Foundation Star Lee Pace Was Fascinated By A Surprising Side Of Isaac Asimov's Writing

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The Apple TV show "Foundation," based on the seminal sci-fi novels by Isaac Asimov, takes a long view of history. The first season of "Foundation" is set in the year 12,067 E.I. (Era Imperial), i.e. 12,067 years after the foundation of a wide-spanning galactic empire. Thanks to some careful research, fans have noted that the empire didn't even come to be until over 18,000 years from the present day. The "Foundation" book series also notoriously features massive, centuries-long time skips in between installations and provides glimpses of a future so distant — maybe 100 billion years on — that the mind can hardly handle it. By then, all humanity will have evolved into a singular intelligence.

On the "Foundation" TV show, Lee Pace plays a string of cloned emperors that has been overseeing the Galactic Empire for millennia, including Cleon I, Cleon XII, Cleon XIII, Cleon XVII, and Cleon XXIV. He also plays a clone named Brother Day who, along with Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) and Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), swap out the roles of the various Cleons. The mythology and plot of "Foundation" is way too involved to get into here, and summing it up would take more time than trying to explain Frank Herbert's "Dune" universe. Needless to say, it deals with large, heady ideas involving foundations, empires, evolution, religion, and politics. This is par for the course for Asimov.

When Pace was gearing up to star in "Foundation," he naturally did his Asimovian research. However, he soon found that Asimov, for all his fame in the realms of science fiction, had an entirely separate literary niche that the actor didn't know about. In an interview with Wired, Pace explained that he had just discovered the glory of the 1970s sourcebook "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare."

Before taking the "Foundation" gig, Pace was already an Asimov fan and had read the "Foundation" novels. When he began doing his homework for the series, however, he learned about Asimov's Shakespeare analysis and was hooked all over again. And in reading Asimov's work, he found some unlikely connections:

"But really, the thing I read very early on of Isaac Asimov — and this is totally a detour — was his analysis of the Shakespeare plays. He has this incredible volume where he breaks down the history behind them and what Shakespeare might have intended. Some of the most interesting stuff that he writes about are the robots and humans' relationship to technology. So, I feel like at the end of season 3, we're kind of unlocking some of the richest stuff that Isaac Asimov created inside the 'Foundation' universe." 

For those unfamiliar with "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare," the author's book walks through every one of William Shakespeare's plays in succession (for 849 pages), annotating important passages and providing pieces of historical context. Asimov doesn't analyze the meaning or the poetry of the Bard's text; instead, he looks to recordable details such as geography, commerce, and politics to put Shakespeare's words onto a broader humanist plateau. Asimov also groups Shakespeare's plays not by genre but by geographical region, essentially serving as a Shakespearean tour guide. There are Greek, Roman, Italian, and English plays, while "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" are presented as being English (perhaps frustratingly to Shakespeare-heads).

Through the book, one can see that Asimov, although a sci-fi author, is preoccupied with the grand warp and weft of human history, tracing the way things interconnect. And that, like Pace observed, is also the central theme of "Foundation."

"Foundation" is streaming on Apple TV.