Foundation and Chaos Review: Part 3

This is the final part of my book review and somewhat overdue. 

To recap, the story of Foundation and Chaos is a suppliment to the works of Isaac Asimov by author Greg Bear. For me I find it builds wonderfully on the themes and ideas that Asimov touched upon. More than that, it's a fascinating subversion of the trope of the hero's journey. 

Foundation and chaos has always been about the actions of community. Community is a thing which all characters in the book need; whether they're robots seeking out others of their kind or human beings seeking companionship of like minded individuals. But it goes deeper than that. A central theme of the book is the idea that deeper bonds and being closer to one another is a good thing. It's easy for science fiction to laud the heroic individual who can bend the galaxy to his or her will. However it's harder to make a narrative lauding the community and the way it can bend the will of the galaxy. 

As we've covered in previous parts of the review, heroism has a role to play in the story but it does not matter historically. The most powerful, willful and well connected individuals can only sway the course of history perhaps a millionth of a degree. They are very much the product of their environment and not the other way around. The character Hari Seldon literally visits a prison for Tyrants as a matter of scientific investigation. This is a world for people like real world Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler. By the standards of the novel these figures in the interviews they give are small minded, short sighted and reflexively cruel. By the view of Seldon's Psychohistory, they are mere flashes in the pan. The impact they have on their worlds is rapidly forgotten. Most of the time, their tyrannical and destructive tendencies come from the instinct of fear; please pay attention to that. 

But again, this book is not like the novel The Lord of the End Times or even like Rick and Morty; the tale of a nihilistic "man of science." The galaxy is larger than any one man or woman. Even the robot Daneel who has controlled the galaxy from the shadows knows that his time is at an end. His method of control is producing stagnation and slowing human evolution; more than that it is becoming harder and harder to dictate the fate of the galaxy with the Empire dying a slow death. 

There is one other character in the novel who perhaps is the largest refute of the heroic ubermensch. She by her physical description and mental powers recalls another Asimov character, the Mule; an immensely powerful psychic who conquered the Galaxy single handed and whose work was swept away like the ancient King Ozymandias. As it stands, she is a tormented individual, unable to bond with ordinary humans or with the growing and very much group oriented mentallics who will one day form the basis of the Second Foundation. Despite being a psychic of such power that she can crush the next most powerful psychic a thousand times over. 

This ties into the other major theme of the novel, that top down dictatorial change can't lead to anything good or lasting. Much like the tyrants on the prison world tried to impose top down order on their respective planets, so does she by the book's end where isolation causes a mental breakdown in her. She is assassinated by a robot freed of the three laws, but the book implies that she would have caused a destructive reign much like the tyrants had she been given free reign. 

By contrast, the goal of Daneel by the book's end, the goal of Hari Seldon and his second and First foundations it he ongoing evolution of the human race. Not in a forced, dictatorial sense but by a mutual growth; bottom up, horizontal change. Lasting change from the bottom. And while the most powerful man in the galaxy with the resources of millions of worlds at his beck and call can change the course of history a millionth of a degree, a community of a few hundred thousand people can save galactic civilization and build something greater and stronger than the old Empire ever could be. 

This leads into the final theme of the Novel. The rejection of fear. 

By story's end, a great catastrophe has been averted. The Galactic Empire will fall in four hundred years afterwards a better new Empire will rise in tandem with a growing and thriving population of psychics whose defining trait is their ability to empathize and feel what others feel. Nobody knows it happened, it's just business as usual for everyone from the greatest tyrant to the lowest labourer. The robots who served as the masters and caretakers of humanity will finally fade away; their purpose finished. In flavour and tone it's very much the opposite of the Warhammer 40,000 world; where a mutant with psychic abilities imposes a top down dictatorship in order to save mankind. Spoiler alert, he fails miserably and everything he builds goes to pot. 

I'm not suggesting that Warhammer and Foundation are in any way linked; the stories they tell are night and day, as are the purpose of either form of writing. But maybe it's worth reflecting that Foundation and Chaos is a more mature fantasy than that of Warhammer. Human beings need each other; we are simply a social animal. The strongest and most independent among us rely on constant help and aid from our fellow humans. As the book's final sequence touches on, we began as tiny mammals living under the shadow of the dinosaurs. On some level, that primal fear has never left us. What was useful as tiny rodents living in burrows may in fact be a liability to upright, intelligent mammals with access to technology. Getting away from that eternal fear is one of humanity's longest and most unattainable goals. We're working towards it as a species, not just in science fiction but in reality. For every failure and stumble we are only moving forward as a species. 

Someone once said that good science fiction should be able to teach us. I believe this book and the Foundation series in general can teach us; about ourselves more than any kind of technology. Teaches us that the power of community, built on empathy and understanding can build a better future. It is the ultimate refutation of nihilism, as the lack of any kind of heavenly centered morality is not a thing to despair or feel anomie over but a blank check to write the future on; a better, kinder, more free future. 

We're building it now. So go out and Read The Foundation Series, go out and read Foundation and Chaos. You won't be disappointed.