Radiation Hypothesis

cover art by Paul Lehr

Here in 2020, I'm celebrating the science fiction stories of Isaac Asimov. For my previous blog post, I read the original version of his 1952 story The Currents of Space. Here, I'll comment on his story "Pebble in the Sky", the version that was published in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books, Winter 1950.

Contrived. Back in the late 1970s I owned a copy of Pebble in the Sky with cover art by Paul Lehr. When it came time for me to move across the continent, I only kept a few of my Sci Fi books, and Pebble in the Sky was not one of them. I did keep my copies of Second Foundation and The End of Eternity, but it was easy to dispose of Pebble. Asimov started out writing short stories for publication in pulp magazines. Pebble in the Sky was Asimov's first attempt to directly publish a novel written from scratch without prior publication in the pulps of smaller parts of the story.

"I've contrived outrages all my life!"

Easy as 1, 2, 3
Asimov claimed that he could think of 1) a starting point for a novel and 2) the ending of the story and 3) then just sit down and write it all out, progressing chapter by chapter. "Having worked out the first scene, I have the second scene in mind, and so on all the way to the end of the novel." Yes, he could write that way, but it resulted in a silly contrived mess of a novel in the case of Pebble.

So why should I return to Pebble in the Sky, now, after 40 years? Back in the 1970s when I discovered written science fiction, I had no access to science fiction magazines. The old Sci Fi magazines are increasingly available via the internet, so I now get to re-experience stories that I first read decades ago in book format, now seeing them in their pulp magazine context.

recycled cover art (see)

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
                                                                    -Asimov

It was a surprise when I first saw the 1950s cover art for Pebble in the Sky that is shown to the right on this page. There is scene in Pebble in the Sky where the Imperial Storm Troopers actually wear glass helmets, but pain-inducing neuronic whips are the preferred weapon in this story, not blasters.

What about the interior art?

Interior art for Pebble in the Sky in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books, Winter 1950.
There is no scene like this in the story, but readers are told that Earth has repeatedly had rebellions against the Imperials.

Radiation Warning

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by
Lawrence Stevens, Earle Bergey,
Paul Lehr and Walt Miller.

There was a review sales promotion for Pebble in the Sky by Frederik Pohl in Super Science Stories, May 1950. Pohl drew attention to the setting for Asimov's story: a future time in which much of planet Earth is dangerously radioactive and a despotic police state rules over Earth. Does this mean war?

Another review of Pebble in the Sky, in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1950, assures readers that Asimov has a "quiet approach" to telling his story. Really, don't expect a book full of pitched battles in the streets!

L. Sprague de Camp wrote a glowing review of Pebble in the Sky for Astounding Science Fiction, August 1950. The dictatorial Secretary Balkis (insane puppet master of Earth's figurehead ruler, the High Minister) and the oppressive Council of Ancients on Earth, resenting how the down-trodden people of Earth have been treated by the rest of the rest of the galaxy, prepare "a dreadful revenge".

1950

nuclear explosion

The year 1950 started off with nuclear saber-rattling. The nuclear spy Klaus Fuchs was know to have passed secrets to the Soviet Union, which had detonated a nuclear bomb in 1949. The United States announced that it would now develop H-bombs. Scientists such as Albert Einstein warned the world of the horrendous consequences of nuclear war.

So, since he was writing in that atmosphere of nuclear tension, we can excuse Asimov for imagining a future Earth with radioactive wastelands. Asimov later expanded on this idea in some robot novels (Robots and Empire).

Mystery solved:
Daneel did it
in the Galactic Empire
with telepathy!

Galactic Milk of Amnesia™
What I find harder to excuse is that in Asimov's imagined future, most of Humanity, now living on millions of exoplanets of the galaxy, had forgotten that humans evolved on Earth. In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov tries to tell us that the mutant people of radioactive Earth are so despised by everyone in the galaxy that nobody can allow themselves to imagine that Earth is the original home of Humanity. Later, in Foundation and Earth, Asimov blamed this galactic amnesia on Daneel, the telepathic robot.  

If I had a hammer, or an ax, or other mixed metaphors. Asimov had an ax to grind, and through all of Pebble in the Sky, Asimov keeps grinding at the idea of racial prejudice blinding people to simple truths. Thank you, Dr. Asimov... now, back to our Sci Fi program.

Why, you might ask, did Daneel go to the trouble of hiding Earth? Apparently he did not want anyone to find his "secret hideout" on Earth's moon. This is all so silly that I continually spoof the whole concept in my Exode Saga by having everyone imagine that Observer Base is on the Moon.

nanoscale DNA analysis

In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov provides much pseudo-scientific hand waving to justify the wide-spread belief that humans originated (evolved) independently on multiple planets of the galaxy, then discovered that they could all interbreed, no matter which world they evolved on.

Sadly, Asimov was writing just a few years before a molecular structure of DNA was determined (the double helix) which quickly led to recognition of how genetic instructions are stored in a molecular genetic code; sequences of base pairs. These days, you can have your genome sequenced and the genomes of extinct human variants have also been studied.

