Customer Reviews

Foundation and Chaos (Second Foundation Trilogy)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a hard hard book to review.

Firstly, I must congratulate the author who did a fantastic job after the 1st mess of a book to put the series back together again. The concise, clear style is much appreciated by this reader (despite what anyone may say about individuality and style, the readers here are the original fans of Asimov and therefore probably prefer the Good Doctor's style! ).

But more damage is done precisely because of this. Benford's work I can completely ignore because it is so far from it's foundations (sorry ;-)) that it's virtually unrecognisable. The same cannot be said about 'Foundation and Chaos'. It's an easily recognisable/acceptable episode in the Asimovian Galaxy.

Spoiler alert: I'm going to discuss plotting, characters and theme here.

Firstly, thank you Mr. Bear for getting rid of (or as much as you could) wormholes, memes, sims and most of the other unnecessary additions by Benford.

Secondly,why is everyone focusing so much on robots? This is the FOUNDATION series - a series originally about human resourcefulness and ability to triumph, remember? This is NOT THE ROBOT series. Just because the Good Doctor decided they take place in the same universe doesn't mean robots now fill every page of a FOUNDATION book. In the 3 foundation novels that robots were mentioned (F&Earth, Prelude and Forward), only 1 novel had a significant portion of the novel devoted to robots. In this new series we are presented with 2 (and mostly likely 3) novels packed full of robots.

Don't take me wrong - I like the robot series very much - probably more than I did the original Foundation series. I whooped with joy when Daneel appears in 'Foundation and Earth' and was glad to greet him like an old friend in all subsequent novels. But a Foundation novel filled with robotic characters, robotic underground wars, robotic betrayal and humans in pursuit of robots? Where's the Foundation in this novel?

Alright Killer Bs - if you want to play with robots, go head. But at least do it well. Alas, there is very little left of what feels like the original Asimov robots. The simple/virtuous humanity present in the Good Doctor's robots are practically gone and we are left with quibbling, controlling, assuming beings. I don't like any of them in this novel, including Daneel and I blame the authors for that. By turning Daneel into the God-like figure he now is, he has lost our sympathy and empathy. He is no longer gentle Daneel who has carried an immense weight alone for so long (F&Earth, Prelude). He is now omniscient, suffocating, cold and calculating. Why?

The Calvinian robots is a ludicrous idea - where have they been all these years? How did they leave the Spacer worlds? (Neither earth nor Settlers allowed robots) And what is the logic behind hurting a human (Seldon) to defeat another robot to promote the 3 Laws? To harm/change Seldon's mind is a violation of the 1st Law. To do this for future good is clearly the Zeroth Law working. What gives?

And finally... why Seldon? As a previous reader pointed out - we've had enough of Seldon. Asimov devoted 2 novels to him. We want to know what happened to Golan Trevise and the fate of the rest of the galaxy.

4 stars for bringing me a whole night of solid entertainment and for bringing back, if not in spirit, the Asimov universe.

I hate repeating what has been said in the other reviews, but let's be honest and admit that FOUNDATION'S FEAR by Gregory Benford was abysmal, and this book by Greg Bear has done much to get back on track. I did groan a bit when the sims, Joan of Arc and Voltaire, came back in it, but Bear got stuck with them thanks to Benford's bizarre plotting, and did what he could with them.

Basically, this deals with Hari Seldon's trial and the conflict between two factions of robots, those who identify with Susan Calvin, the pioneer in Robotics, and those who identify with the legendery R. Daneel Olivaw. Throw in a couple of mentalists at odds with each other, and you have a rather good Foundation novel.

Read FOUNDATION'S FEAR if you think you must, but it's not necessary because this far better written second novel stands well by itself.

Unlike Foundation's Fear (the first book in the new Foundation trilogy), I can categorically recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Foundation saga started by Isaac Asimov. Granted, you have to read Foundation's Fear to really get the full benefit from this book - but this story was told in a much better fashion and one that, in my opinion, was more true to the Asimov mold of writing and thinking. (In fact, a few times it was easy for me to forget that this was not vintage Asimov.)

The story is very well fleshed-out and the plot (and plotting) are excellent, including the political aspects. (After all, Hari Seldon always operated in the sphere of the political regime). I highly recommend it. It makes slogging my way through the first book in the new trilogy (which I was not as thrilled with) well worth the effort. Foundation and Chaos also ties in very nicely with the events from the Part I section of the original 1951 Foundation novel and fills in a lot of gaps as well as keeping the wonderful Robots-Foundation combination story going. We also get a little taste of what the events in Asimov's Foundation and Earth foreshadowed.

