Harper Torch (Paperback), ISBN 0-06-105639-1
When you're a veteran reader of Sixties science fiction, you approach books that try to follow in the Master's footsteps with not so much caution but with a fully loaded elephant gun. How dare anyone try and reproduce the style of the classics!

Yet Foundation's Triumph astounds. My only regret lies in coming into the trilogy on the third book and not the first. In this volume Professor Hari Seldon, creator of the Foundation, escapes from exile for one last adventure.

Hari believes in his theories of Psychohistory but worries about the Chaos events. Chaos events could punch their way through his rigorous calculations and destroy all of the carefully crafted future the Foundation set out to achieve. So when offered a chance to study Chaos behavior first hand, Hari willingly follows the Grey Man, Horis Antic, off planet to observe the seemingly consistent pattern of chaos.

Then comes a series of plots, counter-plots and sub-plots. The elusive Daneel Olivaw, leader of a secret race of androids (i.e., human's protectors) plays out his own agenda towards the rebirth of the human race. Dors Venabili, Hari's lover and fellow android, races to be with Hari in his final days. Yet Hari's plans become disrupted when two chaos survivors board the ship. The seductive Sybyl and the irascible Gornon Vlimt kidnap Hari and Dors. Meanwhile, the rebel android Lodovic joins forces with a group of Calvinian (anti-Daneel) androids, further complicating matters. Before long, the possibility of a wave of chaos revivals turns into a real probability.

All in all, Foundation's Triumph brims with enough action and underhanded double-dealings to make this a novel of which Asimov would approve, and certainly one that fans of Asimov will enjoy reading. Especially the tense, gripping climax -- a moment where the entire destiny of the human race and Hari's psychohistory calculations hang in the balance.

Again my only regret -- that I started the series with the third volume of the trilogy. Now I have to find the first two volumes and start from the beginning.

Stephen Smith

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