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Triangle: The Currents of Space, Pebble in the Sky, The Stars Like Dust
A Collection of Isaac Asimov's first three novels: "Pebble in the Sky" (1950), "The Stars, Like Dust" (1951) and "The Currents of Space" (1952). They are set at a time when Terra is still aglow from a past nuclear holocaust.
- GenresScience Fiction
516 pages, Hardcover
Published May 1, 1961
26 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
About the author
Isaac Asimov
4,343 books27.9k followersWorks of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles,
The Foundation Trilogy
(1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 15, 2016
This was an early SFBC acquisition of mine and the first omnibus edition I remember getting. I was in 10th grade at the time. I remember the dust jacket. It includes 3 novels about the Trantorian empire set in the same era as the Foundation series. It's epic Asimov and a book the cemented my relationship with Science Fiction; a relationship that has only gotten deeper.
January 12, 2023
Start with Pebble in the sky, then the Currents of Space and end with my personal favorite Stars like dust. This is in my opinion the best way to understand the Foundation universe before reading the Foundation books. This isn't the publication order and might not be the chronological order of the stories either but it feels like the best flow of the stories. Stars like dust is definitely set furthest into the future.
June 1, 2023
I’ve had this book for quite awhile and, in an effort to make amends for my literary crime of owning unread books, I grabbed it and discovered it is actually three books in one. Compilation, doncha know, of Isaac Asimov’s three earliest novels. The first one was published in 1950, the next two following shortly thereafter at about the same time he was doing the first Robot and Foundation novels. So, brand new scifi author at the dawn of the scifi genre and yes, yes, I know there’s been plenty of scifi since about the 12th Century but the 1950s saw its jelling: space age and atomics and the baby boom producing a whole generation of us nerds who thought we'd be commuting to our jobs on the moon by jet pack somewhere around 1970. Galaxy and Amazing and, later, Asimov’s own magazine that we boomer nerds bought by the truckload.
Ah, those were the days.
It all reads rather quaintly now, which is to be expected as the decades roll by and our tastes become more sophisticated or, at least, should. But there’s a certain joy in visiting your hometown and seeing the old haunts where you and that gang o’ yours formed the old people they’d later become.
Without further ado:
1. Pebble in the Sky. Asimov’s first novel and, surprisingly, one that holds up rather well after all this time, even if Isaac got the tech a little wrong. Still using microfiche? Okay, proof that even the most prescient of scientists are trapped by the tech of their time. Well written, fast paced and interesting with not too much exposition and hard science ‘splainin’. Not too much.
Joseph Schwartz is walking down a Chicago street when he is transported hundreds of thousands of years into the future by a uranium chemical experiment gone awry. Between one step and the next, he ends up in a woodland somewhere near the town of Chica, a radiation-free oasis on a radiation imbued Earth because, of course, we had that long feared nuclear war which so overshadowed the 1950s (and which looks a bit more likely now than it did then). The Earth is a Galactic backwater, sneered at, shunned by the rest of humanity because of its radioactive taint and the fanatic beliefs of its resident Ancients who insist Earth was the original home of humanity. Oh, posh! Humanity developed simultaneously on all the other worlds; you earthers are just an in-bred radioactive variant.
Somehow Schwartz ends up as a ‘volunteer’ for a new medical device called the Synapsifier … really, Isaac, this is what you come up with? … which supposedly enhances the memory because this throwback Schwartz with actual facial hair can’t speak a lick of the local lingo and an unsanctioned experiment (man, why does this keep happening to the guy?) might help get him with the program so he can work for the farmer who found him to cover the existence of an old man the farmer is hiding because there’s something called the Sixty, which is the age when the Ancients decide you’ve lived long enough, thank you very much, so here’s the orange room. At least they don’t turn you into soylent green. The Synapsifier turns Schwartz into Professor X and the next thing you know, we’ve got galactic wide plots to destroy the rest of humanity and braindead bureaucrats and proof that people really don’t change that much, time and distance notwithstanding.
I read this when I was a ‘tween and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it again. I’ve always remembered a couple of its scenes, the professor who was running the awry chemical experiment back in 1950 Chicago searching the papers for stories of people who mysteriously disappeared, and Schwartz standing in a field looking at stars he no longer recognizes while quoting Browning. I expected it, after all these decades, to be campy and dated but it’s not. It’s good.
