Pebble in the Sky

1958

This is the first book that Dr Asimov actually wrote as a novel. The three original Foundation books were written as a series of short stories later assembled into full length books.

Joseph Swartz is a gentleman in the later years of life and after a lifetime of hard toil is enjoying the golden years of his retirement.

Unfortunately, this is all spoilt as he walks past the Institute for Nuclear Research in Chicago. An experiment within those hallowed walls goes critical and a beam of radiation shoots through the streets of Chicago.

Between one footfall and the next, Joseph Swartz finds himself swept out of the warm familiarity of late 1940s Chicago to... where (or... when)?

It's like nothing he's ever seen before. Where there was crowded suburban Chicago, there's only an empty road and emptier fields As he followed the road to habitation, and a phoneline out of this insanity, night falls and he realises that he sure ain't in Kansas no more Toto (well, you know what I mean.... :-)).

When he finally reaches a house it looks like no other he has seen and when the inhabitants open the door, they don't speak a language that Joe Swartz recognises and he has a photographic memory. This proves too much and the poor man collapses.

This is Earth though, just the Earth of 827 of the Galactic Era, more than 10,000 years after Joe's birth and Earth is a radiation swamped wasteland, a backwater in the Galactic Empire, ruled by zealots dreaming of a Golden Age when Earth ruled all it surveyed.

When Joe is taken to a research team attempting to improve Man's intelligence, he unwittingly becomes involved in an attempt by those powers to overthrow the yoke of Empire. His co-conspiritors include the head of the research team, who was threatened with death when he reached the age of 60 (all earthers are euthanased [well, murdered :-(] on their 60th birthdays unless they have a special pass) because he treated Joe who was suspected of being an Imperial spy, and an Imperial archeologist who had hit upon the idea that Earth was the home world of the human race.

This unlikely group are Earth's defence against the malevolence of the Earther zealots towards the Imperials, and the equally malevolent hatred of the Imperials for the Earthers.

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