I was actually disappointed by this series as a whole, having built up quite an expectation in my mind after learning that it was a collaboration by three of my top five favorite SF authors (Stephenson and Sterling make up the balance). Benford's tedious start made me think twice about continuing the series, but the promise of Greg Bear made me come back to it. And I wasn't disappointed. (At least until I moved on to Brin's contribution.)

It really seemed to me like this series wasn't as much a collaboration as a competition... Bear seems to take pains to instantiate his own ideas and opinions about the Robots/Empire/Foundation universe at the expense of Benford's. (And later, Brin will do much of the same.) I much rather would have seen a true collaboration that brought out only the best of the authors involved (much like the Niven/Pournelle collaborations do). Unfortunately, we're subjected to something that comes across as literary oneupsmanship.

But I give Bear 4 stars for his effort, which is easily the most "Asmiovish," in my opinion. Not that Asimov wasn't tedious (like Benford), or didn't take lurching left turns (like Brin), but of the three novels in this series, Foundation and Chaos was most like what I expected. Brin's conclusion is easily worth reading, if you make it this far, but don't expect it to be better than this one.

The second book in the post-Asimov foundation series is by one of my favorite SF authors--Greg Bear. This book picks up after Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, but does not come chronologically right after the end of that book. Rather, what has been done in this new series is that spots not filled out by Asimov are now filled in, so Benford's work takes place just as the main character, Hari Seldon, takes the post of First Ministership, while Bear's book takes place after that time and what we were left to think was the decline and death of Seldon (that impression made in Asimov's Forward Foundation.

Bear is really great at picking up a genre that is not his own (as I liked in his Star Trek and Star Wars novels). Foundation and Chaos is more like Asimov's style than Benford's, but Bear still manages to fill out some details not covered before, especially about political strive among the robots. The idea that the robots have differing opinions and political groups working against each other is really amazing. Loved it all.

I was impressed beyond my wildest expectations (which were quite low after having read Foundation's Fear)! Greg Bear's creative imagination has added a powerful, page-turning interpretation of the Grand Master's universe. What a fantastic idea R. Lodovic presented! Bear's climactic recreation of Seldon's trial also had me fully engrossed. I finished the book in 3 hours without pause. Asimov would have been proud to see his Foundation series added to with this wild tale.

One of my favorite Foundation books is "Forward the Foundation". I did not think that Benford's novel added anything to the story between "Eto Demerzel" and "Cleon I" (I HATED the sims, memes, tiktoks, pans, and the characters did not seem right). "Foundation and Chaos" expanded on "Epilogue" and "The Psychohistorians". It has great characters and a great plot. I wish that Bear and Brin would have never mentioned the sims, and wormholes. I do not think that Brin's novel added much to the Foundation Universe. The plot was not as solid as Bear's and he tried to tie up the loose ends in a way that I do not think Asimov would have done. It seemed like it's main purpose was to tie up loose ends.

Greg Bear was able to catch all of the style and story told by Asimov in his books. It is very well written and reads like Forward the Foundation. Sometimes it feels as if you reading yet another Asimov's book.

Other two books produce no significant impact on your imagination and sometimes wander off from the idea set by Asimov. Despite that, Bear was able to connect both quite seamlessly.

While I really do recommend reading Foundation and Chaos, I do not recommend even to try reading Foundation's Fear as it doesn't make sense and it is hard to understand what is going on. As for Foundation's Triumph - not necessary to be read for completion of Foundation and Chaos.

I enjoyed "Foundation and Chaos" but make no mistake--this novel is very unlike anything that Isaac Asimov would have written. If some of Asimov's own writing was contained in this novel, as some reviews have stated, it is well submerged in Greg Bear's very different writing style. Bear has a murky, much more wordy style than did Asimov, and this novel is not an Asimov story.

In fact, I would argue that this novel is not really a Foundation novel. Without giving too much away (*minor spoiler*) this book postulates that robots had played a huge role in the development and control of the human race as it spread out among the stars. I found this theme to be depressing and unnecessary. Asimov's theme was that, with minor exceptions, robots had more or less gotten out of the way, with Daneel emerging mainly to nudge Hari Seldon into inventing psychohistory to soften the fall of the Galactic Empire. Here we have robots against robots, factions, intra-robot conflict, etc. Like most of Bear's novels, there is an interesting idea here, (Bear is an idea guy) but confused by his somewhat murky writing style.

I liked the novel. Most Asimov fans will probably like it too. But this is not an Asimov story.

By far the best plotted and written of the three new Foundation books. Bear explores some very interesting nuances of the Foundation Galaxy such as "emotions" in the robot Dors, the various "heresies" amongst robots when it comes to the 3/4 Laws of Robotics, and the effect of no laws. He actually does something useful with the incredibly misguided "sim" story line foisted on us by Benford. And while focusing on robots, he doesn't overdo their impact the way Brin does in the third book in the series.

My only wish is that Bear had written all three of the books.