Why does Asimov matter?
Let’s put it this way
Asimov rewrites our mythos around the values reason, rationality, science and humanism
Huh?
As humans we’re faced with many questions that we not only have no answers for, but that we cannot answer factually.
We have to answer these unknowns with myths, stories that bound our reality so we can frame its unknowability.
Science is always blowing our myths away so we have to rewrite them.
And at a very important moment in the mid-20th century, Asimov composed a new mythos that made sense of the unknown for generations to come.
The galaxy wasn’t just a place out there that humans might one day visit. The galaxy was where human civilization was going to continue our progress and development.
Fallen empires. Psychohistory. The first and second Foundations. The individual as a bit player in the grand sweep of history. The Mule. The elements of the Foundation saga have been so widely copied that it’s easy to forget how original Asimov’s new mythos was.
Issac Asimov’s Empire of Reason, a feature video essay on the Science Fiction channel, charts how Foundation was conceived and written.
PS – sadly none of this made it into the Foundation tv show, but please don’t let it put you off reading the books!!
Damien Walter 
I agree. Asimov is one of the father of modern science fiction that every serious reader should know. Foundation is at the base of a cosmic view of the future that contemporary authors seem unable to conceive. A must-read for everyone, just like The Odyssey, Moby Dick and Dune.
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I haven’t watched the television series yet. I couldn’t imagine that there was any way it could quite capture the scope of the original trilogy.
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It does not even try.
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