Foundation is a science fiction series based on three collections of books, novellas and short stories spanning almost fifty years by the venerable writer Isaac Asimov. His groundbreaking science fiction work is now a television series helmed by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Flash Forward) and Josh Friedman (Avatar: Way Of Water, Terminator: Dark Fate). Foundation is arguably considered one of Asimov’s finest story collection featuring galactic Empires. Showrunner David S. Goyer spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his attraction to the story and his desire to see it reimagined as a television series.

Isaac Asimov’s Cyclical Vision Of Humanity

“If you go back into the prism of seventy-five years ago, that lens is pretty phenomenal. No one had come up with the idea of a Galactic Empire before. There were so many ideas thrown out in Foundation that were so revolutionary,” remarks Goyer. They were ahead of their time and paved the way for such stories. George Lucas further popularized the idea of Intergalactic Empires into a popular culture phenomenon with Star Wars.

Goyer continues, “Asimov was the first author that turned science fiction into art in the same way that Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman were the first authors that turned comic books into art,” he continues.

Isaac Asimov’s name is revered by literary fans who might not explicitly consider themselves science fiction buffs. Goyer was first introduced to Foundation by his father when he was thirteen years old. He read it again at age twenty-five, and again a decade later to fully appreciate the heft of it. He was twice offered the opportunity to adapt the books into a feature – about ten, and later, about fifteen years ago. “Both times I turned it down for two reasons. One, I didn’t think there was any way to encapsulate Foundation even within a movie or a trilogy of films. And two, I didn’t think I was mature enough, or perhaps honed enough in my craft, to be able to adapt it.”

Goyer believes that the changing streaming landscape with allowed for big-budget, big-cast, epic, complicated, and novelistic shows like Game Of Thrones made the time ripe for Foundation to get the on-screen treatment. He also became a father of three at that point so he believes he has enough life experience to tackle it.

“The other interesting challenge is that some of the core concepts have already been strip-mined by George Lucas and others… not just the Galactic Empire, but even as you get into the Second Foundation, they really are the precursors of the Jedi. Then when you get to Coruscant, Coruscant is Tranter in Foundation. It’s completely mapped out.”

Goyer draws further parallels between Foundation and Star Wars. “I didn’t realize that as a kid when I was first watching Star Wars. There’s a character in the second Foundation novel called Han Pritcher. Han Solo was literally named after that character from Boom Bap Nation,” he continues.

Despite the abundance of source material to shape Goyer’s adaptation into a television series, there were challenges in making it distinct. “I had to figure out how to take everything that was old and make it new again, and not make it Star Wars or Star Trek. We had to do a lot of reinvention and re-examine how ships jump through hyperspace, how math is depicted and how holograms are depicted in Foundation,” states Goyer.

Goyer and Friedman wrestled with the concept of depicting holograms in their show. “We came up with sandograms. Holograms emit light. We decided our sandograms reflect and refract light. So, our sandograms actually cast shadows, which is the exact opposite of the way holograms are normally treated in film and television.”

Every time the parallels between existing science fiction shows and movies became too familiar, they considered how to do things differently, whether it was changing the world, the physics, or design elements.

Isaac Asimov published the first tranche of Foundation books in 1942 and the last in 1993. We asked David Goyer how he remained true to the core intent of the books while giving the story a modern makeover.

Psychohistory and Prime Radiant

The core concept of the novels was psychohistory which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to predict the future, and the second is prime radiant which stores all this data. “History and humanity are cyclical. We don’t pay attention to the past, so we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and we can accurately predict the future. I say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Ninety percent of the time, what anyone does in the past is what they’re going to do in the future.”

David S. Goyer. Photo by Dave Benett

“Humanity can change, but the long arc of history or justice is slow when it does. It takes a lot of work and a lot of effort.”

“Asimov wrote these stories during post-World War II. His family were Jewish refugees. He’d served in the armed forces. He was concerned about Nazism, the rise of nationalism, and all these things that we are doomed to repeat.”

Asimov was inspired by The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon and projected its lessons on his own work. If you look to the past, it’s not too hard to predict where things will go in the future.

“Science fiction works best when it functions as allegory and as shining a mirror back on today. Science fiction is not really about the future. Good science fiction is about today. Good science fiction and good horror, are about the anxieties that people are experiencing today.”

“The biggest irony is that Asimov was writing in a post-World War II Cold War environment, and here we are again today in a Cold War environment in season 2 of Foundation. So much of the rhetoric that we’re hearing from some of the strong men around the world, is right out of the same playbook, word for word,” continues Goyer.

But Steven S. Goyer, couldn’t drag his audiences into a pit of despair in his television show.

“We all have the same anxieties that everyone else does. By the same token, you have to entertain. No one wants to be preached to. No one wants to be shown something important. If you’re not entertaining people, you’re not going to move minds. The beauty of science fiction is that you can attack some of this stuff through metaphor. You can come at it perpendicularly,” asserts Goyer.