There is perhaps no name more synonymous with old school science fiction than Isaac Asimov. By the time the prolific writer passed away in 1992, he had published over 500 books and innumerable short stories, many of which went on to be brought to life on-screen in some fashion (including 1999’s Bicentennial Man and the 2004 Will Smith action blockbuster I, Robot). Though the late author is not without his controversies, his influence is felt throughout science fiction, and several authors, from Frank Herbert to Timothy Zahn, would not exist in the same form without him. Project Hail Mary’s Andy Weir recently cited Asimov among his all-time greats, too.
In 2021, Apple TV+ released the first season of a series based on Asimov’s thematically dense and wildly influential collection of novels under the same name. An epic that spans multiple generations, following the struggles of the Foundation (an organization created for the purpose of saving the full breadth of recorded human knowledge) in the far future, as they buck against the machinations of an interplanetary Empire while trying to save humanity from a future cataclysm they're unable to foresee, despite the existence of psychohistory, a kind of super math designed to predict the larger events of tomorrow.
