Joseph Schwartz is a retiree in post-WW2 America who is out for his morning stroll when he is suddenly transported in mid-step tens of thousands of years into the future, where the Galactic Empire ruled by Trantor is in full-flower, the origins of humanity have become lost and enshrouded in myths and theories bandied about by the myriad human races who have settled across the cosmos, and Earth is nothing more than a "pebble in the sky," a grungy little ghetto world no respectable person would spit upon.įinding himself amongst people whose language and culture he cannot hope to understand, Schwartz is taken to the city of Chica (a pretty obvious bastardization of the name Chicago) where he is made a test subject for a machine called the Synapsifier, which is rumored to increase human learning capacity by increasing synaptic discharges, but which has also had an annoying habit of killing most of the animals it has been tested on to date. Though the science may be hopelessly out of date, Pebble nonetheless shows off Asimov's then-developing talents for clarity and accessibility to dazzling effect. Pebble in the Sky was Isaac Asimov's first SF novel, which is really a pretty amazing thing to contemplate when you think about it: kind of like knowing what the first brick in the Great Wall of China is.
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