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.
In Before the Golden Age, Asimov wrote that Pebble in the Sky ...
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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.
In Before the Golden Age, Asimov wrote that Pebble in the Sky was influenced by the short story "Proxima Centauri" by Murray Leinster.
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...
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