Pebble in the Sky
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Isaac Asimov |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Empire Series |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Released | 1950 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 223 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Currents of Space |
| Followed by | Blind Alley |
Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, published in 1950.
This work is his first novel — parts of the Foundation series had appeared from 1942 onwards, in magazines, but Foundation was not published in book form until 1951. The original Foundation books are also a string of linked episodes, whereas this is a complete story involving a single group of characters.
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[edit] Plot introduction
It begins with a retired tailor from the mid-20th Century, who is accidentally pitched forward into the far future. Earth is now radioactive, and is a low-status part of a vast Galactic Empire. There is both a mystery and a power-struggle, and a lot of debate and human choices. The originality of the work is the choice of a very ordinary man as the story's protagonist, rather than the more typical space opera hero.
It was originally written in 1947 as Grow Old With Me, intended for a magazine called Startling Stories. As Asimov explains in The Early Asimov, this was intended as a quotation from Robert Browning's poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra," which actually says Grow Old Along With Me. It never appeared in this form, though in 1986 it appeared in The Alternate Asimovs. In 1949, it was accepted as a book, to be expanded to 70,000 words. Asimov also retitled it Pebble in the Sky.
This book takes place in the same universe as the Foundation series. Earth is part of the Empire of Trantor, later the setting for Hari Seldon's invention of psychohistory. Asimov returned to the radioactive-Earth theme in The Stars Like Dust, The Currents of Space, and Foundation and Earth. He would explore it most fully in Robots and Empire.
It has been grouped along with The Stars, Like Dust and The Currents of Space as the Galactic Empire series. But they are only loosely-connected, occurring between the era of the Spacers and the Foundation, but not otherwise overlapping in time, location, or theme.
In this work, unlike The End of Eternity, time-travel is one-way and uncontrolled. It might be an accidental use of the same technology — Asimov hints at a connection in Foundation's Edge, but never definitely settled the point. We have to assume that it is a pure accident that the man from the past ends up at a particularly critical moment when he can make an enormous difference in the course of history.
One element of the novel of which Asimov was particularly fond was the inclusion of a scene of exposition conducted over the course of a game of chess between two of the characters. By recounting all the moves, Asimov reacted against the common tendency of novelistic portrayals of chess games to neglect the action on the board. The game that he chose to present was a victory by Löwenfisch (black) over Werlinski (white) in Moscow in 1924, which gained the victor a brilliancy prize.
[edit] Plot summary
While walking down the street in Chicago, Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is the unwitting victim of a nearby nuclear laboratory accident, by means of which he is instantaneously transported tens of thousands of years into the future (50,000 years, by one character's estimate, a figure later retconned by future Asimov works as a "mistake"). He finds himself in a place he does not recognise, and due to apparent changes in spoken language that far into the future, he is unable to communicate with anyone. He wanders into a farm, and is taken in by the couple who live there. They mistake him for a mentally-deficient person, and secretly offer him as a subject for an experimental procedure to increase his mental abilities. The procedure, which has killed several subjects, works in his case, and he finds that he can quickly learn to speak the current lingua franca. He also slowly realises that the procedure has given him limited telepathic abilities, including the ability to project his thoughts to the point of killing or injuring a person. These are similar, but much less developed, powers to those employed by The Mule many millennia later.
Earth, at this time, is seen by the rest of the Galactic Empire as a rebellious planet — it has, in fact, rebelled three times in the past — and the inhabitants are widely discriminated against. Earth also has several large radioactive areas, although the cause is never described. (The prequels elaborate upon this specific point.) Because the radioactivity makes large areas of Earth uninhabitable, it is a very poor planet, and anyone who is unable to work is legally required to be killed. Earthpeople must also be executed when they reach the age of sixty, a procedure known as "The Sixty," with very few exceptions; mainly for people who have made significant contributions to society. This is a problem for Schwartz, who is now sixty-two years old.
Although Earth is part of the Empire, with a resident Procurator (as in the Roman empire), with a military garrison, it is in practice ruled by a group of religious fanatics. They have created a supervirus which they plan to use to kill or subjugate the rest of the Empire, and avenge themselves for the way their planet has been treated by the galaxy at large.
Schwartz, along with Affret Shekt, the scientist who developed the machine that boosted Schwartz's mental powers, his daughter Pola, and a visiting archaeologist Bel Arvardan, are captured, but escape with the help of Schwartz's new abilities, and are narrowly able to stop the plan to release the virus.
The book ends on a hopeful note — perhaps the Empire can be persuaded to restore Earth, and bring in uncontaminated soil.
[edit] Place in the wider Foundation saga
- What follows is not a spoiler for this book, but gives away key points in various other novels.
[edit] Chronology
The 50,000-year estimate is at odds with the chronology given in Asimov's later novels, in particular Foundation and Earth and The Caves of Steel. The latter novel indicates that the robot R. Daneel Olivaw was constructed some three thousand years after the founding of New York City. Foundation and Earth, in its concluding scene, establishes that Daneel survives into the Interregnum period, after the First Galactic Empire collapses. He gives his age as (roughly) twenty thousand years. The Galactic Era dating system, to which most of Asimov's Foundation Series adheres, places Foundation and Earth approximately twelve thousand years after the events of Pebble in the Sky. Adding up all the differences, Joseph Schwartz's time displacement ultimately transported him only some eleven millennia into the future.
This sort of inconsistency occurs elsewhere in Asimov's early fiction. It is probably to be expected, given that Asimov wrote the Foundation stories over several decades, and did not fully connect the disparate historical eras until the last years of his life. Furthermore, his characters almost always act with incomplete information, frequently enriching their understanding of Galactic history as the plot unfolds. In this context, such inconsistencies are not only expected, but are also — to an extent — necessary for realism.
In Foundation, the Galactic Empire has existed for 12,000 years. Nuclear power is believed to have existed for 50,000 years, even though this is long after the era of Pebble in the Sky. Yet in Foundation and Empire, General Bel Riose says, "[Contrast] the two millennia of peace under the Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire with the two millennia of interstellar anarchy that preceded it." ("The Dead Hand").
[edit] The fate of Earth and its people
In Foundation and Earth, we learn that the Empire began a restoration of Earth, but that this was abandoned. We also encounter descendants of the old population at "Alpha," a planet of one of the suns of Alpha Centauri. They were settled there by the Empire, which intended to make a whole terrraformed world, but in fact produced just one large island. Daneel explains that he had a role in attempting the restoration of Earth's soil and also settling humans at "Alpha," but achieved less than he had wanted. Whether he was involved in the actual events of Pebble is not discussed, but strongly implied. It is also left open that other refugees from Earth might have settled elsewhere in the universe.
| Preceded by: | Series: |
Followed by: |
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| The Currents of Space |
Empire Series Foundation Series |
Blind Alley |
| The novels of Isaac Asimov |
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Robot Series: The Caves of Steel | The Naked Sun | The Robots of Dawn | Robots and Empire |
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