Foundation Star Lee Pace Loves Ursula K. Le Guin, And So Should You [Exclusive]

The Apple TV+ series "Foundation" is based on the works of a science fiction legend. Few names in the genre are as meaningful and widely recognized as that of Isaac Asimov, the prolific 20th-century author who penned not only the "Foundation" series, but also the "Robot" series, the "Galactic Empire" books, and story collections including "I, Robot," which inspired the film of the same name.

There may be few names as highly-regarded as Asimov's, but one is, and it's a name "Foundation" star Lee Pace is apparently intimately familiar with: Ursula K. Le Guin. In an interview with /Film's Vanessa Armstrong ahead of the premiere of "Foundation" season 2, Pace answered a question about the sci-fi he's been reading lately by waxing poetic about the specific talents of the award-winning "A Wizard of Earthsea" author. 

"I have been in a deep study of Ursula Le Guin," Pace explained in the interview alongside co-star Laura Birn. "I am going through a lot of her short stories right now," he continued, citing the 2002 collection, "The Birthday of the World and Other Stories."

We here at /Film are pretty big Le Guin fans ourselves (take this piece, for example, which compares a great "Star Trek" episode to her devastating short story, "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas"), but it's exciting to hear Pace reference a relatively deep cut from the legendary author's bibliography. Specifically, he recommended a novella called "Paradises Lost" that's included in the collection. "There's this one that takes place on a slow ship, a generational ship, and it takes five generations to get to the planet that they're going," he said. "So you're with this one generation that's only known the ship. That's their world."

Normally, hearing that an actor is diving deep in a certain bibliography would inspire rumors that they might be involved in an adaptation of the author's work, but the "Pushing Daisies" and "Halt and Catch Fire" star is famously a bookworm with a penchant for sharing his current reads. He's also a big sci-fi fan. Back in 2015, he tweeted that he was reading Frank Herbert's "Dune" and "never [wanted] this book to end." He's also mentioned Le Guin before, recommending her utopic 1974 novel "The Dispossessed" in a thread in 2021 in which he also shouted out Ann Leckie's "Ancillary Justice" and, of course, the "Foundation" series.

"I love her," Pace continued while recommending the works of Le Guin. "I love everything about what she writes. I love her, this world of respect and consent that she creates." The author's work has been the subject of study for, among other things, creating visions of worlds that function at a higher level than the earth we live on. One of her books, "The Left Hand of Darkness," even imagines a planet where beings are without permanent genders. Her works are thought-provoking and humane, and they don't just ask life's biggest questions, but often attempt to answer them, too.

"I happily go back to her again and again. You agree, right?" Pace asked /Film's Armstrong at the end of their interview. We do, we really do.

"Foundation" season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on July 14, 2023.