It does have its 1950s characteristics: the mad scientist, the intrepid hero, and the spunky smart girl who becomes the romantic interest. You can almost hear her going, “My hero!” to the hero, Alavardan, a Sirian (you know, from Sirius) archaeologist come to test this pishposh that Earth is, indeed, humanity’s origin. There’s even a mention of Trantor, which is a delight.
Read this as a history lesson, how the genre started and developed because, face it, there’s much better scifi out there now. Thanks, of course, to Asimov.
2. The Stars, Like Dust. Then there’s this one. Hundreds of thousands of years into the future, humanity has turned into imbecilic simpletons who are easily duped by the silliest of plots. See what TV does to you? The main story here is a bit hard to swallow: Brian Fellin, the son of the Rancher of Widemos (which I guess means the head cattleman of the planet) is caught up in a plot to destroy the Tyranni, who have taken over his home world and executed his father for … well, because. There’s a Vegan, which is someone from Vega, not a meat-eschewing effete who would be a traitor on a rancher world. Or quickly starved. There is a princess who simply falls head over heels in love with Brian for reasons having more to do with proximity than anything and Brian rejects her because her father, the near comatose leader of the Rhiadon empire, a vassal state to the Tyranni, did the actual murdering of his father, but he does provide her everything a space girl needs, like cosmetics and perfume and dresses, while they make their escape from the clutches of the Tyranni in a Tyranni ship that the Tyranni left for him to steal because it’s the only kind the Tyranni can easily track across the galaxy.
Sheesh.
3. The Currents of Space. Back to good form with this one which is a whodunnit in space. On the planet Floriana, Rik is a gibbering half-wit barely functional worker on a kyrt farm in constant need of attendance by Valona, the one person willing to tolerate his infantile behavior when, all of a sudden, Rik starts remembering things he shouldn’t. Like, he’s from Earth. He’s a spatio-analyst, a highly technical scientist who measures the various elements that waft through space, and last year he discovered something that dooms Floriana. So, how did he end up a gibbering waste of space? Psychic probe, because the ruling Sarkites can’t have their kyrt monopoly interrupted by something as pesky as worldwide destruction.
What’s kyrt? Think of it as spun gold.
We are then off on a galaxy-wide somewhat wild chase between Sarkites and Florianions and Trantorians … yes, Trantor! This book actually gives you some insight into how Trantor became the Empire of Foundation fame. The whole book is rather decent and makes you wonder what was going on with The Stars, Like Dust. Was that just a throwaway to meet contract obligations, or was it the victim of too much to do because Asimov was also writing the Robot and Foundation series at the same time?
And, yes, there are some rather credulity stretching things in here along the lines of you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know-but-don't-know-that-she-knows-that-you-know nonsense, and items deliberately withheld from the reader’s attention until the end to give that whole whodunnit feel to things. But still, purty good.
Ah, those were the days.
It all reads rather quaintly now, which is to be expected as the decades roll by and our tastes become more sophisticated or, at least, should. But there’s a certain joy in visiting your hometown and seeing the old haunts where you and that gang o’ yours formed the old people they’d later become.
Without further ado:
1. Pebble in the Sky. Asimov’s first novel and, surprisingly, one that holds up rather well after all this time, even if Isaac got the tech a little wrong. Still using microfiche? Okay, proof that even the most prescient of scientists are trapped by the tech of their time. Well written, fast paced and interesting with not too much exposition and hard science ‘splainin’. Not too much.
Joseph Schwartz is walking down a Chicago street when he is transported hundreds of thousands of years into the future by a uranium chemical experiment gone awry. Between one step and the next, he ends up in a woodland somewhere near the town of Chica, a radiation-free oasis on a radiation imbued Earth because, of course, we had that long feared nuclear war which so overshadowed the 1950s (and which looks a bit more likely now than it did then). The Earth is a Galactic backwater, sneered at, shunned by the rest of humanity because of its radioactive taint and the fanatic beliefs of its resident Ancients who insist Earth was the original home of humanity. Oh, posh! Humanity developed simultaneously on all the other worlds; you earthers are just an in-bred radioactive variant.
