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My little cat has very wisely decided that a spread blanket is an invitation for her to sit upon it. Beast frequently wears a fleece dressing gown about the place, and she sits on the loose bit when he's on the sofa. So I have been spreading the blanket across my lap and legs, and usually leaving her a gap between my knees. Last night, I kept my knees together, and Sable spent about two hours curled up happily on my lap. \o/ She is so very silky to stroke.

We had to give her pills yesterday. She **hates** having flea treatment put on the back of her neck, so this time I asked for a pill. The worm pill (half a pill, as she is a Very Small Animal) was sandwiched into a piece of chicken and went down very easily. When I tried to administer the flea pill in a similar way, the chicken fell apart onto the floor. Sable hoovered it up, and then perceived another small white something on the floor, and ate that, too. A lot easier than I had expected!

Of late the cat has been seen to eat: crisps, curry sauce, strawberry yogurt and, most weirdly, avocado. I have a suspicion my cat thinks she is a Labrador.

*

Foundation

Has anyone been watching Foundation? It's on Apple TV, so possibly not. Still, the whole of the first season is now available, and we've watched it. Note: there may be 'spoilers' for the books here, but I figure spoilers for books that were published several years before I was born can be forgiven.

Well, it's beautifully done. Apparently the landscapes were largely *real* ones, in various parts of Europe (Malta, Iceland and others), which is nice. Costumes are good without shouting about it, and the future tech is well thought out. I very much like the multiracial casting, it presents a world of difference, though there does seem so far to be a dearth of Chinese/Japanese/Korean (etc) characters. (It does seem to me that the Future, so far out, ought to present humanity which has basically all melted into a state where 'ethnic types' can no longer be distinguished, but it would be very hard to cast.)

The problem with the original is that Asimov didn't write a lot of characters, so any adaptation had to bring his puppets to life, and that necessarily means giving them a lot *more* than they started with. That's fine. Jared Harris' Hari Seldon, for instance, gets to be smug, superior, and frankly rather a jerk, which all seems very plausible.

I really love the way the triple Emperor is done. The actors for Day (Lee Pace) and Dusk (Terence Mann) are doing absolutely stellar work. It is very easy to differentiate between the first Dusk and the second—I honestly found myself thinking, that isn't the same actor, is it? when Dusk was behaving just as Day had done. And younger Day has something of the child.... though he's still the same ruthless, absolutist and cruel bastard as his elder self, as it unsurprisingly turns out. The plotline involving the youngest of the three is very interesting, and the portrayal of his Hunt is extremely cool. In many ways I think this is the best thing in the show—an examination of how power corrupts, how an already appalling personality (who has himself cloned so that all future emperors are *him*—that's not a nice man!) gets even more appalling when there are no restraints whatever, how this set-up means the political system literally cannot change, because the personality in charge is utterly vile. No wonder the Empire is destined to fall, and no wonder the Emperor(s) can't see it.

The Star Bridge (my Beast reminds me) is not part of the original novels, but is a brilliant concept (possibly one of Arthur C Clarke's) and very well presented, though I'm not sure it did enough damage.

What I don't altogether like are the lucky/instinctively right characters, and it annoys me particularly that they are both female. Gaal taught herself highly advanced mathematics from scratch and apparently by instinct, which is... quite a lot to swallow, plus she gets instinct/prescience warnings of Bad Stuff. Salvor sees visions which lead her to make great choices. I want them to have been logical! I want them to be smart, not lucky! In the books, the anomalous character is a Big Fucking Deal, because he breaks Psychohistory. Why write in characters who are not and cannot be accounted for in these mathematically calculated forecasts of future human behaviour, when they are precisely what stops the model from working? (Also I am side-eying very hard the idea that Seldon predicted that ship and how it would be used. Srsly? I mean, they inserted a minimal handwavy explanation, but bah.)

And... well, I just wonder, if you're going to make a TV show based on the Foundation trilogy, and publicise it as such, why not actually, um, make the TV show based on the books? There do need to be changes—for starters, the vision of the future summoned up in the 1940s/50s is well different from the visions of the future that work now. A modern future has women in it, for instance. This show does well in that respect. (They seem to have made a definite choice that White Man = Bad, in various degrees—never trust a white man in authority!—but I can't seem to care about that.) But some of the things that have happened in the show seem to be different for the sake of being different, and I'm not sure there is a particular benefit there. The Anacreon/Thespin storyline is well done, plausibly set up, etc, but does include that magic ship and the magic girl who just knows exactly what to do and, eh. I'd much prefer a logical Salvor, and really, the story could have been written more or less the same but with her being *smart* and *logical*, not *smart* and *lucky* and *with visions*. The original story, the book story, had a much more plausibly psychohistory-style plot, with political logic coming in to save the colony, and Salvor Hardin as an intelligent mayor who stopped them making false steps. As I said, why not actually *make* the story you claim to be making? Possibly there wasn't enough visceral violence in the original?

Admittedly, 'Psychohistory' is Just Silly, and I thought so back when I was a teenager and first read the books. Its manifestation in this series is Just Silly as well, only Even Sillier Than That. Still. Take a SF 'classic' and make it work as television, and do it by paring it down to what's essential, bringing it up to date, giving it interesting characters, and working out the logic that it needs. Don't start down the road and then fork off down all the side roads. Or, if you must, be honest and admit that it is fanfic. Ohmigawd, it's fanfic with TWO Mary Sues.

Crossposts: https://pensnest.livejournal.com/689566.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kingstoken

What is soft blanket if not place to sit?

