There are a lot of people really hating on the TV show here, so I’ll offer a slightly contrarian take:
I would say the biggest problem is the marketing that implies they faithfully are telling the books, when they’re not. The TV show is not faithful to the books.
That said: the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction. It works well because they are _short_ stories, and following the span of history, frequently jumping ahead a generation, is cool. But it would’ve been very difficult to render that as-is for television and have much of an audience. Also, the original stories were written in the 1940s and some parts feel quite dated (everyone is smoking all the time, the hyper focus on nuclear power, the relative role of women). So whoever picked the stories up, they were going to make a lot of changes.
If you think of the series merely as “inspired by” them not “based on them,” then the show isn’t bad. It has some corny flaws like most TV (the combat, just terrible), but they’ve developed a few good characters, added some new mysteries, and the order in which they’re unfolding events over time is interesting.
So, is it a classic? No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. But IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :)
I would say the biggest problem is the marketing that implies they faithfully are telling the books, when they’re not. The TV show is not faithful to the books.
That said: the books are fascinating, but they are almost more like historical documentaries then narrative fiction. It works well because they are _short_ stories, and following the span of history, frequently jumping ahead a generation, is cool. But it would’ve been very difficult to render that as-is for television and have much of an audience. Also, the original stories were written in the 1940s and some parts feel quite dated (everyone is smoking all the time, the hyper focus on nuclear power, the relative role of women). So whoever picked the stories up, they were going to make a lot of changes.
If you think of the series merely as “inspired by” them not “based on them,” then the show isn’t bad. It has some corny flaws like most TV (the combat, just terrible), but they’ve developed a few good characters, added some new mysteries, and the order in which they’re unfolding events over time is interesting.
So, is it a classic? No. Is it faithful to the books? Not at all. But IMO it’s decent sci-fi, and interesting enough to watch if you’re bored :)