Other than for self-improvement, I’m not a big fan of books (nor podcasts) in general, because of the big time investment required. THIS, however, is such an amazing masterpiece of a radio adaptation that I can heartily recommend it to anyone who has a good grasp of spoken British English (it was produced over fourty years ago by the BBC, after all). After the first episode, I was hooked, and ate through the entire série in a week or two. I found it best listened to while relaxing, with eyes closed to immerse yourself in the intergalactic drama at play.
I’ll smugly say I foresaw a couple of the plot twists (including a big part of the chapters concerning the Mule), but Asimov kept surprising me otherwise.
Besides having very talented voice actors give life to what might otherwise be a bit of a dry story for non-sci-fi connaisseurs, it turns out that the radio adaptation has a special segment about the life of farmers on Rossem. That segment is absolutely hilarious, contrasting heavily with the doomy & gloomy nature of the whole series. It is also fairly philosophical, touching on the question of life fulfilment. The exchange between Pritcher and the Mule, after talking with those farmers, was a great emotional portrayal: you could actually feel perplexity and doubt in Pritcher’s voice, and shock and urgency in the Mule’s.
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Comments
One response to “BBC Radio's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy”
Hey, thanks so much for posting this! Already downloaded it and going to start to listen to it in the next couple of days.
I always wanted to get started on Asimov, but with my limited time for pleasure reading I thought it too hard to commit to a series that’s sometimes described as “dry”. But being able to listen to it while walking places in a few hours I may finally get around to it 🙂
And isn’t it great when stuff like this is available in the public domain?
Found this via Planet Gnome. Thanks so much!