The novel “Pebble in the Sky” by Isaac Asimov was published for the first time in 1950.

Joseph Scwharz is a retired tailor who becomes the victim of an accident that happened in a nuclear power plant that transports him to a distant future where the Earth is radioactive and only some areas are habitable. Confused by the fact that everything around him suddenly changed, Schwarz seeks help but the people he encounters don’t speak English. Committed to the care of a scientist as a guinea pig for an experiment of synaptic augmentation, his mind starts changing.

Bel Arvardan is an archaeologist arrived on Earth to study its ancient ruins. Unlike most of his colleagues, he thinks that the legend about human species being born on the planet is real and wants to find the evidence. The Earthlings, however, reciprocate the prejudices of the inhabitants of the other planets and to make things worse the most radical fringe that believes that the planet Earth should lead the galaxy instead of Trantor is preparing for a new rebellion against the Empire.

In 1947, Isaac Asimov wrote the novel “Grow old with me” but failed to sell it and was published in that version only many years later. In 1949, Doubleday accepted the story but wanted a longer novel to publish it as a book so Asimov expanded it almost doubling its length and the novel was published in 1950 under the title “Pebble in the Sky”.

“Pebble in the Sky” is linked to the Foundation series, of which is a sort of prequel. In fact, it’s set in the ninth century of the Galactic Era, when the planet Trantor has become the capital of an empire that rules the entire galaxy, which means more than ten thousand years before the time of the original Foundation trilogy.

Isaac Asimov was inspired by the history of the Roman Empire to start the cycle of the Foundation in which the Galactic Empire is in decline and eventually collapses just like the Roman Empire. Again, for “Pebble in the Sky” Asimov was inspired by history, in this case the initial phase of the Empire. Its planets, like the ancient provinces, have a wide autonomy as long as they pay taxes and obey the imperial laws but not everyone is happy with this situation.

Isaac Asimov came from a Jewish family so it seems natural that he got inspired by the story of that people to describe the Earth in the distant future where people thought they were special, in this case because they maintained the belief that their planet was the home of humanity.

In the distant future described in “Pebble in the Sky”, the actual memory of the origins of humanity is lost. This may seem absurd but millennia have passed since the first colonies on other planets were established and space civilizations were born and fell. It’s also possible that on many planets people wanted to cut their ties with the Earth deliberately removing parts of their history. On the mother planet historic memory may have been lost due to the collapse of the civilization caused by the radioactivity.

What we do know is that the future Earth is radioactive, perhaps because of a nuclear war. “Pebble in the Sky” was written a few years after the use of the first atomic bombs so the idea of a planet that’s become radioactive as a result of their use was extremely strong.

Isaac Asimov had a considerable scientific knowledge but at the time the long-term effects of radioactivity on living creatures were still unknown. Years later, the author admitted that the idea of the Earth made radioactive by a nuclear war and yet still inhabited was made absurd by the scientific knowledge gathered through the decades but it was a central concept in “Pebble in the Sky” so it wasn’t possible to fix the novel. He just gave a different explanation when he wrote new novels to connect the various parts of his future history, attributing some misconceptions to the loss of historical archives.

On Earth, the idea that the planet has been the cradle of humanity remains as a dogma and some extremist Earthlings want to overthrow the Empire and take the place of Trantor as the capital planet of the galaxy. Joseph Scwharz is thrown into that future and his character is often interpreted as a messianic figure. However, Isaac Asimov was an atheist so it’s no surprise that in “Pebble in the Sky” the Earth’s priestly caste is seen in a negative way.

Asimov was a humanist and a rationalist so for him scientific knowledge but also the genuine acquaintance among inhabitants of different planets was a means of progress or at least to limit the crisis like the Empire’s in the Foundation series. In “Pebble in the Sky” a genuine mutual understanding among some of the characters allows the overcoming of the dogma that led to the creation of mutual prejudices between Earthlings and Outsiders and to racism against Earthlings.

“Pebble in the Sky” is a novel quite long by the standards of the time – more 200 pages – but its plot is linear and though in some ways the scientific part is obsolete it’s still well structured. Character building wasn’t Isaac Asimov’s strong point, in fact in this novel they aren’t particularly sophisticated.

Despite its flaws, “Pebble in the Sky” is overall a good novel that has become a science fiction classic so I recommend reading it at least together with the other stories written by Isaac Asimov in the ’40s and ’50s that are part of his future history.