Foundation's Fear - Gregory Benford

Introduction Sir Isaac Asimov has been a beaming icon in the world of science fiction. Of his novels, the foundation series has found the most acclaim and has won the Hugo of the Hugo award, the only series to have won this award. Since the demise of Asimov, there has been a clutch of writers who have tried to fill in the void and answer some of the queries to some of the unsolved or unattended portions of the foundation mysteries. Estate of Isaac Asimov decided to authorize a few authors to answer these mysteries. So a set of three authors, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Greg Bear went on to author a followup series to the Foundation series and decided to call it ''The Second Foundation Trilogy''. Foundation's Fear is the first installment in this series and is written by Gregory Benford.

The Plot

The plot of this novel tries to investigate the life and times of Hari Seldon. It traces the rise of Hari Seldon from a mathist to the role of First Minister. It also gives a brief insight as to why and how the concept of Foundations came to his mind. The story starts with invitation to Hari Seldon from Emperor Cleon who mentions that Hari is his choice for First Minister. This idea was rooted into the emperor by the outgoing First Minister, Eto Demerzel who is none other than R. Daneel. But Hari's accession to First Ministership is not so easy. He first has to get a vote from the Council and get elected. Betan Lamurk of the High Council wants First Ministership to himself. Of course, his political background gives him unfair advantage over Hari Seldon. So Hari has to play a cat and mouse game with Lamurk and Lamurk uses all his resources to prevent Hari from becoming First Minister at any cost. A few life attempts latter, Hari decides to fight fire with fire and then the hidden determination of Hari to win comes to the fore. In the meanwhile, Trantor has other problems too. There is a renaissance rebellion brewing in Sark which is threatening to spread like wildfire all over the empire. Hari knows that it is events like this that would lead the empire to a rapid decline. So this poses a challenge to both the First Ministerial Candidates. Another issue which crops up is the Tiktok rebellion which strikes at the root of Trantor leading to a food crisis at Trantor. Another challenge for Hari and Lamurk to resolve. Of course, all the time Hari is also working on the development of the science of PsychoHistory with the help of his sidekick Yugo. Things are beginning to shape up in this study as more and more variables are now becoming clearer and more and more historical evidences are also becoming available through Dors (Hari's robotic wife). So does Hari become First Minister? Does Psychohistory shape up properly? What happens to the Sark Renaissance and the Tiktok rebellion? What about the showdown between Lamurk and Hari? Read Foundation's Fear for answers to all these queries.

Critical Review

Foundation series defined a very big highpoint in the realm of Science Fiction. Gregory Benford and team have an uphill task to meet such high standards especially when their insight into the plot is just from the point of what they have read about the foundation series and then they have to develop things on their own. Keeping this thing in mind, Gregory has done a good job of relating to the foundation series and trying to answer some of the basic mysteries like the rise of Hari Seldon in this novel. The novel begins pretty fast and the story develops pretty quickly, but after that the novel goes into a long winding sleepy details and non required scenario details, and ends in a decent climax. The story after the initial thrusts seems to go in fits and starts and sometimes the broad picture gets totally lost in mundane details. Especially the portions of the story dealing with the sims, Voltaire and Joan seems to be so dull that I could never read the portions related to them without at least putting down the book umpteen number of times. Again the portions relating to the pans are so much detailed that they can again put readers to sleep. Again the writing style of Gregory Benford is pretty slow paced and you keep waiting through large portions of the novel for something to happen, nothing really happens. In fact, the novel spanning more than 600 pages could have been compressed to 200 pages and the story might have been retained intact minus the mundane details supplied. To be fair to Gregory Benford, he has tried to put in some elements from the original series like good one liners into the novel. But one-liners like ''Marriage is a voyage of discovery that never ends'', just don't pack the same punch as the original series' one-liners. My verdict is simple. Although Gregory Benford has taken the right topics to address in ''Foundation's Fear'' and has a decent plot, the writing style of Gregory Benford and the way he develops the story leaves a lot to be desired. I think he would disappoint most of the Foundation's fans with this story. Also, I am disappointed that the Estate of Isaac Asimov did not do more to make sure that ''The Second Foundation Trilogy'' stands up to the original ''Foundation Trilogy''. Of course, I have got the other two books in the Second Foundation Trilogy, but after reading this book, I am unsure as to whether I want to read them or not.

About the Author

Gregory Benford is a physicist, educator and author from Alabama. He is a professor of physics at the University of California-Irvine. His popular offerings are ''In the Ocean of Night'', ''Across the Sea of Suns'' etc.

Summary

A promising mystery to answer, a promising plot, but poor story development and writing style makes ''Foundation's Fear'' a foundation's fans' fear as well!! I would give this book only a two starrer based on two things. It is a poor followup to a great series and the book happens to be a sleeping pill at best. I had given up on this book three times, before I pulled up the socks and decided to complete the book.

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