. i.e. Stories would start after the violence or some clever twist would side step it altogether. He left a lot for a visual medium to add-in. The core is there so far: psychohistory, robots, huge Trantor, planning to 'save' a galaxy amount of culture and info for a galactic reboot, etc.
It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's the first live action adaptation beyond the robot movie. Kind of always have to be forgiving with a first attempt. Even Star Trek TNG didn't get into a grove until 2nd or 3rd season.
Arguably, the departure of Gene Roddenberry was what made TNG what it was after the 2nd season. Giving more spotlight to Klingons and Romulans, violating the prime directive, made for a more interesting show. Later DS9 improved on these concepts, by showing a Federation that is willing to bend the rules when desperate times, using deception (forging evidence to disrupt the Dominion-Romulan alliance), covert operations (Section 31) and even planning a genocide (infecting Odo with a disease to spread the disease to other Founders, also Hugh in Star Trek TNG).
Kubrik made the film Lolita based on the screenplay Nabokov wrote in adaption from his novel.
The narrative frame and structure for the screenplay is quite different than the novel, but more suitable for a visual medium. I'll leave it to you to decide if it is a great movie, but the proposition that slavishly transliterating a novel into a movie is usually a bad idea seems reasonable to me.
The Expanse has its own problems, though. Namely, that a lot of the acting is terrible. Foundation at least, to me, has some strong acting and interesting character relationships.
I’m watching The Expanse now for the first time and I love it. Some characters are 2-dimensional and have childish motivations sure.
But there was a scene in which Chrisjen Avasarala gives an “imminent war” speech extremely sarcastically, like Homer to Marge in the bedroom.
I figured they’d address in the episode what her secret plan was for that speech.
Turns out: no plan, the actress wasn’t being sarcastic. She was going for strength and gravitas.
It makes no sense to me how an otherwise high quality show has those scenes. Surely the director could have gotten a non-sarcastic take. And if not, they’d have to minimize the actress’s role.
As it is, every scene with her in it breaks the fourth wall and reminds me I’m watching actors acting in front of cameras, rather than a visual narrative.
I enjoyed the realpolitik of Expanse but hated the trite interpersonal conflicts which seems to be a mainstay of modern drama. I find the main characters to be rather childish.
They are written in a childish manner: the white knight, the highly assertive love interest, the sociopath who wishes he could be a good guy, and the cowboy. Their personalities are unrealistic in ways that I would attribute to a young teenager. That said, the quirks of these trope-like characters is sometimes amusing. I enjoy the series mainly for the protomolecule plot, despite the characters.
I think the acting gets much better over the seasons. And when I rewatched seasons 1-3 recently, I didn't notice it. But maybe I'm so into the characters and stories that it just doesn't register anymore. And the Expanse certainly does have interesting character relations as the story progresses.
To be fair, I never made it past Season 1 so you may be right. It was just so distracting that I couldn't force myself to continue. More and more people recommend it, though, so I may have to just suffer through those early seasons to get to the good stuff.
The Expanse is one of only five science fiction productions on TV I could seriously recommend to someone. It deals with big themes in a coherent manner. And the characters get incredible depth as the seasons continue. And thematic/political elements get way more interesting. Almost every other science fiction series turns out to be mostly fluff (admittedly, very entertaining fluff) when viewed through the lens of The Expanse.
o Firefly - no brainer. Brilliant.
o Battlestar Galactica - Has some issues mid-late course, but still pretty end-end enthralling.
o Dark (I keep re-watching this over and over every few months. I have many notebook pages full of analysis. Seriously good SciFi for the most part.)
o Altered Carbon (mostly Season 1 - but Season 2 was okay)
Big Recommendation:
Not really science fiction (even bigger themes explored) but far superior in terms of overall quality of work/screen writing, and has a similar "concept" that a lot of supposed science fiction shows have - "The Leftovers" - Which I put on my list of the 5 most brilliant things on Television (Sopranos/The Wire/Deadwood/Breaking Bad being the other 4).
I'll give a honorable mention to stuff I loved but I can't totally recommends:
o Travelers - I'm a sucker for a good Time Travel Show.
o Foundation - Pretty - I watch it, but I totally would never recommend it.
o Fringe - Wow - was totally into this. Definitely an acquired taste though.
o Raised By Wolves - Interested in where it's going. Could entirely suck eventually I guess.
o Black Mirror - Hit and miss, though hits often enough that I keep coming back to it.
o WestWorld - I mean, we all watched it. Season 1 was *awesome* if you watched it in realtime and didn't read all the internet commentary when the aha moment hit you. Season 2 was pretty good as well IMHO. Season 3 was just dreck where the screen writing tanked *but* it paid an *awesome* homage to the very last of the Foundation Novels to bring it all home.
I did want to quit around episode 6 of season 1 on my first watch. Part of the problem is that it takes most of season 1 to cement the main characters and establish the story. I stuck it out and was hooked by season 2. Season 3 was fantastic. The story just keeps evolving, all the way up to book 9 and various novellas (season 6 is coming out in December).
LOTR and Harry Potter are easy to translate to the big screen because both follow the Hero's Journey formula. The same can be said with Dune. The only difficulty with Dune is that all of its content is hard to fit in two hour snippets.
As far as "faithful to the literary work", while the first one did a pretty fine job, it would bee an understatement to say that it didn't stay the distance especially past Azkaban. (Azkaban which is ironicaly form me is still a great movie on his own as the screenplay is in my eye a sweet wink at back to the future II)
And it still was a much more faithful adaptation than Foundation. Foundation is like a boomerang that was thrown three episodes ago, and hasn't come back yet to its source.
Not really. It feels very different from the book. It's more psychological and less supernatural even though there are elements of it from the book. If Kubrick was too faithful, it would not have been as scary.
> what struck me most on re-reading was how completely boring it would be to be faithful to it.
For God's sake.
It's screenplay writers work to adapt. One did a good job if they create a nice screen play. If that work is simplified by a solid foundation (pun intended), we'd expect at least not worse off from starting from scratch.
Look at what we get in this visual carnage of garbage.
It's very good visually, but mediocre plot-wise. The last few episodes look relatively low budget, so my guess is that they're preparing to end the season with more fistfights, a elaborate space war and the Invictus exploding like a Death Star.
If they had forgo the Foundation name and made their own universe, the fanbase would be more or less the same.
Few people are criticizing the show from deviating from books per se. It isn’t good on its own merits.
Of course they had to make some changes and flesh out some characters to adapt it for TV. They just made poor choices. Instead of going with chosen ones, heroes, and battles, they should have gone for politics in space.
Something like the political manouvering in A Song of Ice and Fire but in space.
It’s a really grand scope for a universe - but I’m enjoying the series so far and it will be interesting to see where they go with it. Basically I’m just hungry for more space and since it’s visually very appealing and the universe is compelling, I think it deserves a chance.