Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: Hear a Radio Dramatization (1973)

Last year Jonathan Nolan–screenwriter of Memen­to and Inter­stel­lar and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan’s brother–announced that he would be devel­op­ing Isaac Asimov’s leg­endary Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy for HBO as a series. And we assume he’s still doing that, because there’s been nary a peep from the chan­nel since. So far the Inter­net con­sen­sus has been a col­lec­tive “well, that could be good!” instead of groans, which is a heart­en­ing thing these days.

For those who haven’t read the clas­sic books, but would like to get the jump on ol’ Nolan, we sub­mit this BBC Radio pro­duc­tion from 1973, which is now avail­able on Spo­ti­fy below. (Down­load Spo­ti­fy soft­ware here.) The record­ing also lives on Archive.org as well.

Right from the begin­ning we know we are in good hands, with the ana­log drones of the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop ush­er­ing us into a stereo land­scape filled with plum­my British accents and atmos­pher­ic sound effects. It’s like the best ever episode of Doc­tor Who with­out a Tardis, cor­ri­dors, or the enfee­bled cries of a lost com­pan­ion.

The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy is heav­i­ly indebt­ed to Edward Gibbon’s The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as a belief in the cir­cu­lar nature of his­to­ry.

Asimov’s hero in the first book, Hari Sel­don, using a sci­ence called psy­chohis­to­ry, can see the inevitable col­lapse of the Galac­tic Empire in which he lives and sets about try­ing to change it by set­ting up an oppo­si­tion called the Foun­da­tion. The nov­els then jump decades ahead, check­ing in with this essen­tial con­flict, much like Gibbon’s work goes from emper­or to emper­or, mark­ing the decline of empire and its inevitabil­i­ty. Free of aliens and shoot-em-ups, Foun­da­tion is very human despite its galac­tic scope.

Adapt­ed by Patrick Tull and Mike Stott, the eight part radio series does a good job of pre­sent­ing the nov­els as a char­ac­ter-dri­ven dra­ma, and while it is talky (it’s radio after all), it was Orson Scott Card who said of Foun­da­tion, it is “all talk, no action — but Asi­mov’s talk is action.”

It also influ­enced many future sci-fi writ­ers. No doubt some­where along the way Dou­glas Adams was lis­ten­ing to the radio play’s talk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia and think­ing, hmm, what if this had jokes?
And once you get through the trilogy–maybe after an eight-hour flight?–there’s more Asi­mov radio plays for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure on Spo­ti­fy: Host­ess, Peb­ble in the Sky, and Night­fall.

NOTE: Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

And note this: Audiobooks.com also has a free tri­al offer where you can down­load a free audio­book. Details.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Lis­ten to 188 Dra­ma­tized Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries by Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard & More

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.