Foundation's Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy) (Hardcover)

In honour of the clear and conciseness of the Good Doctor....

1. This is NOT a Foundation book. Those who are going into it with that expectation please ditch it now - or else you'd end up like me and hate the book. This is a Benford book set in a 'Benford-altered' Foundation universe.

2. Having never read Benford before this, I hope this is not his normal style. Perhaps the author noticed the mess himself, as hinted by the comment in the Afterward: "Those who think it is easy to write clearly ... should try it"). Hallmark of a badly written novel - when you find yourself grappling to UNDERSTAND what the author is trying to say through that ornate prose and end up not even caring whether you do or not. Nobody writes as clearly as does Asimov, but surely they can find someone who does better than this!

3. The neologisms ... UGH! Perhaps it's just me, but lots of techno-babble does not equal hard SF. Intergrating technical information seamlessly into the narrative is a skill that Benford doesn't seem to appreciate. And calling a spade a spade does not detract from the science. Words such as 'mathist', 'stim', 'sim', 'pan'; 'meritocrats', 'tiktoks', 'memes' etc etc etc do not add to the narrative. It took me 8 pages to figure out what a 'pan' is - call me dumb if you will but I don't believe this kind of thing doesn't detract from the story.

4. Professor of Physics or not - Mr. Benford, you're now in someone else's universe, please show some respect. Wormholes are en vogue today - who knows what will be in 10 years time. Throwing them into a galaxy that did very well without them for 16 books for the sake of 'up-dating' is arrogant and will, I suspect, date 'Foundation's Fear' more than otherwise. Perhaps I could've accepted them had they been central to the plot - alas, they were not.

5. Hari Seldon as James Bond doesn't work. If I wanted to read action-adventure, I would. I can just imagine Roger Moore jumping out of that elevator shaft, dusting off his jacket and saying to the on-lookers: "Just dropping in." That is NOT Hari Seldon. Speaking of which... what's happened to Seldon anyway? He is confused, impatient, apathetic, cold and hard. In 'Forward the Foundation' Asimov clearly explains that Seldon is his alter ego. I can see the Good Doctor turning in his grave.

6. And speaking of turning in his grave - the VIOLENCE oh the violence of the book. Asimov is one of the last frontiers of bloodless fiction. He abhorred murder and used it when he must (such as a murder mystery) and 99% off the stage. Since when is brute force valued more than intellect in an Asimov book? In 'Foundation's Fear' - Seldon not only quite happily bats someone to death but also plans mass murder and gloriously baths in it's aftermath. With the assistance of ....

7. ... Daneel. I fell in love with him during my teenage years and is probably among the minority that let out whoops of joy when Asimov dragged him kicking into the 'Foundation' series. ;-) The Daneel in this novel is a changed robot - he is no longer grave and gentle (stern and aloof were the two most common adjectives used). And he seems to have lost the Laws of Robotics somewhere along the way. The mass murder of Lamurk's agents - not a flicker of indecision; the mind swipe of Lamurk - not a flicker of regret ... on the other hand the robots (his brethern) are obviously more important to him. As a previous reviewer commented, to me Daneel is the most threatening figure in the novel.

8. Does Benford have a problem selling his novelettes? 150 pages of Joan of Arc and Voltaire and 50 pages of 'pans' - that's 1/3 of the whole novel! Why did Asimov's estate even allow these?

9. Benford points out the inconsistencies of the whole saga in his Afterward. If only he didn't create more - I sometimes wonder whether he read the original series. I'm not a nitpicker and I'm not talking about trivia like dates and population - characters changed personalities (Seldon, Dors, Daneel, Amaryl); characters disappeared (Raych); backgraound of the galaxy changed (aliens, tiktoks, wormholes); and events clearly documented in previous volumes ignored (Seldon never saw Daneel again after his turn as Demerzel; Dors' role was never well publicised; the public understanding of Earth! ).

10. Throwing in a comment about the 'ugliness of "sociohistory"' and the cute chapter titles do not save the book. Especially when the novel lectures you like you're an idiot. We're not and we get the point without being told to us point blank again and again and again...

Sorry to be so long-winded. But this is an extremely frustrated fan writing! ;-)

I must say, though, that if you are insistent on reading this series anyway, skip this first one. Oh my God. Nothing like Asimov (as you can tell by these other reviews). Even Daneel acts differently, which is a shame.

It truly seems that when the Asimov estate approached Benford to write this novel, he quickly read the Foundation series, then merely tied in several story ideas Benford himself was working on anyway, slapped them together with a minimum of stitching, and turned them into something remotely Foundational.

I also noticed that you can get no real sense of time (in later books, Hari and Dors's pan adventure is explained to be quite a long period of time's worth, but you can't tell that at all from Benford's book -- it seems like only a week at most). As a matter of fact, if you read Bear's or Brin's entries (which are much better by the way -- Greg Bear's is more action-oriented and fast-paced, where poor David Brin has to bat clean-up and seems to do more explaining for the whole mis-begotten affair than anything else) you'll see the other two authors almost trying to shy away from Benford's novel: there's hardly anything mentioned in Bear's book regarding the Voltaire and Joan sims until the end (thank goodness -- they were annoying and the most pointless characters in this book, and, unfortunately, they were the majority of it), and Brin worked with the sims as best he could.

Avoid the first book, but give the other two a try. There's not much you'll miss at all if you don't read "Foundation's Fear" that couldn't be explained in three sentences. Actually, I think that's exactly how it was explained in the following books anyway! As mentioned before, even though I think the last two are better, Bear's book is a classic sci-fi action film in book form, and Brin's book almost makes you want to hate the robots for being so "controlling" of humans. But they're still better written and thought out than "Fear".

I've never read anything else by Mr. Benford, and not planning on it.

Then there's psycohistory! Asimov used it as a vehicle to further his plot, he didn't try to flesh it out in detail. Benford does, and it just doesn't work on that level. If elaborate statistical analysis worked that well think what it could do to major sports. He also indulges in long-winded detailing of psychohistory's graphical output. This also goes on and on. And there's the imperial government, which is autocratic, but also seems to be subject to democratic constraints at the same time.

Benford discusses in the "Afterward" all the considerations involved in extending Asimov's Foundadtion series, and there were many. To his credit, he didn't try to imitate Asimov's style and he introduced technologies not used in the original books. And some parts of the book are faster-paced and more entertaining. I thought the section on "Panucopia" was the best, but there were other good scenes.

This book has it good points and its bad ones. It's two hundred pages too long and there are inconsistencies that are already well-documented by others. On the whole it isn't very satisfying. Those wanting to do the full sequence should be prepared to plod through, others probably should bypass this one altogether.