Foundation’s Fear – Gregory Benford (not rated… yet…)

Although I’ve only read some 70 pages of this book yet, I felt compelled to jot down a couple of lines already.

After finishing just about all the books Isaac Asimov himself had written in the Foundation saga (started out as a trilogy, now counts a whole lot more then three books) and his Empire and Robot sagas, I went looking for more books in the same genre (“Hard Science Fiction” people call it) where the story isn’t the only important part of the book. Isaac manages to give the reader the idea that the story is second to the underlying principles. I’m sure I’ll write more about that in a post on Mister Asimov himself some day.

I’d bought “The Second Foundation Trilogy” as these three books are called with the thought that they’d be the same as Asimov’s work. After reading about ten pages from Foundation’s Fear I had to drop the book. It was nothing like Asimov’s work and I thought it paled in comparison. Where Asimov concentrated on character and storyline, Benford did more in location description and looks. I was disappointed and decided to put the book back on the shelf. Not the Asimov shelf, mind you, but the “Books by other the then original writer” shelf next to the Dragonlance books that weren’t written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

After reading Gibson’s Neuromancer I decided to give it another try. There aren’t that many good books out there and I’d regret not having read this if it did turn out to be one. I decided to read it as if it had no relation to the foundation series so that I couldn’t be disappointed.
The second try was a lot more impressive though. After the initial “fluff” Mister Benford does get to the point. And at about page 70 he is now even more hardcore then the Asimov books ever were. Not only does he delve deeper into the scientific principles behind what our main character, Hari Seldon, is doing. He delves deeper into them then Asimov dared, going almost to the point where the reader has a hard time following. Sometimes I do lose track of what he’s trying to tell.

I won’t put a rating on this book yet. I’ll do that when I finish it. I can tell you that I do expect it to be a nice rating though