‘In ‘Foundation and Chaos’, one of science fiction’s greatest storytellers takes one of its greatest stories into new and fascinating territory. Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series is back. Hari Seldon, approaching the end of his life, is on trial for daring to predict the Empire’s fall. At the same time, final preparations are under way for the long-anticipated migration to Star’s End. But R Daneel Olivaw, the brilliant robot entrusted with this great mission, has discovered a potential enemy. At a critical moment in the Empire’s fall and the Foundation’s rise, Hari Seldon is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. Blurb to the 2001 Orbit Paperback EditionThe novel runs concurrently with Part I of Asimov’s original novel, cleverly using Hari Seldon’s trial – originally seen from the viewpoint of Gaal Dornick – as a central focus to examine events behind the scenes of which Gaal Dornick was unaware. The trial dialogue is identical, but Asimov’s rather dry ‘transcript’ version has been dramatised – if one may use that word in this context – brilliantly and, if anything, creates a tension and suspense where in Asimov’s version of events there is merely his cosy sense of certainty and destiny. The reader was never in any doubt that the Seldon plan would succeed. It was just a matter of trying to work out how. Behind the scenes, Hari’s grand-daughter, Wanda, is gathering ‘mentalics’ – human mutants capable of manipulating the thoughts of others – as the core of Seldon’s ‘Second’ Foundation. Bear’s Foundation universe is a darker and more complex place than Benford’s, and it is to his credit that he manages to capture some of Asimov’s atmosphere whilst fully updating it for a contemporary readership. Here, the robots take centre-stage and their millennia-spanning plans and behind-the scenes manipulations are put into a different perspective. Lodovic Trema, an ancient robot and long-time associate of Daneel R Olivaw’s plans for humanity, has been altered by Voltaire (an AI personality first encountered in Foundation’s Fear). He no longer is bound by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics which forbid him to harm humans, and undergoes a form of robotic exegesis, coming to believe that Daneel’s protective stance of humanity as a whole is a restrictive suffocating policy. The robots’ disparate philosophies and organisations are described using religious terminology with Humanity in the position of God/Creator. Originally united, the robot population was divided and subdivided by schisms, with some becoming Calvinist (after Susan Calvin from Asimov’s original ‘Robot’ series) and others becoming Giskardists following the philosophy of the robot R Giskard Reventlov. To add support to the religious connection there is a conversation between Daneel and the sim personality construct of Joan of Arc in which it is implied that Daneel’s God is Humanity, which in a sense is true if one applies the human religious hierarchical framework to Robots. Humans are the creators. They breathed life into the robots in a far more evidential way manner than God breathed life into Adam. Oddly enough, the robot featured in Asimov’s ‘I, Robot’ or at least in the twilight Zone adaptation, was indeed called ‘Adam’, thus endowing the whole of this robotic narrative thread with a kind of theological thematic consistency. This means that the evolved humans now having abandoned their Gods, it is time for the Robots to do the same.Were this not a posthumous sequel with a solid body of work stretching back – with various degrees of quality – to the Nineteen Forties, the concept of a robot in the late Nineties novel would only work in some ironic post-modern sense, as it does in ‘Roderick’. The concept of a Galactic Empire is also one which modern writers approach at their peril, but here, given its cosy familiarity from the Asimov legacy seems – along with the robots – not out of place. Bear, following on from Benford, fleshes out the power-structures and goes a long way toward making the Empire, and the complex power struggles which pervade it, a plausible entity. It’s fascinating to see how Bear, noted for novels of solid scientific speculation and Big Ideas, copes with what is essentially Space Opera, but cope he does, and extraordinarily well. One of the best scenes involves two of the robots travelling to the secret robot base at Eos, a small blue moon of a green gas giant, orbiting a double star. There, an ancient robot with four arms, three legs and seven vertical sensor strips on its face ‘two of which glowed blue at any given time’ performs necessary maintenance on those robots who come in for their MOTs. It’s a poignant and evocative section, laced with a Golden Age sense of wonder.
