The eighth book in Isaac Asimov‘s extended Foundation series, this Pebbles in the Sky is the final background novel before Prelude to Foundation (1988) really kicks things off. It’s a bit more intriguing than its predecessors—especially The Currents of Space…what a snoozer!—though the sci-fi aspect really takes hold in this one.

The Plot – A Rough Overview

Of the many Asimov novels I’ve read lately, this one has perhaps the most fascinating opening scenes. Joseph Schwartz is just a dude strolling the streets of suburban Chicago in 1955 when he’s suddenly transported 10,500 years into the future, thanks to some freak glitch in the low-grade Uranium being handled across town.

Wouldn’t you want to keep reading the novel after an introduction like that? Schwartz’s transport takes him ahead in the future yet keeps him on Earth, a forgotten planet which is by now almost entirely a radioactive wasteland sparsely inhabited by a backwards and despised people.

Also on this otherwise unrecognizable globe, however, is a five-square-mile dome situated north of the Himalayas that houses a garden and the palace of the reluctant and lonely galactic representative and his wife. Schwartz is eventually prodded and probed as an incredible specimen with ancient genetics, and he comes away from the testing with (and here’s the extreme sci-fi bit) telepathic abilities. He later calls it “a mind touch…a somethingness there like a velvety tickle” (178). It’s been over 7,000 years since we last heard anything about mind-reading, and that was way back with Giskard the robot in Robots and Empire. No human has ever had the ability, until now.

Schwartz uses his telepathy in the political intrigue that ensues—an Asimov hallmark that readers need to get used to, if they’re ever going to enjoy his writings. Part of this intrigue is that some of the hated inhabitants of Earth realize that, although they are outnumbered 25 billion to one, they have a secret power to defeat every other world in the galaxy by simply releasing a mutated flu virus.

The Book’s Place in the Series

I’m still unaware of the over plot of the later Foundation novels, but I have been guessing each step of the way. Now I wonder if this reintroduction to Earth is an inkling that she will play an important role in the future books. It’s hard to imagine: people have forgotten that Earth was the first planet of human inhabitation. As a radioactive planet, most figure it’s always been that was and has only recently become inhabitable. Is it is possible that Earth was once healthy and alive, but that we somehow destroyed it ourselves?

This book also contains the first mention of robots in quite a while, that they did gather in great numbers and create their own culture. In Chapter 3, it mentions that:

[Arvardan] had written a monograph on the mechanistic civilization of the Rigel Sector, where the development of robots created a separate culture that persisted for centuries, till the very perfection of the metal slaves reduced the human initiative to the point where the vigorous fleets of the War Lord, Moray, took easy control. Orthodox archaeology insisted on the evolution of Human types independently on various planets and used such atypical cultures, as that on Rigel, as examples of race differences that had not yet been ironed out through intermarriage. Arvardan destroyed such concepts effectively by showing that Rigellian robot culture was but a natural outgrowth of the economic and social forces of the times and of the region. (39)

It’s possible that those cultures never phased out entirely and that they’re still out there, humanoids unknown to humanity but faithful to themselves. Could that be the direction Foundation takes?

Final Comments

It doesn’t matter how far into the future Asimov looks, he still tends to maintain a familiarity with his readers that keeps them grounded in the plausibility that his characters are at least still human like the rest of us. I think it’s great, for example, that even in the year 12,411 his characters still read newspapers and struggle with nearsightedness—two things that already are pretty much outdated.

I enjoyed this book far better than the one preceding it. I hope they keep getting better. I’ve finally crossed the hump and am now more than halfway finished with the series. Next up, Prelude to Foundation (1988). Can’t wait!

©2025 E.T.

Read More from Isaac Asimov:

• The Extended Foundation Series:
  1. The Complete Robot (1982) [A.D. 1995]
  2. The Caves of Steel (1954) [A.D. 3421]
  3. The Naked Sun (1957) [A.D. 3422]
  4. The Robots of Dawn (1983) [A.D. 3424]
  5. Robots and Empire (1985) [A.D. 3630]
  6. The Stars Like Dust (1951) [A.D. 4850]
  7. The Currents of Space (1952) [A.D. 11129]
  8. Pebble in the Sky (1955) [A.D. 12411 or 827 G.E.]
  9. Prelude to Foundation (1988) [12020 G.E.]
  10. Forward the Foundation (1993) [12038 G.E.]
  11. Foundation (1951) [12067 G.E.]
  12. Foundation and Empire (1952) [13800 G.E.]
  13. Second Foundation (1953) [13850 G.E.]
  14. Foundation’s Edge (1982) [14200 G.E. or 498 F.E.]
  15. Foundation and Earth (1986) [14200 G.E. or 498 F.E.]
• Short Story Collections:
  I, Robot (1950)
  Buy Jupiter (1975)
  Gold (1995)
  Eight Stories from the Rest of the Robots (1964)
• Other Novels:
  Fantastic Voyage (1966)