When "Foundation" Gets the Blockbuster Treatment, Isaac Asimov's Vision Gets Lost

An innocent viewer of the new Apple TV series "Foundation"--a lavish production complete with clone emperors, a haunted starship, and a killer android who tears off her own face--might be surprised to learn that the novels it's based on inspired Paul Krugman to become an economist. Isaac Asimov's classic saga revolves around the dismal science of "psychohistory," a hybrid of math and psychology that can predict the future. Its inventor, Hari Seldon, lives in a twelve-thousand-year-old galactic empire, which, his equations reveal, is about to collapse. "Interstellar wars will be endless," he warns. His followers establish a Foundation on the frontier world of Terminus--a colony tasked with conserving all human knowledge--where they spend the next millennium fulfilling "Seldon's plan" to reunite the galaxy.