[spoilers below]
Kevin Street wrote:
>
> What do you think of the trilogy of books written by Bear,
> Benford and Brin that extended Asimov's foundation universe?
>
<sarcasm>
I think this is off-topic. There's a list to discuss these
books, the galactica e-group [accessable by www.egroups.com]
</sarcasm>
:-)
>
> I read the the Benford and Brin volumes. They were
> entertaining (the Brin more so than Benford's) but
> I'm not sure they really added much to
> Asimov's original stories. Heck, I'm not sure that
> Asimov did himself any favours with all those sequels
> and prequels to the original "Foundation" trilogy.
>
<aol>
I agree
</aol>
The problem is that the BBB didn't have much to work
on; telling more Hari Seldon stories seemed, IMHO,
totally uninteresting. And I guess they did the right
thing: they abused the flashbacks to tell the *whole*
Empire and pre-Empire history.
For example, in _Stars like Dust_, we end the book
without knowing what happened to the "revolution". I
thought it failed, because the star-cluster g*vernment
that Tyrann was building was a step to the galactic
g*vernment that Trantor imposed, some years later.
But Brin not only told us that they succeeded, but also
that they succeeded in remaining semi-independent from
the worse tyranny of R.Daneel Olivaw.
Also, in _Foundation_ we are given the idea that The
Empire was an Evil Thing, causing lots of harm to
human beings. This clearly contradicts the Zeroth Law,
so the BBB explained the Empire as a Good Thing in
Decadence.
Alberto Monteiro
