Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov6/7/2023 ![]() This theory seems risible to most: everyone knows there’s human life everywhere because of Emergence, which means that when human life was ready to develop on any one planet, it did. Only some mad scientists theorize that maybe, just maybe, humanity had its origin on Earth and then spread out to other planets. 5,000 years from now, at the height of the Galactic Empire, Earth has a nasty reputation as a radioactive backwoods, and it’s the butt of bigoted jokes all over the galaxy. Except “futuristic” is more a chronological descriptor than an environmental one. ![]() “Pebble in the Sky” was retroactively made part of the overarching “Foundation” / “Empire”/ “Robot” vision, and it’s a good place to start with Asimov as novelist for those who are curious but not necessarily invested in the grand intellectual reach of something like “Foundation.”Īn experiment with concentrated laser beams accidentally sends Joseph Schwartz from 1949 Chicago to a futuristic Earth. ![]() ![]() His reputation as a reliable, prolific writer of science fiction stories had already been set at least as far back as 1941 with the chilly, succinct horror treat that is “Nightfall,” but Asimov was still far from the giant that he would be by a decade and a half late, when his name would be synonymous with sci-fi (along with Arthur C. “Pebble in the Sky” was Isaac Asimov’s debut as a novelist in 1950. ![]()
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