Season 2 Episode 2 – Podcast History is Littered with Charlatans and False Messiahs
And… here we are! The moment to which we’ve been building. After months of anticipation, we finally have episodes to watch and discuss! And discuss them we do!
Join us for a no-holds-barred conversation about Foundation: Episode 1 – “The Emperor’s Peace” and Episode 2 – “Preparing to Live!”
Don’t want spoilers? Run to your favorite streaming device, find Apple TV+, and watch the episodes! Now! We’ll be here when you’re ready!
Too excited to worry about spoilers? Us too! Dive right in! We’re happy you’re here!
This is it! A teevee series 80 years in the making! Brother Dawn may not be able to save his legacy, but we’re giving a nice polish to Philo T. Farnsworth’s as well as that of The Great and Glorious AZ!
As of today, 25 September 2021, Jon, Dan, and I have watched the first two episodes of Foundation and we’ve recorded Season 2 Episode 2 which starts our analysis!
There are some minor spoilers below, so beware!
One thing that seems to be a near-universal opinion is that the series looks great! I (Joseph) think it goes a bit farther than that. There’s some skillful use of imagery to tie the themes and moments together. This shot impressed me. When we see Gaal, there are frequent images of water. Water is tied closely to her home on Synnax and her religion, or rather, Synnax’s religion. In this scene, Jerril is trying to convince her to denounce psychohistory. Betray Hari, he’s telling her and you can go home. And here, with the two of them shrouded in darkness, with all of the water and all of the mist, is where he makes the case. Jerril is pushing the Empire’s interests and the spaceship and sun are central. Further in the background, those interests are tied to the star bridge. More on this soon!.
Here are each of our first impressions.
Jon: Very different from the book. They had a lot of exposition to do and they did it intelligently. I am left wanting to see what happens. I loved Sid in the courtroom scene! No twisting 😦
Joseph: Here’s my tweet from after the first episode.
Dan: We didn’t expect Hari to end up on the ship, either!
And what about episode 2? What do we think about everything else? You’ll have to listen to our next episode to find out! We look forward to seeing you!
The first two episodes of Asimov’s Foundation have dropped on the Apple TV+ a few hours early. We don’t know if this was by accident or by design.
So get watching! And if you’re so inclined, we provide some Foundation Bingo Cards to enhance your viewing experience, lovingly crafted by our own Jon Blumenfeld. Value added: It’s what we do here at Stars End Podcast.
Enjoy! And please join us for our reactions on our next episode! Personally, I’m hoping to learn how to pronounce “interregnum.”
Season 2 Episode 1 – “All Podcasts Lead to Trantor.”
The naysayers said it would never happen and that our plucky little podcast would never see a second season! Yet here we are defying the laws of Psychohistory, renewed and ready for the advent of the Apple TV+ series in roughly 24 to 48 hours.
That will be our focus for season 2. We’ve been waiting with bated breath and our patience (or lack thereof) is about to be rewarded! We’ll be recording weekly for the duration, unless it turns out that we’re recording weakly… but we’re not going to let that happen!
So, as you count down the final few hours before Foundation hits your teevee, join us for our season premiere where we talk about our hopes and expectations for the show. Then we can all strap into this metaphorical roller coaster and enjoy this ride together!
As the Manimal threshold fades into the rear-view mirror, we reach our next milestone, with number 11, we now have as many episodes as Cop Rock! You know, it takes most shows years to get around to a musical episode, but those guys? Musical episode right out of the gate! Never fear, though; Stars End: The Musical is toward the end of our Thousand Year Plan.
Right now, please join us for Episode 11 – A Podcast Has No End.
And podcasts don’t, but books and trilogies do. We’re at the end of Second Foundation, and we talk about the very last story, “Search by the Foundation,” known as “…And Now You Don’t” when it was published in Astounding. We’ll meet Bayta Darell’s granddaughter, Arkady, and see a reveal of where the Second Foundation might be, followed by the reveal that there is no Second Foundation, followed by another reveal that the Second Foundation might be somewhere else, and then… well, you get the idea. Plus, we discuss the latest trailer and squeeze in one more round of Asimov Trivia before we start Season 2, coming soon to one of them WWWs near you!
The start of the Apple TV+ series is now less than a month away and we’re approaching the end of our discussion of Asimov’s original trilogy!
Join us for episode ten “Finished Podcasts Are For Decadent Minds.” That’s 10! Our first-round number! And it’s not 10 base-two or 10 base-eight but 10 base-ten! That makes it the tenest ten!
We’ve finally jumped into Second Foundation! We’ll be talking about the first story, “Search by the Mule,” known as “Now You See It” when it appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. See the final fate of Han Pritcher! Learn the ultimate destiny of the Mule! Marvel at the awesome presence of the Second Foundation! Swoon at the other stuff! A podcast 80 years in the making!
