Foundation comes to Apple TV + to the delight of fans of the literary saga and followers of Isaac Asimov. This is not only a storytelling feat, but also a risk of gigantic proportions. After all, Foundation is the emblematic work of the extensive work of Isaac Asimov. Also one of the most important contributions to the science fiction genre in its enormous extension and proposals.
It is a tour of all the great themes, topics and concerns of the genre. With almost five hundred works (which include a varied mix of types of stories), Asimov reconstructed speculative literature. It gave a preponderant place to human concerns and to the fact of ttechnology at the service of man as the cornerstone of his narrative gaze.
Isaac Asimov drew up a road map to the future. He did so through the conviction that literature and science could answer most existential questions. With a look between sensitive and based on all kinds of questions and wide-ranging questions, Asimov looked at gender as a space for debate.
Also as a way to elaborate his most extraordinary theories about what could await human history in its transit into the future. With an astonishing imagination and a delicate conception of time and space, Asimov managed to narrate the world. But the world of tomorrow, of great technical feats, of planets and artificial intelligence. Everything before they existed. Or at least he had a critical sense that far exceeded similar proposals.
A traveler in time and space through the page
His colossal Saga Foundation was born as a trilogy and ended up spreading as a great fantastic nomenclature through all his work. The author iimagined the galaxy as some kind of unexplored terrain halfway between magical wonder and scientific curiosity. In Asimov’s worlds, beauty is assimilated through technology.
For Asimov, “psychohistory” ranges from technology to time, the perception of the future of history and the daring of the imagination. Therefore, and according to Asimov’s perspective, the behavior of what we are and want to be as a culture and society can be predictable. Which makes science fiction an extraordinary manifesto and of enormous value as an intellectual document.
Perhaps for that reason, Isaac Asimov is often called the father of modern science fiction. A title that may seem exaggerated, but that actually encompasses and defines the writer’s contributions to a new perspective on the genre. Asimov, with his optimistic conception, and above all deeply humanistic of the future, rebuilt and rethink that notion about the human being as part of their environment. But special as the owner of his future.
Time and time again, Asimov considers human nature as a mystery in itself, beyond robots or planets to discover. For Asimov, dystopia and utopia merge to build a new vision of the future. One that borders on science without relying on it completely that analyzes culture and perhaps criticism, but always maintains hope.
Asimov and science fiction as you know it
A Kafkaesque agency capable of controlling time and the future. One that also makes decisions on questionable occasions to maintain chronological unity. Shall we talk about the series Loki? Or the plot pirouettes of Rick and morty? Actually the book The end of the eternity (1955) Asimov had raised the idea, and in fact he had carefully deepened it. The book, which terrified readers of the time, is one of the must-see references in time travel.
In 1950, the author published I robot, in which for the first time he ponders the limits of artificial intelligence. And it does so, through the invention of the word “robotics” and its fundamental laws.
- First: a robot must not harm a human being or, by its inaction, allow a human being to suffer harm.
- Second: a robot must obey the orders that are given to it by a human being, except when these orders are contrary to the first Law.
- Third: a robot must protect its own existence, insofar as this protection does not conflict with the first and second Laws.
A decalogue of duty that seems to subject technological creation to a novel moral tirade. Perhaps emulating Philip K. Dick, Asimov questions in his work the responsibility of the technological creatures of man about the world it inhabits despite its limitations as a creation restricted to use and even to mere whim.
Asimov’s perception of robotics is essential to pop culture. From 2001 A Space Odyssey from Stanley Kubrick to Ex machina of Alex Garland, Asimov is the main reference. It is also so in writers such as William Gibson, Douglas Adams, and Jeff VanderMeer.
In his novel Steel Vault (1953), Asimov proposes the colonization of other planets. But unlike other authors, it does so with a brilliant need to explore the human outside of its purview.
Asimov wrote with the same passion about ancient Egypt as about dinosaurs or the extinction of the human species. For Asimov, human knowledge was a great synthesis, without borders or small divisions. A perception that led him to imagine time, space and possibilities from curiosity and a certain innocence. Perhaps an astonishing achievement amid the cynicism of our age.