Resumo de Foundation And Chaos

Foundation And Chaos is the second book in the Second Foundation Trilogy which has been approved by the Estate of Asimov as a follow-up series to the very popular and classic Foundation Trilogy by the maestro himself. The other books in the Trilogy are Foundation's
Fear written by Gregory Benford and Foundation's Triumph by David Brin. Foundation and Chaos has been written by Greg Bear.

Plot
The story traces the gradual decline and decay of the Galactic Empire after the retirement of Hari Seldon from the post of First Minister. Hari Seldon has come down from his heady position and is now regarded everywhere as a doomsday sayer.

On the other hand, the new emperor of the Galactic Empire Klayus is a mere puppet in the hands of two men i.e. His personal counsellor Farad Sinter and Commissioner Chen. Both of them love to hate Hari and his work and this brushes on the emperor as well. Chen's right hand is Lodovik Trema who is actually a humanoid robot.

In an accident, Lodovik Trema undergoes a startling transformation and suddenly finds that he is not bound by the laws of robotics both the Three laws of Susan Calvin and the Zeroth law which came in later. This makes him a dangerous proposition as a machine without control.

Farad Sinter meets a lady called Vara Liso who is physically very frail but seems to have mysterious mental abilities. She has the power to sense others views and to affect those views. Farad decides to use her in his campaign against Hari and Robots both alike. So Vara
Liso begins to sense Robots and Farad's forces try to finish them off. For a while, all that Vara manages to detect are other mentalics with similar mental abilities like her although in much lesser quantity, but then she hits pay dirt and senses out Lodovik Trema.

R. Daneel Olivaw is still up and running and as long as he is up and running he would do anything to keep the Universe from upheavals and also keep Hari safe. So Daneel starts weaving a net around Hari to keep him protected. Commisioner Chen in the meanwhile chooses a soft moment for Hari to take him into custody and put him on trial on the charges of treason and false propaganda against the stability of the empire.

So what happens next? Does Hari escape the trial? What is Daneel's gameplan? What about Vara Liso? Check out this second offering in the Second Foundation Trilogy for all the answers.
Critic's Viewpoint
Greg Bear seems to have learned from Gregory Benford?s Foundation?s Fear and has come up with a far more straight forward plot, though at times he does dwell on some of the plots introduced by Benford. The novel is much more fast paced and story is well presented by Bear.
Another contrast with the first novel in the series is the fact that instead of Hari who hogged most of the limelight in the first, it is the Robots and the mentalics who are the focus of this novel, though Hari still has a crucial role to play.

Greg Bear also tries to answer a lot of queries that comes up in the minds of the readers of the Foundation series such as
1) What is the trial of Hari about?
2) How were the recordings of Hari for the cusp moments prepared?
3) How were the planets for the two foundations setup? and so on and so forth.

The good thing in this novel is that Hari is shown in moments of self-doubt about Psychohistory, but on the flip side the Godly air surrounding him is greatly diminished and he is shown as a mere instrument in the hands of R. Daneel Olivaw. Bear also does a good job in showing the decline of the empire in various parameters including the administration and
the powers of the people in and around the king. Again Bear should get a pat in the back for laying the foundations of some of the elements of the Foundation series like the mentalics and mutants.

But there are a few shortcomings due to which some of the suspense of the Foundation series are rendered useless. The exact location of the d Foundation is revealed in this novel. Again the establishment of the Second Foundation and Foundation at two distinct locations seem to be coincidental rather than any thought process regarding the same by Hari.
It is on this point that I though Isaac Asimov scored heavily. Despite having cross connections between many novels in the series, the mention is made in such a way that the substance of either novel is not given away in the other. Bear would have done well to have learnt this art from the maestro and use it here.

If the discussion between Joan representing emotions and Voltaire representing cold logic was the highlight of Foundation's Fear, the highlight of Foundation and Chaos is the argument amongst the various breeds of Robots i.e. Robots with Zeroth law and the Robots without
Zeroth law.

Summary
All in all it is a much better offering than Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear. I would give this novel a three star rating mainly because it acts as a spoiler for the Foundation series.

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