Sadly, True Believers, no one claimed the No-Prize from Episode 9; the Hitchhiker’s Guide Reference comes from Chapter 25 when two philosophers, Vroomfondel and Majikthise are confronting Deep Thought about how the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. That could put philosophers out of business you know! Anyhow, at some point, Vroomfondel shouts “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!” which I maintain is one of the finest sentences ever written in the language of Shakespeare. And of which I borrowed a bit in episode 9’s description. Always steal from the best and then provide a citation.
But never fear! That was an obscure one! In this Episode’s Asimov Trivia, you’ll have another chance at the glory of a prize that isn’t actually anything! We’ve added an extra question for you folks at home and to make things more interesting we’ll allow multiple winners! No-Prizes will be awarded not only to the correct answer but to any answer with an interesting explanation. Always show your work!
With the Threll of the Las Vegas 55-Year Mission winding down and the excitement of the Apple TV+ Foundation series winding up, now is a perfect time to check out our Stars End Podcast! Whether you’re looking for a new decades-old franchise to enjoy, you want to catch up on some of your favorite old SF before enjoying the new teevee series, or if you’re just looking for something entertaining to listen to at the airport, Stars End can fill that need! We’re not even off-brand yet!
Please join us for Episode 9 – “A Podcast is Best and Most Effective When It Does Not Evaporate In Empty Phrases” as we wrap up Foundation and Empire with the resolution to Episode 8’s cliffhanger and learn the sooper-secret identity of the Mule. Will the Foundation persevere? Will the Mule conquer the Galaxy? What’s up with Bayta? And where the heck is the Second Foundation anyway? All will be revealed as long as it falls outside our rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty. Thus we merely foreshadow Second Foundation which may or may not be about the location of Seldon’s Second Foundation.
Also “Asimov Trivia” and a new game: find the Douglas Adams reference in this very episode description! The first person to identify the reference and comments on it here or to @StarsEndPodcast on Twitter will receive what Stan Lee used to call a “No-Prize.” That’s not really anything, but we’ll mention your name here or something.
If you’re keeping up with the Stars End Podcast, Episode 8 has been out for about a week, and Episode 9’s release is imminent. In these two episodes, we discuss the entirety of “The Mule” as we know it from Foundation and Empire. If you’re reading along, of course, it’s pretty easy to find a copy of the book including on Archive.org.
If you want to read this story as it first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, it appears in the November and December issues from 1945. Not-at-all coincidentally it’s broken up just as we did it on the podcast. The first installment covers the Foundation and Trader Worlds first learning about the Mule and then considering how to respond. It corresponds to Chapters 11 (Bride and Groom) through 18 (The Fall of the Foundation) and ends, as you might guess from the title, with quite a dramatic moment. The December installment covers the remainder of the story and completes the tale with a search for the Second Foundation. Asimov’s writing had gotten better here as evidenced by two nice touches; Mayor Indbur III on Terminus and Emperor Dagobert IX on Neotrantor are excellent personifications of their respective dominions.
As we’ve been seeing, Asimov changes very little from Astounding to the novels. As was the case with “The General” The obligatory Encyclopedia Galactica entry that serves as a prologue is absent, replaced in the first part, by this teaser, probably written by John W. Campbell.
First of two parts of Asimov’s first serial of the Foundation — and of the one factor that even Hari Sheldon could not predict — could not defend the Foundation against. The defenses were based on human psychology; The Mule was a mutant!
Unlike for “The General,” unfortunately, the layouts have largely reverted to rectangles and a lot of the images are tiny. We can hope they do a bit better in part two.
Once again there are some nice illustrations in both parts by Paul Orban. Unfortunately, the scans of these issues aren’t as clean as the previous installments have been so the image quality is uneven.
Second of two parts. Across the ruined, dying Galactic Empire , fleeing from a conquered Foundation, three frightened people and the hunted jester of the new conqueror, the Mule, sought the Second Foundation — the only hope, but it must be warned
That’s followed by a summary of part 1, which you can find here: Astounding Science Fiction, December 1945 if you’d like to read it. Paul Orban’s illustrations are below. They’re larger and more textured than the illustrations from Part 1.
Hello, again folks! It’s 8/8 (or if you write dates the European way 8/8) and here we are with Episode 8, “It’s a Dead Hand Against a Living Podcast.” We’re quite proud, we now officially have just as many episodes as Manimal! Imagine! For those of you tracking our milestones, eight is a very round number: It’s “10” in base eight, “20” in base four, and “1000” in base two. Soon, once we’re past the Manimal barrier, we’ll quickly approach an actual, genuine round number. In base ten even. Tom Lehrer tells us that “Base eight is just like base ten really, if you’re missing two fingers” but maybe it will be even better!
As for what’s in store we start off with our “Apple TV+” minute where we see what we can learn from an interview with David Goyer, Foundation‘s show-runner. We have another round of “Asimov Trivia” and discuss the first half of the second half of Foundation and Empire, “The Mule.” One of the highlights of the series.
Coincidently, this part of “The Mule” ran in the November 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction which was the first issue to go to press after the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. We’ll take a moment to reflect on John W. Campbell’s editorial from that issue.
Stars End: A Foundation Podcast 