Pebble in the Sky

infobox Book |
name = "Pebble in the Sky"
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of first edition (hardcover)
author = Isaac Asimov
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Empire Series
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Doubleday
release_date = 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.

Plot introduction

It begins with a retired tailor from the mid-20th Century, who is accidentally pitched forward into the future. By then, Earth has become 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 S.F. 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 the novella "Grow Old With Me", about 40,000 words long, and intended for a S.F. magazine called "Startling Stories". As Asimov himself explained 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 was not published in this form in 1948 as intended for the magazine, but in 1986 it appeared in the book "The Alternate Asimovs". In 1949, it was accepted as a book-length novel, to be expanded to about 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".

"Pebble in the Sky" has been grouped along with "The Stars, Like Dust" and "The Currents of Space" as the so-called "Galactic Empire" series. However, these are only loosely connected, occurring between the era of the Spacers and the Foundation Series, but not otherwise overlapping each other in time, location, or theme.

In this work, unlike "The End of Eternity", the 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 nuclear-laboratory 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, one which gained the victor a brilliancy prize.

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 recognize, and due to apparent changes in the 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 that lives there. They mistake him for a mentally deficient person, and they 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 realizes that the procedure has given him strong telepathic abilities, including the ability to project his thoughts to the point of killing or injuring a person.

The 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 frowned upon and discriminated against. Earth also has several large radioactive areas, although the cause is never really described. (The prequels elaborate upon this very 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 euthanized. The people of the Earth must also be executed when they reach the age of just sixty, a procedure known as "The Sixty," with a very few exceptions; mainly for people who have made significant contributions to society. That is a problem for Schwartz, who is now sixty-two years old.

The Earth is part of the Galactic Empire, with a resident Procurator, who lives in a domed town in the high Himalayas (see the book-cover artwork of the town in glass) and a Galactic military garrison, but in practice it is ruled by a group of Earth-centered "religious fanatics" who believe in the ultimate superiorty of Earthlings. They have created a new, deadly supervirus that they plan to use to kill or subjugate the rest of the Empire, and to avenge themselves for the way their planet has been treated by the galaxy at large. Among other things, this virus has the ability to kill by radiation poisoning.

Joseph Schwartz, along with Affret Shekt, the scientist who developed the new device that boosted Schwartz's mental powers, his daughter Pola Shekt, and a visiting archaeologist Bel Arvardan, are captured by the rebels, but they escape with the help of Schwartz's new mental abilities, and they are narrowly able to stop the plan to release the virus. Schwartz uses his mental abilities to provoke a pilot from the Imperial garrison into bombing the site where the arsenal of the super-virus exists.

The book ends on a hopeful note — perhaps the Empire can be persuaded to restore the Earth, and to bring in huge amounts uncontaminated soil.

Place in the wider Foundation saga

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 hundred 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"). Two millenia is a gross underestimate, though it is also possible Riose is referring to the period of immediate history where, as the Empire contracted and its civilisation was on the wane, a decreased amount of minor and occasions of civil war also are a sign of the impending Fall. Asimov himself made comment (through R. Daneel to Hari Seldon, in "Prelude to Foundation") that this is a sign of civilisational moribundity.

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 terraformed 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.

A very modified radio dramatization

On June 17, 1951, the NBC radio network broadcast its own version of "Pebble in the Sky" as Dimension X. In this much abbreviated version (only 25 min), the whole story of time travel was cut out with Bel and Pola being the main characters. The ending was quite different, since the virus was, in fact, released, leaving Earth alone as a "Pebble in the Sky."