I recently finished the trilogy and I've got to say... Even though this clip looks neat I've never had less faith in an adaptation of anything. Particularly with Benioff and Weiss at the helm.
If GoT taught us anything, if they have Original Source MaterialTM to adapt, they do a decent job. It's when they are left to improvise that things get awful.
I would get seriously more skeptical if the people in charge of Foundation got their hands on this adaptation tho.
The Chinese adaptation by Tencent is available for free on YouTube. It does a generally good job. Episode 6 seems heavily censored, but it is otherwise a sensible adaptation of the original.
Netflix could have easily built on that and improve on it tremendously. There are parts in the Tencent adaptation that are plain bad (e.g., Evans).
However, if seems that they went on a different route. I hope that this "teaser" is not a faithful representation of the final product.
Speculative Fiction /Science Fiction covers such a huge range of potential topics!
I'm a huge fan of the older masters Heinlein/Clarke/Niven/Asimov/EE Smith, etc. Many of their stories are smaller in scope than a typical space opera (not counting the absurd scale of Foundation!).
Ian Banks's Culture books have fascinating worlds and usually great characterization. I highly recommend them.
In Military Sci-fi, I'm a big fan of Jack Campbell's Lost Fleets serieses. Honestly most of the characters aren't terribly deep, but it's great fun. My #1 shared world is Battletech (big robots), but because that's been written by so many authors, the quality really varies.
I really didn't like the first book, but I can't not finish reading one. The Chinese political side was really interesting, the concept of folding up dimensions was neat (not unique, though; I've read of computers or ships or creatures that only exist as an abstract version of their higher-dimensional selves) but the game stuff was extremely boring. Maybe it was a translation issue, but most of the time spent with the aliens was painful.
I really liked the first book, the 2nd book much less so, but it was still okay, but holy shit that 3rd book..... I think I got half way through and I gave up on it. I can't believe anyone thought it was a good idea to try to make a live action tv show based on these books. I can't imagine how they'll do the game parts even remotely well with out being intensely boring.
The ideas in the first book and the (to me, novel) insights into some Chinese history etc, kept me involved in the first book. The characters were shittily written, especially the final American bad guy who was an underdeveloped trope more than a character.
I barely got through the second book. It had some interesting ideas, but far fewer. The main conciet they build up to is hollow.
I started the third book, on tape this time. I have a long commute and it is always my last choice of what to listen to.
I had the same thoughts. The books are heavily conceptual, even though there are some action sequences. A lot of incredibly abstract stuff to try and translate to episodic drama.
Funny I read someone else on here say the third was the best and in particular the ending so it might be worth powering through if you're half way there.
I've only read the first myself but I'm reluctant to start the second with reviews like yours.
I just hope that it isn't like apples take on foundation. This really can't be too actiony, I'm hopeful that this trailer was only showing a minor part without showing their intent. Three body has a bit more fighting foundation so I'm willing to wait and see. But I was immensely disappointed that so much of foundation was just pew pew laser battles.