• gerikson@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    3 days ago

    Also the Galactic Empire as an anti-scientific hellhole with secret police surveillance.

    Witness good old Hari Seldon unveiling his plans on Trantor:

    It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous phrases in various tones and voices.

    [Seldon] put his fingers on a certain spot on his desk and a small section of the wall behind him slid aside. Only his own fingers could have done so, since only his particular print-pattern could have activated the scanner beneath.

    […]

    “You will find several microfilms inside,” said Seldon. “Take the one marked with the letter T.”

    Gaal did so and waited while Seldon fixed it within the projector and handed the young man a pair of eyepieces. Gaal adjusted them, and watched the film unroll before his eyes.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 days ago

      They traded coal interstellarly, which always made me lol. Think a lot of the people who are this hype about the older sf simply have not read them again in ages. As blakestacey says, the golden age is 12.

      • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        The people who made the Foundation TV show faced the challenge, not just of adapting a story that repeatedly jumps forward from one generation to the next, but of adapting a series where an actual character doesn’t show up until the second book.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 day ago

          I enjoyed what I have seen from the series so far tbh. Doesnt follow the books religiously l, but still a good bit of sf imho. They seem to understand scale at least.

          • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            24 hours ago

            I like the series (I thought the second season was stronger than the first, but the first was fine). Jared Harris is a good Hari Seldon. He plays a man that you feel could be kind, but circumstances have forced him into being manipulative and just a bit vengeful, and our friend Hari is rather good at that.

      • istewart@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        What with all the rapid innovation surrounding small modular reactors, I still firmly believe that I will be able to bolt a nuclear reactor to a DeLorean in my garage

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          2 days ago

          Sadly we talked about those here, and how unlikely they are to going to work, either in the future or ever. Also, think it was a fusion reactor.