“People have been trying to make Foundation for over 50 years,” said Goyer in a promotional video for the series. Goyer’s Foundation ends up being the best Isaac Asimov adaptation ever to hit the screen, it will have cleared a very low bar.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings-Asimov’s dismissive approach to “eye-sci-fi” reflected the constant difficulties filmmakers have had in translating his perennially popular stories to the screen. Though the Foundation series received a special Hugo Award for Best All-Time series-beating out J.R.R. Reverent as that description is, it may not be a promising sign for Asimov fans who know the original Foundation chronicles weren’t novels at all: they were a series of short stories and novellas published between 19, subsequently compiled into three books that became known as “the Foundation trilogy.” Not until the 1980s did Asimov write true Foundation novels, adding four books that expanded the story’s scope. would be a matter of particular interest to Asimov: it’s Foundation, the forthcoming Apple TV+ series based on what the trailer describes as Asimov’s own “groundbreaking novels.” The late grand master, who reserved the more dignified abbreviation “s.f.” for literary science fiction, held out hope that one day, “visual science fiction may graduate from sci-fi to s.f.” Whether the epic spectacular described above will qualify as eye-sci-fi or s.f. “Since the show-business people and journalists who talk about image-science-fiction refer to it, abominably, as sci-fi, suppose we call image-science-fiction i-sci-fi or, better yet, eye-sci-fi.” “In the movies and television, science fiction deals primarily with images, so we might call it image-science-fiction,” he wrote in 1979. An awe-inspiring display of sweeping vistas rendered with the latest special effects technology: vast cities! Towering idols! Brave stands! Smoldering kisses in steamy pools! Vast spacecraft erupting in explosions, while desperate soldiers in armored suits pummel each other with the butts of laser rifles. Fire raining down from space onto a planet besieged.

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