The collapse of the empire, he concludes, will destroy all intellectual life: art, science, history, and everything else smart people enjoy. This is a show not about space or science, but rather the limits of liberal politics.Ī brief plot summary: Hari Seldon, the hero of the books and the Apple show, is not a swashbuckling pulp adventurer, but the ultimate economist-a man who can scientifically predict the behavior of large human populations across centuries using his own field of advanced mathematics, called “psychohistory.” To everyone’s dismay, Seldon calculates doom for the Galactic Empire he calls home. But in updating Foundation for the 21st century, Goyer has produced a near-comprehensive repudiation of his source material. To its credit, Apple’s new series embraces the philosophical ambition of Asimov’s masterpiece. Foundation is a grand sci-fi adventure, sure, but it’s better understood as a work of political theory-a young American’s dialogue with the Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon about the promise and peril of empire. Liberal economists adore it, weirdo tech billionaires are entranced by it, and legions of 13-year-old nerds succumb to its ultra-rationalist siren every year.īut these beloved stories took roughly 80 years to receive the big-budget visual treatment they deserve for a reason. The Hugo Awards voted Foundation as the field’s Best All-Time Series in 1966, and no Worldcon has dared to revisit the verdict since. Goyer-the mastermind behind Apple’s extravagant TV adaptation, which wraps up its first season today-declared Foundation “the greatest science-fiction work ever written,” he was not indulging in prerelease hyperbole so much as reciting the official record.
Certainly nothing from the academy can approach its popular influence.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is perhaps the definitive expression of mid-century American liberalism. This article contains spoilers through the first season of Foundation.
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