SEARCH IN THE GALAXY

It's not really deviation from the story yet. It's too early. Think of it like this: There was a 50 year gap in Asimov's book, from chapter 1 to chapter 2. What happened in those 50 years? The show is just filling that in.

I liked the reference in the beginning to the screen name you have chosen.

So far this series has been quite impressive. One of the best Sci Fi TV series adaptions in a long time. The careful attention to certain interesting bits of technological, cultural, and political detail is quite satisfying.

Yes I was chocked at the end of episode 2 😱

"Basically, it dawned on me that what some people might call "Divine Providence", other people might be thinking of as "Second Foundation", and some people might be thinking of both as pretty much the same thing." OK, I'm assuming you've read the books so I'm going to reply to your comment. It seems that Asimov's books are about how humanity is so messed up and needs some kind of higher power --Whether it's 'the Seldon Plan", the 'Second Foundation", or some immortal robots--to stop it from going awry. Looking at what's happened on Earth in the last 5 years, I think humans desperately need some sort of guidance/control from any one of those groups. I started writing a series "Guardians of Seldon's Plan", it is about the history of the Second Foundation, which has been a blank until the time of the Mule. https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswalker88/pseuds/woodswalker88/series . Here is a link to my Foundation fanfiction, including 'Foundation's Martyrs", a sequel to the ending of 'Second Foundation". https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswalker88/works and yes, I was heavily influenced by political events here in the USA. In general the disastrous turn humanity has taken in the last 5 years inspired me to speculate on what Seldon's Plan was all about, in the essay "Beyond Psychohistory" https://archiveofourown.org/works/37005082 What do I believe is Seldon's goal? guiding humanity beyond their current state of ape-like aggression /warlike insanity. Who can do it? mentalic adepts who can smooth down that lethal aggression. Sorry. This kind of diverged from the Show.

I agree that this TV show has a number of inconsistencies, like pretty much all TV shows these days. It's practically required, for easy laughs and to have some mysteries to solve in the next season. But if I was going to point out an inconsistency, I wouldn't focus on Brother Dawn asking his staff to do things he could well do himself. I've seen powerful people in action a few times, and I've noticed that's how they often behave. And I can see why: delegating tasks is a skill, and there is some "use it or lose it" to it, like with any other skill. If you're looking for inconsistencies, episode 4 is one long incoherent list of them. But then, you may realise that Salvor Hardin isn't just saying that she's an outlier, she's showing what an outlier is. The whole episode is daring viewers: would you say it's a brilliant episode, in spite of this, and that, and the other thing? I would.

@Maria White Brin as far as I know did the third book in a trilogy of Foundation novels, but I would not call the Foundation universe a part of Brin’s universe of creation even though he certainly is a great and respected writer. My comments on Huxley and Rand were just me riffing and not intended to be taken seriously. I apologize if I mislead anyone.

I read the last one on your list, because I thought your take on Hari Seldon could be interesting. I like that Hari Seldon comes from a difficult family according to you, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, Hari Seldon has to be the ultimate defensive pessimist, and I guess a lot of them come from difficult families. I don't like that Hari Seldon is making strong predictions in public soon after he graduates. I wouldn't expect him to have the confidence so early in his life to go public. (And in the books, he doesn't. I think Asimov was right there. I'd expect Hari Seldon to be more likely to be too cautious than too eager to go public.) And I don't agree with your view that the problem is "warlike insanity" or the "animal, selfish part of their nature". That's sort of the classic Cold War mindset, and I think it's way too narrow a viewpoint. I think the essential problem of humanity is a lack of awareness of our own limitations. Even individually we aren't too good at that, and we often think we can do more or less than we actually can. But collectively we seem to be even worse. I read once that wars are only fought for one reason: because each side believe they'll win. If people were fully aware of the likelihood of winning, the losing side would just give up without a fight. But then, realistically, there are all sorts of good reasons why predicting the likely outcome of a war can be extremely difficult. And maybe, realistically, world peace isn't an achievable goal. Still, I think that avoiding major disasters, like world wars or destroying irreversibly our ecosphere, should be well within our collective ability, in principle. Whether they are within our collective ability in the near future is a different question, and I suspect the answer is "no". Which is the main reason I'm a big fan of Foundation. As for "stepping beyond psychohistory"... let's create it before stepping beyond it, hey? Unless, that is, you think that it exists already. Given the state of the world, it certainly doesn't seem to exist, or at least, the bits that exist don't seem to be well known and certainly aren't being applied to improve the current situation. On the other hand, something definitely exists that might be confused in some people's minds with psychohistory, which is what I was talking about. I mean, I've only realised in recent times why Asimov made the Second Foundation of "mentalic adepts". I used to think it was just him not having a good understanding of social sciences and thinking the whole thing needed more psychology than it actually does. Given recent experiences I'm not going to argue with the fact that the human mind can be very weird and maybe some psychology is actually required. But I'd rather not be anywhere close to trusting things like feelings of one-ness. And I don't think the basic principles would be a matter of psychology, but a matter of how systems work, applied to the specific case of human beings living on planet Earth.