From:

pensnest

This is true - as the coating of black hairs attests.

From:

spikedluv

Wow! I can't believe you got away with the pill trick twice in a row, especially after she saw it! Well done, cat mom.

From:

pensnest

It was rather astonishing! She really will eat anything. Except soya yogurt.

From:

stranger

On the Foundation show, I'm reminded of a purported Lensman movie, a cartoon, anime-style thing shown at an SF convention, that was transparently re-using the then-new SW esthetic, including a robot who could have been (and mostly was) R2D2, with a plot very tenuously connected to any of the E.E. Smith books. It's not like Asimov didn't write a plot, even if the characters were cheerfully cardboard. Asimov was good at situations, and math, and robots... come to think of it, that odd not-Lensman movie would have been more convincing if it had been a supposed Foundation animation...

Psychohistory is very much Just Silly, but as an SF concept it supports the what-if story as well as FTL, or telepathy, or time travel, except that Asimov made it up (or at least named it) all himself, instead of a bunch of vaguely literate physicists thinking that the speed of light was a neat SF concept if you could just *subvert* it, and then writing stories. FTL is totally a Mary Sue! Every time Kirk says "warp speed," he becomes a princess and marries Spock. Well, from a physics point of view, it's about the same.

Sadly, I haven't seen the Foundation show at all for various reasons, but it gets points for putting characters where Asimov had naked ideas. And, the lucky instead of smart thing is definitely a problem. Did psychohistory allow for luck? Randomicity? Why am I thinking about Nine Princes in Amber, and how there was never any literal amber to hang that title on...

Edited Date: 2021-11-23 11:17 pm (UTC)

From:

pensnest

Yes! There was an interesting SF concept in Psychohistory, and however silly a concept, it's ok if it's interesting. And quite a smart path plotted out in the books already, so it's irritating that they changed it. So I'm quite torn about the show. The Empire triploid are by far the worst people, but the show deals with them so well (so far); the actual Foundation stuff could very reasonably stand on its own. And, well, isn't it annoying that the *female* math genius got there by "instinct" instead of by being really smart? Hmph.

I am charmed by the idea of Kirk becoming a princess, which... actually isn't that unlikely a concept, is it!

Didn't they live in a place called Amber? It has been a very long time since I read those books. I was very partial to Benedict, I remember. It's probably the name.

From:

stranger

Fanfic happily made Spock a prince, or equivalent, so if he married Kirk...

Amber was (Zelazy blithely info-dumped) the central, real reality of which everything else is Shadow. The Amber princes could travel between shadow realities (including Earth) by thinking changes into their surroundings until they get where they wanted to be. Um. Well, it's a boldly realized creation, and framed as metaphysical fantasy anyway, but the more you think about it, the weirder ane more Medieval it gets. It even might have been throwing a sidewise comment toward "all roads lead to Trantor" if you squint.

From:

bossymarmalade

Crisps and avocado I'm sorry I am now obsessed with your cat.

From:

pensnest

She was a rescue cat from a gaggle of about twelve (the others all seem to have been very handsome tabbies) and I think went short of food because all the other cats were the boss of her. Now she is the boss cat of the house, and will haz All The Fudz. The avocado was a bit of a surprise, though.

From:

dine

Olivier is also fond of yogurt - he'll eat my faves blackberry and dark cherry, and other random flavours if they're offered. he's also a fan of cream cheese, Chinese BBQ pork, browned ground beef, cheddar cheese, chicken nuggets and pulled pork. probably other stuff, but those are definitely on his radar and he demands his share if I'm eating them. I've never offered him crisps or avocado, though he does like green beans

From:

pensnest

Green beans??? Goodness. Yogurt is no surprise, nor all those meat-based products, but green beans.... Sable is Entitled to my breakfast leftovers, these days, but she doesn't care for the soya yogurts which I use about half the time.

From:

dine

the green beans didn't surprise me too much, as our cat when I was a kid also loved them. but he also craved waffles, and would hop on the counter to pull cantaloupe rinds from the kitchen waste tub. can't tell you how often we'd find part of a waffle, or a well-gnawed partial melon rind on the floor

From:

watervole

You may have more belief in Graal and her math ability after reading about Ramanujan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

From:

watervole

I haven't seen the show, but Ramanujan had hardly any formal training.

From:

pensnest

You know, I think I have heard of him before... and I suppose if you have a mind built for math (I *really* don't) it can take you to all kinds of places. But I still don't think it's reasonable to put it in this show. I think fiction needs to be more plausible than life (if possible), especially when there are all sort of concepts being floated about that are already implausible. (As an aside, that may be why I loved my boyband RPF so much—their lives contained so much that you couldn't write as fiction because people would balk!!) They could have set up both Gaal and Salvor with logical minds rather than instinctive stuff, and I'd have been much happier.

From:

turlough

Fuzzy surfaces were MADE for cats to lounge on. At least, that's Lancecat's firm opinion.

Sable's behaviour with the flea pill made me giggle. She's such a good cat. Or possibly Labrador :-)

I remember reading the first Foundation book when I was in my teens and absolutely loathing it. It put me off Asimov forever.

From:

pensnest

Sable is a funny little cat. But I suspect most of them are, except Lancecat who is very dignified and proper. (!)

I'm pretty sure we still have all the Asimov books in the house, but I feel no need to read them again. I like books with characters in them!

From:

frausorge

Yay for your successful cat luring and medicine administering! I got to pet my friend's cat yesterday - he wouldn't sit on my lap, but he sat next to me on the couch to be petted, it was great.