Asimov's Chimera [Hardcover]

Mark W. Tiedemann (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 463 pages
• Publisher: ibooks (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739418769
• ISBN-13: 978-0739418765
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #858,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I began wanting to be a writer, and veered off into photography in high school. This was probably a good thing, since there were no decent instructors in either in my school, and I was rather bad at the writing. I became fairly good at photography. All my pursuits have had public aspects--art, music, literature. I'm something of a ham when I have an audience, but I'm self-conscious about my abilities. Nevertheless, I love the doing. I attended Clarion in 1988 where I finally learned how to write and also made some of the best friends of my life--Kelley Eskridge, Nicola Griffith, Daryl Gregory, Brooks Caruthers, Peg Kerr--and gained a decade of wisdom in six weeks (at least it feels like that).

I could have done none of this without my partner, Donna, to whom I owe what happiness I have--and I think I have quite a lot.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost As Good As The Originals, May 1, 2001

By 

Chris MB "CMB" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Chimera: Isaac Asimov's Robot Mystery (Paperback)

Tiedemann recently resurfaced with this, his second attempt at new robot mysteries. And again, he's done an impressive job.

Asimov's original robot novels were generally straightforward. While not predictable by any stretch of the imagination, the mysteries themselves were fairly simple. Tiedemann has taken Asimov's "universe" but made the mysteries more complex and expanded the scope of the setting to fully explain political situations, alliances, development of society in settler and spacer worlds...many of the things Asimov himself never fully developed. This all amounts to a fairly complex mystery novel set in Asimov's vision of the future.

The novel is not without problems. One criticism I had of Tiedemann's first novel still holds true - two of the main characters have an extensive past together yet Tiedemann makes no mention of this fact. Some of the ideas in Chimera also come across as a bit far-fetched in the context of the setting that Asimov established.

All-in-all, Chimera is an entertaining read. If you're a fan of Asimov's original robot novels, its definitely worth picking up. If you've not had exposure to the originals, however, start with them.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No resemblance to Asimov, October 7, 2009

By 

Laura Todd (Oaks, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chimera: Isaac Asimov's Robot Mystery (Robot Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I wasn't sure whether I was going to give this book 2 stars or 3. It is really somewhere in between. I thought I'd give it a 3 because it held my interest, enough so I finished it in a few days. Missing orphans, murdered stowaways, creepy cyborgs, greedy corpocrats.... it's pretty suspenseful.

On the other hand, this book has a LOT of problems. Let's start with the fact that the only resemblance to Asimov in these books is the existence of Earth, Spacers, Settlers and positronic robots. However, Tiedemann's Spacers have absolutely NO resemblance to Asimov's. Put a Solarian in a room full of Earthers and he's not a real Solarian. Asimov's universe has no room for a man born on Earth to Solarian parents. If you have read Asimov, you'll see what I mean. Oh, and as for the time line... this novel takes place sometime in the future after Elijah Baley. Um, sorry about the spoiler, for those who haven't read Asimov's Robots and Empire...but didn't Earth start to have a serious "radioactivity" problem at this time? This fact isn't mentioned at all in Tiedemann's novels.

Another problem is pacing. This author just doesn't write the scenes I want to see. I want to know what is happening in the minds of Settlers, baleys (illegal settlers) and Earthers. If Aurorans are suddenly friendly with Earth, I want to know how that happened. I want a sense of history, psychology, evolving culture and humanity... all the things Asimov dealt with. I definitely don't want to read pages of rundowns about which corporate head invested in which companies and who bought out whom. This isn't a science fiction novel, it's a script for a banal police procedural on Fox TV!

Then there is the problem of characterization. As in "None". Coren Lanra is the main character and he is little more than a name on which to hang the word "undercover cop". Derec and Ariel also appear in this novel, and they too are as characterless as the robots they love. After reading all the Robot City novels, I've had about enough of Derec and Ariel. What's with endlessly recycling characters? Can't anyone create new ones?

Finally, I suspected that this book would not have a satisfying ending, and indeed it did not. Loose ends were left untied, and I still don't really know why those baleys were murdered. A bad ending is a pretty serious sin. OK I just bumped it back to a "2 stars". (If you want to read a series that is worthy of the name "Asimov" on the cover...try Roger McBride Allen's 'Caliban' series.)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Updated Robots, Realistic Characters, January 31, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Chimera: Isaac Asimov's Robot Mystery (Paperback)

Sometimes sticking too close to the way something was originally done is a good way to damage a new piece of work. Tiedemann doesn't seem to make that mistake in Chimera. Instead, as in Mirage, he updates the basic material, bringing it more in line with contemporary information about nanotech and AI. He takes what Asimov did and makes it his own.

More than that, though, he's done a thoroughly excellent job of creating fully-fleshed, believable characters, real people with real problems. He places them in a fast-paced thriller plot that flows logically and answers questions both about the action of the story and the larger issues nesting within the Robot universe Asimov created. Rather than do a straight imitation of Asimov's style, he has written his own kind of narrative, matched to the content of his storyline.

The creation of Bogard in Mirage was a masterful twist on the 3-Law scenario. Tiedemann continues to play with the limitations and implicit possibilities in Asimov's original structure in this book.

The Caves of Steel in Chimera are both creepier and more plausible, the psychologies of the various habitues matched against each other in elegant dialogues and plot twists (as in one character's surprise visit to a Spacer party in the open air!). Tiedemann displays a deft hand at depicting the inner realm of the human condition, a trait he displays much more fully in his own original novels.

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