The Foundation Trilogy (Dramatized)

By: Isaac Asimov, Patrick Tull - adaptation, Mike Stott - adaptation

Narrated by: Geoffrey Beevers, Lee Montague, Julian Glover, Dinsdale Landon, Maurice Denham, Angela Pleasence, Prunella Scales

Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

The opening episode begins on Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire, with the meeting of Seldon and Dornick, their trial, and their exile to Terminus. The action then jumps forward 50 years, to the first Seldon Crisis, where the repercussions of the recent independence of the Four Kingdoms of the Periphery are being felt on Terminus, and are handled by the first Mayor, Salvor Hardin. The scene then moves forward a further 20 years, as Mayor Hardin faces down the domination of the nearby and most powerful Kingdom, Anacreon.

The Merchant Princes
One-hundred-fifty years after the Foundation was established, the now powerful trading nation faces its greatest threat to date, guided by master trader Hober Mallow.

The General
Two hundred years after its creation, the Foundation battles Bel Riose, the last powerful General of the dying Galactic Empire.

The Mule
A further hundred years have passed, and the Foundation is challenged by an unexpected threat named The Mule.

Flight from the Mule
During the war against The Mule, with things going badly for the Foundation, some key figures under the leadership of the Foundation's greatest scientist, Ebling Mis, flee Terminus in search of the Second Foundation, to warn it of the danger from The Mule.

The Mule Finds
The Mule attempts to find and overthrow the Second Foundation.

Star's End
Sixty years later, and a teenage girl is at the center of the Foundation's renewed search for the Second Foundation.

Changes from the written Trilogy: The conflict between The Foundation and Anacreon takes place 70 years into the Foundation era; in the novels it occurs at 80 F.E. A small segment in Foundation titled "Traders" has been removed entirely. General editing for time has been done throughout. A large, rather comedic section on farming on Rossem has been added to "The Mule Finds".

Please note: This is an historical broadcast recording, produced by the BBC in 1973. The audio quality represents the technology of the time when it was produced.

©2011 ABN (P)2011 ABN

Great Content, Uneven Mastering.

I'm a big enough fan of fan of the books that the negative reviews of the sound quality didn't deter me from buying this item, especially given the low price. Yes, the sound quality is pretty lousy at times: on a few occasions the speech is garbled and/or muted to near-unintelligibility, and the interstitial music levels are way too high throughout. But rather than characterize the effect as being ear-bleedingly awful, I would say that it's a mildly irritating nuisance to the listening experience.

Apart from the lacklustre sound engineering, the adaptation and the performance are excellent. The amusingly futurismic musical effects are just as dated as the golden age SF motifs of the narrative, and so add subtext: the past imagining the future.

On the basis of great content with poor audio quality, I was going to rate it three stars out of five (three and a half, if I could). However, today I found out that the show is also available free of charge from another site, and judging from the reviews over there (and a cursory random listen on my part), that version does not suffer the audio quality problems that this one does.

Presumably somebody at ABN (the distributor) dropped the due diligence ball when acquiring the material from the BBC. If the series truly has been released to the public domain by the BBC (as claimed by the uploading party on archive), then it's ridiculous that a commercially distributed version should have inferior sound quality to the publically available one, $2 price-point or not. Even if the archive item is an illicit upload by a fan, the fact that a superior digital version exists at all should make Audible embarrassed to be hosting this one.

Good Story, Bad Presentation

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Better audio, clear audio. I realize it's an old BBC radio broadcast but it is very muffled and the volume swings were awful.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

ear-distress

Any additional comments?

As an Asimov fan I was looking forward to this dramatization, but I was disappointed by the audio. The voices were muffled and often very low. When I turned the volume up to hear more clearly the transition audio would kick in and rock me out my seat or blow me out of my car. The tones were like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Audible mess up

Any additional comments?

The other reviwers are correct. The production is awful ....BUT!! This is an Audible.com mess up not the original production. I have this production on cassette tape (I'm very old!!) and it is absoutely fine. I bought this Audible.com version as I could not be bothered to convert my cassettes to MP3, but this is just awful. I don't know what they did but I'll be going back to my tapes.

Minority Opinion

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

While I can't deny the other reviews comments on the production elements of this book, they didn't detract from my enjoying the story. I can overlook the silly introduction and ending of each segment without a problem. While obviously streamlined, the meat of the story is still there. A great value at the current price. Not recommended for those who haven't already read the trilogy.

Yes, the sound is bad at times.
Yes, the BBC has this strange thing about using British actors.
Yes, you should keep the volume control close by.

It's still a fun listen and a great story.

Sound just fine on a Kindle Fire HD!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I love radio shows and this one is very well done.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Arkady Darell was my favorite with her Grandmother Bayta a close second. These women rocked! They were well rounded and fiercely protective yet amazingly fun.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

A radio play, so no real narrator. Everyone played their own characters. Wonderfully done.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

If I had 7 + hours to listen I would have, as it was I finished it in 2 days.

Any additional comments?

A lot of people complained about the sound quality, either Audible fixed it, or at least on the Fire HD with their Bose speakers, there wasn't a problem. I listened with headphones and without throughout.
Wonderful story that has inspired many famous people, Paul Krugman and Elon Musk among them.

Shortened too much

In the dramatization only mere barebones are remaining from the story. It doesn't work well.

Great story, well performed, but poor audio

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

No. While it's a fabulous story from the greatest of books, and it's well performed, the audio was so bad it was annoying. It's abridged, so there lots of transitions and every transition was too loud (relative to the text), too long (3-5 seconds vs 1-2), and too discordant (really annoying). Additionally, some of the dialog was recorded in an attempt to achieve some effect, but was just hard to hear. The whole thing was hard to listen to.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Primm Palver

How could the performance have been better?

The audio could be infinitely better

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It's simply a marvelous series.

Any additional comments?

I'd recommend the owners of the rights, dramatically edit the audio transitions and re-balance the sound, but keep the overall performance.

Great show but be careful of your ears

There's a reason why this story is a classic. The acting is good. However I found that the chapter breaks and some of the special effects were excessively loud and hurt my ears. A rebalancing of the audio amplitudes would make this easily a five.

just ok

dramatized parts are much louder than speakers, pretty rough to keep adjusting the volume on my headphones.

Production quality poor. Worth 2 bucks? I guess.

Like the other reviewers, I found the sound effects (particularly the section end "music") extremely jarring. I looked it up, it was made in 1973 and sounds like it...


That said, everything else is exactly what you'd expect from a dramatization. The script is just fine, and the actors are just fine. The pacing is good, and it was (again, excepting the discordant sound effects) enjoyable.


I'd feel ripped off spending a whole credit on this one, but for 2 bucks it's perfectly acceptable. I'd recommend it to Asimov fans in particular, but perhaps not for a general SF audience. It's 3 starts to me, but it might be only 1 star for someone who loves Asimov just a little bit less.