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Foundation and Chaos : The Second Foundation Trilogy

Foundation and Chaos : The Second Foundation Trilogy

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good, but not Asimov
Review: This is a very good story written but a great author. I am so glad that he stayed so true to Asimov's original intentions for the series (unlike Brian Herbert with his Dune books). It does not read like Asimov though. This is forgivable because Bear never tried to emulate Asimov's style, he only tried to take Asimov's unfinished story and do the best job he could with his own writing style, which is really a better way to go if you think about it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good, but not Asimov
Review: This is a very good story written but a great author. I am so glad that he stayed so true to Asimov's original intentions for the series (unlike Brian Herbert with his Dune books). It does not read like Asimov though. This is forgivable because Bear never tried to emulate Asimov's style, he only tried to take Asimov's unfinished story and do the best job he could with his own writing style, which is really a better way to go if you think about it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Just okay
Review: This is an attempt by the Killer B's to expand upon the foundation series. This book looks upon the time and circumstances of Hari Seldon and explore the events that followed to establishment of the 2 foundations more closely. This book also ties the knots of foundation with Robots and the eternals. It is a good read if you are a foundation fanatic.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Foundation and Chaos
Review: This is the best book of the new trilogy. After reading this one I recommended to a few friends that they read the first one just so that they could get to this one. I've read everything Isaac Asimov has ever written, but nothing by Greg Bear except perhaps maybe one of his short stories. Now that Isaac is gone, I now look forward to checking out what other novels Mr Bear has written.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good and up lifting!
Review: This story is very up lifting and very well written. It has a very optimistic view and says a lot obout the best and the worst of the human race and ware it might or might not end up! In the far future. If I was living in the future this is the right time and places I would like to be in.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gimme ol' Doc A. back, PLEASE
Review: Though not bad a novel this is definitely inferior to the old asimovite classics on Foundation, Psychohistory, the Raven in persone grande. I recommend getting first , as not to get the shock of a lifetime. After the old masterpieces this is all right, a digestable new brew.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Who needs it?
Review: Though this book was written much better than Foundation's Fear, I wasn't very impressed. You know how movie studios always do re-makes of old movies? Well this here is a re-write, basically of the first chapter of Asimov's classic original Foundation book. What a waste of paper. If you already read the original, then you already know what will happen at the end.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hari Seldon and the Robots of Doom!
Review: Though twice as good (or half as bad) as its predecessor in this misguided series of Foundation filler books, Greg Bear's installment continues the ruination of the Foundation franchise begun with Asimov's own bridging novels. Asimov's original Foundation books are tight little novels with twists and surprises. The linking stories -- designed to provide continuity between the robot, galactic empire, and Foundation books -- end up destroying the magic that existed when all of the original topics stood alone.

Asimov's not-so-great idea of unifying his disparate storylines is carried to further depths with this Second Foundation trilogy, at least so far. Brought to you by writers who are allegedly the best in the field, they would seem ideally suited to carrying Asimov's torch.

Unfortunately, Gregory Benford's first volume made a hash of it, introducing cyberspace and two extremely annoying characters in the form of simulated Joan of Arc and Voltaire intelligences. In this book, Greg Bear gets the credit for cleaning up some of the mess. Here he brings to the fore a couple of interesting characters in the forms of extremely powerful telepaths. They foreshadow an important character in one of Asimov's original novels, representing the Chaos that threatens Seldon's theories. One of these characters has interesting potential, along with the novel's subplots involving competing robot conspiracies and yet even more imperial palace intrigues. But the whole thing ends with a whimper, disappointing by the standards established by both Asimov and Bear in their own books.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: True to Asimov form. Good addition to series.
Review: 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.


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