Somehow Schwartz ends up as a ‘volunteer’ for a new medical device called the Synapsifier … really, Isaac, this is what you come up with? … which supposedly enhances the memory because this throwback Schwartz with actual facial hair can’t speak a lick of the local lingo and an unsanctioned experiment (man, why does this keep happening to the guy?) might help get him with the program so he can work for the farmer who found him to cover the existence of an old man the farmer is hiding because there’s something called the Sixty, which is the age when the Ancients decide you’ve lived long enough, thank you very much, so here’s the orange room. At least they don’t turn you into soylent green. The Synapsifier turns Schwartz into Professor X and the next thing you know, we’ve got galactic wide plots to destroy the rest of humanity and braindead bureaucrats and proof that people really don’t change that much, time and distance notwithstanding.
I read this when I was a ‘tween and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it again. I’ve always remembered a couple of its scenes, the professor who was running the awry chemical experiment back in 1950 Chicago searching the papers for stories of people who mysteriously disappeared, and Schwartz standing in a field looking at stars he no longer recognizes while quoting Browning. I expected it, after all these decades, to be campy and dated but it’s not. It’s good.
It does have its 1950s characteristics: the mad scientist, the intrepid hero, and the spunky smart girl who becomes the romantic interest. You can almost hear her going, “My hero!” to the hero, Alavardan, a Sirian (you know, from Sirius) archaeologist come to test this pishposh that Earth is, indeed, humanity’s origin. There’s even a mention of Trantor, which is a delight.
Read this as a history lesson, how the genre started and developed because, face it, there’s much better scifi out there now. Thanks, of course, to Asimov.
2. The Stars, Like Dust. Then there’s this one. Hundreds of thousands of years into the future, humanity has turned into imbecilic simpletons who are easily duped by the silliest of plots. See what TV does to you? The main story here is a bit hard to swallow: Brian Fellin, the son of the Rancher of Widemos (which I guess means the head cattleman of the planet) is caught up in a plot to destroy the Tyranni, who have taken over his home world and executed his father for … well, because. There’s a Vegan, which is someone from Vega, not a meat-eschewing effete who would be a traitor on a rancher world. Or quickly starved. There is a princess who simply falls head over heels in love with Brian for reasons having more to do with proximity than anything and Brian rejects her because her father, the near comatose leader of the Rhiadon empire, a vassal state to the Tyranni, did the actual murdering of his father, but he does provide her everything a space girl needs, like cosmetics and perfume and dresses, while they make their escape from the clutches of the Tyranni in a Tyranni ship that the Tyranni left for him to steal because it’s the only kind the Tyranni can easily track across the galaxy.
Sheesh.
3. The Currents of Space. Back to good form with this one which is a whodunnit in space. On the planet Floriana, Rik is a gibbering half-wit barely functional worker on a kyrt farm in constant need of attendance by Valona, the one person willing to tolerate his infantile behavior when, all of a sudden, Rik starts remembering things he shouldn’t. Like, he’s from Earth. He’s a spatio-analyst, a highly technical scientist who measures the various elements that waft through space, and last year he discovered something that dooms Floriana. So, how did he end up a gibbering waste of space? Psychic probe, because the ruling Sarkites can’t have their kyrt monopoly interrupted by something as pesky as worldwide destruction.
What’s kyrt? Think of it as spun gold.
We are then off on a galaxy-wide somewhat wild chase between Sarkites and Florianions and Trantorians … yes, Trantor! This book actually gives you some insight into how Trantor became the Empire of Foundation fame. The whole book is rather decent and makes you wonder what was going on with The Stars, Like Dust. Was that just a throwaway to meet contract obligations, or was it the victim of too much to do because Asimov was also writing the Robot and Foundation series at the same time?
And, yes, there are some rather credulity stretching things in here along the lines of you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know-but-don't-know-that-she-knows-that-you-know nonsense, and items deliberately withheld from the reader’s attention until the end to give that whole whodunnit feel to things. But still, purty good.
July 30, 2023
What fun it was to read this trilogy again. No robots anywhere to be seen, yet the foundation series lets us know that they were there, behind the scenes, influencing things through the ages.
Read
May 12, 2016Asimov says the chronological order of the books, in terms of future history is:
The Currents of Space (Galactic Empire #2)
The Stars, Like Dust - (Galactic Empire #1)
Pebble in the Sky (Galactic Empire #3)
The Currents of Space (Galactic Empire #2)
The Stars, Like Dust - (Galactic Empire #1)
Pebble in the Sky (Galactic Empire #3)
November 22, 2016
Triangle" is the Galactic Series printing in "chronologial order" which is actually the reverse order of publication: 1952, 1951, and 1950. Read the book in order of publication, because this is not a solid trilogy based on characters or themes.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews