Last Friday Apple TV+ premiered David S. Goyer’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic SF series of novel starting with Foundation.

Confession: I have never read the novels upon which this series is based. I have read a few novels and more short fiction from Asimov’s, but I always found his fiction too dry, the character to flat to be fully engaging. Asimov’s fiction tended towards Ideas and Puzzles with his characters there to push plot points forward to solve the puzzle or give voice to the idea. Only on Asimov story stands out in my memory with any sort of emotional weight and that is the short story Liar from the collection I, Robot. With his love of logic problems and flat characters to me it is not surprising that Asimov is best known for robot stories of artificial intelligences.

Foundation is the story of a collapse of a Galactic Empire ushering in a barbarous dark age of endless war and strife as civilization vanishes from the galaxy. One man, Hari Seldon, through the development of his science Psychohistory, which reduced human history and civilization to data and equations and can prediction with unerring accuracy the movement and actions of population but is utterly blind on the individual level, sees the coming fall and strives to shorten it by establishing The Foundation that will help rebuild civilization after the collapse.

The Series opens with a young brilliant mathematician, Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), who comes from a world of religious zealotry, arriving to work with Seldon (Jared Harris). She is perhaps the only other mathematician in the galaxy that is skilled and talented enough to fully understand the complex equations of Psychohistory. The emperor, a trio of clones of different ages, (played by Terrance Mann, Lee Pace, and Cassian Bilton is descending order of age) sees Seldon and his following as a threat to the stability of the Empire. Even as the social fabric unravels and the empire faces unprecedented threats its focus is on enemies and not the coming darkness.

Showrunner Goyer has stated that to tell the full story of Foundation and the thousands of years it will encompass he hopes to have the series run for eight seasons. Only time and audience numbers will tell if he can avoid the collapse of his how personal empire before the story is complete.

Foundation streams on Apple TV+.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,