The origin question.

Here on Earth, the tools of molecular paleontology are allowing us to figure out how humans spread across the globe and multiple human variants inter-bred. With such molecular biology tools available to the Galactics, it is hard to imagine how anybody in the galactic civilization of Pebble in the Sky would be confused about "the origin question"; where humans came from and how they spread from world to world through the galaxy, even if due to some catastrophe, records of that spread were never carefully maintained.

Sci Fi Empires

Rathole World
Pebble in the Sky is set in a future time when there are tens of millions of planets that are home to humans, most of them unified under a sprawling Galactic Empire. This is Asimov's "all human galaxy", so there are no aliens running around. There is a kind of embassy on Earth where a representative of the Galactic Empire lives, the Procurator, Lord Ennius.

Get over it. Yes, Asimov modeled his galactic empire after the Roman Empire. The Procurator thinks of Earth as a rathole world and also calls it a pigpen world, a cesspool world and a brutish peasant world. However, Lord Ennius admits that there are a few good Earthlings, including Dr. Shekt, a physicist.

the doctor and the synapsifier

Shekt is described as a physicist, but he has invented a synapsifier. Asimov assures us that there is much mathematics involved. Shekt is the character in the story who refers to Earth a pebble in the sky, thus emphasizing its unimportance in the galaxy. Poor Dr. Shekt has to explain to Lord Ennius how the synapsifier works. Asimov's Shekt's neurobiology lecture is very silly, but I believe he wanted to make his readers feel like it might actually be possible to reduce time delay in transmitting neuronal signals across synaptic connections between brain cells and thus speed up someone's thinking.

Schwartz achieves telepathic superpowers
after one session with the synapsifier.

Mind Touch
Shekt uses the synapsifier on Schwartz, a man magically transported through time from the far past (this time travel is some kind of silly nuclear energy magic; don't ask). The synapsifier treatment gives Schwartz telepathic powers.

Biological Warfare

virus engineering

The synapsifier has also been used on Earth's biologists, allowing them to become super clever and able to devise a virus that can be used as a deadly weapon against the people of the galaxy. Conveniently, the people of Earth are immune to the engineered virus. You'll have to read Pebble in the Sky to learn the thrilling outcome.

Schwartz gets lucky.

 Luck
Sometimes it seems like a fictional character is exceptionally lucky. I've previously speculated that Kirth Gersen is either exceptionally lucky or has telepathic abilities. Asimov drops a whole string of unlikely events into Pebble in the Sky. All the inexplicable coincidences are even recognized by Secretary Balkis and feed his paranoia.

Teela Brown: bred for luck

Schwartz reminds me of Larry Niven's character, Teela, who was lucky because of her special genes. Niven implied that Teela's genes "knew" that Ringworld was the place where her genes could spread most widely. Similarly, Schwartz finds himself sent into the future where he can be transformed from a tailor into a telepathic superman.

                                                          Technological Change

time travel

Asimov placed Pebble in the Sky in his Foundation Fictional Universe. However, the synapsifier did not get used to create more telepaths. The synapsifier is a revolutionary technological breakthrough, but in Asimov's fictional history of the future it gets dropped; a one-off invention that was never used again.

Time travel 
How was Schwartz magically transported into the future? In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov suggests a temporal fault lines analogy to geological fault lines. One of the early stories written by Asimov was called "Cosmic Corkscrew". Sadly, he lost his copy of that story, but apparently it was constructed around the idea that it is easy to slip between some particular points in Time (see also: "A Statue for Father"). Alternatively, I prefer to think that Daneel and other time traveling robots were at work behind the scenes, and they might have made use of Schwartz to initiate a Reality Change.

Sci Fi Mutants

the golden mutant

In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov describes Secretary Balkis' idea of creating a biological weapon as arising from the fact that there were spontaneously arising mutant viruses on Earth because of its high radiation environment. Stories about mutants had a long history in Sci Fi magazines, so we can't be surprised that Asimov wrote about mutants (including the Mule). In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov also implies that during the 30,000 years that have passed since Schwartz was born, the human population of the galaxy had lost a functional vermiform appendix.

Good and Evil 
Asimov would later write that his preferred style was to write stories in which it is not clear which characters are good or evil, right or wrong. There is no such ambiguity in Pebble in the Sky. Pebble in the Sky is like a James Bond story where the evil mastermind hatches a complex plot that after 90 minutes of hectic hand wringing eventually collapses under its own improbable weight.

future fiction

Location, location, location
One of Asimov's favorite literary tricks was to imagine how the names of places could change through time. He could use the future variant of a place name, providing a hint as to a location, and then at the end of the story make clear the meaning of the hint. Schwartz is able to deduce that in the future, St. Louis is called Senloo.

Related Reading: The Caves of Steel - The Currents of Space
                  The Naked Sun - The Stars, Like Dust -
Next: 2020 writing change challenge

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