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HBO Developing Asimov's Foundation Series As TV Show
wired_parrot writes: Jonathan Nolan, writer of Interstellar and The Dark Knight, and producer of the TV show "Person of Interest," is teaming up with HBO to bring to screen a new series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of books. This would be the first adaptation of the Hugo-award-winning series of novels to the screen.
Good thing it's Asimov and not George R R Martin...
Hari Seldon would have been killed by a classmate before he ever developed psychohistory.
How will HBO put boobs in this? Will there be fembots in it? :-)
Make a Rendezvous With Rama movie, would ya?
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Since the book(s) have all the action in the background, and the big reveal in the post crisis recap, I am sure the movie will suck. The temptation to turn it into a special effects Michael Bay-like cinema enema will ruin the complex story line. But the CGI teams will win a shit-tonne of awards.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Now I don't have to read the books.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The original trilogy was awesome, but later books were not the same caliber. But knowing how the entertainment industry works, they'll milk it for all its worth.
Foundation was not really prudish, but Asimov really didn't include (any that I recall) blatant sex scenes or sexual themes in his books, at least directly. It was always between the lines, as a means to advance the plot. Similarly the language was pretty clean most of the time. I'm not sure how this fits HBO's M.O. I mean they added MORE sex to Game of Thrones, and the books I think covered almost every variety and perversion attainable without giving characters internet access.
Foundation to me was always more Star Trek style science fiction, geared towards dreamers and full of hope (even in spite of what psychohistory predicted, and why Foundation existed). In contrast, HBOs other series, though well done, tend to focus on our seedier side. HBO can make a good show, but I wonder if the end product will resemble the series it's based on. Sex won't ruin it, but done the way HBO does it, will certainly be distracting.
Well, at least we got to learn that Minister Lizalor's breasts were as massive, firm, and overpoweringly impressive as the Minister herself. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
I Robot had nothing to do with the book. It was in fact written on another title first and then they bought the name to slap on it because people would recognize it, and, hey, it's about robots, right? A bit of script touch-up to change a few names (gotta have Susan Calvin, although of course she won't be plain) and put in a few references to Asimov's concepts, and we're done!
Most movies and TV shows take place in a universe where the only sentient beings are humans from Earth.
Quite a few seem to be based in a universe where there aren't any sentient beings at all. We call them "reality TV".
The story has antigravity, faster-than-light travel, force-shield projectors you can wear as a belt buckle and you're okay with the unrealistic physics, but you dismiss the entire series because you don't like the abstractly-defined maths in the first book?
If you thought Asimov was unaware of chaos theory, then you haven't read past the first book, and you also don't know the author's other works.
Depends on which books, and where in his career he was. He got fairly blatant around mid-career, although rarely actually explicit. When they say 'Foundation Series' it's open to interpretation on which books are likely meant - The original three were early in his career, and didn't really have much sex in them. The later two (mid-career) at the end have sex as a major plot driver/enabler, and the two prequels (end-career) feature it without making it a huge point. So it depends somewhat on where they start. I'm betting they'll start with the prequels - they have a strong central character, and can lead into the rest without much issue even after he dies. (And a fair amount of sex if they want it.)
The other point I'd be worried about is violence - the Foundation Series is about the fall of an empire and the rise of a new one, but actual fighting doesn't occur often. There are several places where it looks like it's about to, but then the forces of history make it unnecessary. (Or the populace gets mind-controlled, in one case...) It'd be very tempting for a director of a drama series to ramp up the violence, but it would change a large part of the point of the stories.
Oh, and in response to a couple levels up: They didn't use robots for sex in the stories. They didn't use robots for anything, in fact. There was a complete ban on higher-level AIs and on humanoid machines, to the level of taboo. (Although there were a few characters who where extremely humanoid robots in the prequels and sequels - and were basically the reason for the bans.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
That Al-Quaida gets its name from these books?
Yes. As a Russian American Jew, Asimov represented everything that Bin Laden loved.