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BOOK REVIEW: The Trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars

If you want to go to Mars, this trilogy gives a realistic, hard sci-fi picture of the

problems and possible wonders that you might experience. It also gives you an idea

of how man would go about making Mars an environment that man can live with

through the action of terraforming. It also gives you an idea about the inevitable

conflicts that would exist between those people who desire to remake Mars in the

image of Earth and those who believe that we should let Mars be dusty, red cold and

airless. If this seems like a lot of exposition it should because the Robinson Trilogy

covers a lot of ground and has 1500 pages to do it in. Less interesting in Robinson's

tomes are the growth of Marsian government and the political infighting that occurs.

More interesting is the influence of low gravity on human physiological development

All in all I can recommend this set very highly. Most of the characters are interesting

and engaging and you actually will learn something about the science of space

exploration and human expansion through out the solar system. Robinson provides

very imaginative solutions to the exploration and settling of other planets, and moons

in the solar system and interesting solutions to the insolvable problem of exploration of

Venus. The story does suffer through long slow stretches of detail revolving around

planetary government and unlikely soap operaish sub-plots involving the characters.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Trilogy of sequels to Issac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy "Foundation's Fear" by Gregory Benford, "Foundation and Chaos" by Greg Bear, and "Foundation's Triumph" by David Brin.

Describing this trilogy as a sequel to Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is a little difficult

because all of it occurs as a prequel chronilogically to Asimov's original work. The

trilogy is the brain child of Greg Benford who got the permission of Janet Asimov,

Issac's widow, to extend the original work.

Benford's book is slow, slow slow. I was so bored that I actually gave up and switched

to the next one in sequence (Bear's). Benford has some electronic intelligences that

embody the personalities of Joan of Arc and Voltaire. They naturally argue all the time

about...well let me say that it was about as interesting as actually having your own

argument. After 100 pages I was begging for someone to pull the plug on these

Bear is a good writer who has a track record writing cutting edge hard sci-fi. Some of

his previous work can get pretty thick though unless you enjoy keeping track of a

zillion characters all with peculiar names. Anyway, Bear does a good job of imitating

Asimov's original style which is a big help in reading 400 pages; about twice as long

as any of Asimov's original works in the trilogy. The story focuses on the rise of

human mentallics on the planet Trantor and the incredibly ornate and complex politics

of Trantor. The good guys win in case you had any doubt.

Brin is also a fairly well known writer, who like Bear, tries to write the way Asimov

would if he was at the typewriter. Again, this helps. Brin does a good job of weaving

the events in Benford's and Bear's novels with his own and also with Asimov's original

trilogy and Asimov's true sequels "Foundation's Edge" and "Foundation and Earth"

This novel is not as good as Bear's but is much better than Benford's, but it is still

TOO SLOW. This is particulaly true in areas where the characters quibble over small

points of philosphy for pages on end. Brin's story focuses on the manipulations of the

eternal Robot R. Daneel Olivaw and his plans for humankind and it's salvation.

Gerry's analysis of the new Second Foundation Trilogy:

Some similarities and some differences to Mark's analysis here. The three books

cover the story of Hari Seldon in detail, from his development of psychohistory and his

plan for the First and Second Foundation to the end of his life. This new supplement

to Asimov's work was the idea of Gregory Benford, author of the first work in the

series. He wrote a very interesting afterword to that story ("Foundation's Fear") which

discusses how Asimov's own vision of Foundation changed over time, and how they

hoped to add to the series with these works. Benford points out that he did not try to

copy Asimov's style, and that was quite apparent in "Foundation's Fear". It tells of the

many adventures of Hari Seldon and his wife Dors, as he tries to account for all

variables in his psychohistory while undergoing assasination attempts and political

intrigues. At times, it read more like a high action adventure story, and Hari Seldon

seemed more like an action figure who could be played by Bruce Willis than a

scholarly professor. Of the three books, it seemed the least like a story I could

imagine Asimov writing. However, it was fun, and several of the events which occur in

that story are referenced in the later books. "Foundation and Chaos", by Greg Bear,

seemed to fit in best with the Asimov series (though in all three books, robots play a

pivotal role, similar to later works such as "Foundation and Earth", but unlike the

original Asimov trilogy). Bear focused on the importance of the mentalics, humans with

telepathic type skills. The last book, "Foundation's Triumph", by David Brin, is very

philosophical. The issues of stability and stagnation versus advancement with chaos

were debated at length, along with all the ethical concerns related to robot involvement

in human destiny. The end of the story was satisfying, since it addressed some of the

issues left unresolved at the end of "Foundation and Earth", and I found Hari Seldon's

predictions to be very insightful. On the whole, all three books were interesting to

read. They provided a detailed look (in three different styles) at a narrow time period in

the Foundation story. My one wish is that Asimov himself were still here to continue