Foundation

Salvor Hardin's line that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent sums up the books well. In Asimov's Foundation, crises are won by thinking, by out-reasoning an opponent rather than out-fighting one. Readers who come from the show will find a colder, sharper, more cerebral work, where the real subject is an idea: that the future of a civilisation might be calculated, and what happens when people live inside that calculation. The trilogy gives something the series has deliberately given up. It moves across centuries, and each section jumps forward to new people facing a new problem. No clones or cryosleep carry a familiar face through the ages, so history itself becomes the main character. This makes Seldon's plan feel huge in a way that continuous storylines cannot. The books are also short, brisk and full of dialogue, and they show clearly the foundations the show has built on so loosely. For viewers drawn to Demerzel and the Cleons, the trilogy explains what the show is reacting against, and Asimov's prequels and robot stories show where Demerzel's roots lie.

Brothers Dawn, Day and Dusk, the Cleon clones who rule the Empire as a Genetic Dynasty, were invented for the show. Nothing like them appears in Asimov's books, and showrunner David S. Goyer has called the idea a big departure. Demerzel is just as central. She is a female version of the robot Daneel Olivaw, who never appears in the original trilogy, only in the later prequels. The show gives her a new, tragic backstory in which she is bound to serve the Cleons, built from Asimov's robot stories. The structure changes most. The books are linked stories set decades or centuries apart with no recurring leads. The show keeps its characters alive across time jumps through clones, robots, cryosleep and the Vault, partly because buyers would not take an anthology. The leads change too. Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin become women. Gaal turns from a passive observer into an intuitive character torn between logic and emotion who later becomes a mentalic. Salvor is no longer Terminus's mayor but its Warden, a military post, and she is far more action-driven than the book's advocate of avoiding violence. The show also adds events of its own, including a terrorist attack that brings down Trantor's Star Bridge and the brutal murder of Hari Seldon. Raych is reworked and takes over scenes from other figures, such as Seldon's lawyer. Season 2 merges material from several books. It pairs a new Seldon Crisis with Hober Mallow's shift from religion to trade, adds an original mentalic community on Ignis as the root of the Second Foundation, makes Dors Venabili a robot sent by Demerzel, and kills off Bel Riose, Mallow and Salvor. The Mule is set up early through Gaal's visions. In tone the show trades the books' cerebral, idea-driven style for character drama, graphic violence and sex. The show is still running, with a fourth season ordered, so whether it will keep or change the books' ending cannot yet be judged. Nothing is known so far about a changed ending.