Compared with the novel that came before in this series, this one was phenomenal!Foundation and Chaos: The Second Foundation Trilogy is clearly a secondary book in a trilogy. It advances the story arc and sets up the crisis to be resolved in the third novel, without actually answering many questions itself. This novel was a faster read than Foundation's Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy, #1), and seemed to dovetail very nicely with the initial vignette in Foundation.I was thrilled to see Dors back (I like/d her), but equally annoyed to see the return of Joan and Voltaire.My reading notes follow:(view spoiler)[@ 2.7% // Well look at that! Raych is mentioned right at the start of this novel. Unlike the previous novel, he is remembered to exist! @ 3.3% // So long, and thanks for all the worm holes. The worm holes, a rare science accuracy in a world of space fiction (often called science fiction) of the previous novel has just been killed off in order to return to Asimov's hyper drive ships. To those reviewers that found worm holes anti-cannon and unpalatable when reading the previous novel, this point in this novel must have been a wonder to behold. Are they jumping for joy? @ 5.3% // Loving the subtle nod to Planck.@ 7.5% // Stimulk is the new Popsicle... @ 10.7% // ... if Popsicles were beer.@ 16.9% // Science fiction science jargon at its best. About the only part of that currently related to science is the assertion that Sodium chloride is table salt. @ 16.9% // What on Earth is a "weighted balcony"? @ 17.0% // Widdershins! Someone actually used "widdershins" in their manuscript! Love! @ 57.8% // I had so sincerely hoped that all that nonsense with Joan and Voltaire was just limited to the first of this new trilogy. But alas, no. And honestly, what does it matter that those SIMs have quarreled? @ 59.1% // And just who, exactly, is it that you believe us a robot that you are saving "us" from the servitude of, Sinter? Seldon? The Emperor? Chen? @ 60.7% // Wait a minute! How did Klia et al discover that they were working for robots? I feel as if I missed a scene. At last telling, they just knew that they were working for mysterious individuals. But robots? They know this now? Biggest secret in the universe and it seems that everyone knows it. @ 66.2% // “That is not a surprise,” Plussix said with a soft internal whir. “A copy of the sim Voltaire exists in Plussix and me, as well.” Editing faux pas? Since Plussix is the one talking "Plussix and me" makes no sense.@ 88.4% // So Seldon has had his crisis of conscious and wants to scrap the entirety of the Foundation project. But since this is a prequel and we know that he does not, let's see how he changes his mind in the next 12% of the novel. Or is that what the next book is for? (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Foundation And Chaos (1999)?
Minden tekintetben meghaladja a Gregory Benford jegyezte Az Alapítvány félelme c. regényt. Greg Bear története nemcsak tartalmi-logikai és stilisztikai szempontból illeszkedik sallangmentesen Asimov univerzumába, hanem a benfordi szálakat is sikerrel fűzi össze az Alapítvány epizódjaival – egy nem éppen könnyű feladat. Nyilván, az Alapítvány és a Robotok univerzum szakértő olvasói kimazsolázhatnak egy-két következetlenséget, lelhetnek néhány pontot, ahol Bear sztorija apró karcot ejt az asimovi regényfolyamon (bár ilyen súrlódások az eredeti asimovi novellák között is kimutathatók, amint arra maga a szerző is rámutatott), de ezek egyike sem csökkenti érdemben a befogadói élvezetet, sőt…
—Zoltán
I almost gave this two stars until I realized how utterly pointless the book was. Nothing in the story advances the plot of the Foundation Series until the last 10 pages or so.The "sims" were (thankfully) largely downplayed after their disastrous introduction in Foundation's Fear. There was no VR immersion nonsense either. It also wasn't nearly as long (albeit still 350 pages or so too long in my opinion...). So in these regards, it was not as bad as Fear was.But, there were robots. Tons and tons of robots for no reason other than to fight with each other for some reason. Daneel is back, and changed for the worse. In previous books, Asimov stated how it was very hard for Daneel to manipulate someone's mind even a small amount. In this book he is having entire conversations with people just to erase their memory of it when he is done. Why??Asimov would be rolling over in his grave if he realized how his legacy was tainted by his greedy survivors.
—Jeremiah Johnson
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Well, this was definitely better than Benford's entry in the Foundation series in that at no point while reading this did I want to gouge my eyes out. However, I can't really say it was a good or necessary part of the Foundation saga. I wouldn't call it a complete waste of time (again, unlike Foundation's Fear)...but I was pretty glad to finish it. I did gain a healthy respect for Bear's writing (he's one of my wife's favorites) and am interested in reading something else. I just hope it has more of a plot than this had.
—David
