{"id":1200,"date":"2018-08-08T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T21:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2018-08-04T15:36:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T21:36:54","slug":"book-pebble-in-the-sky-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/08\/book-pebble-in-the-sky-1950\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Pebble in the Sky (1950)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1474953094l\/23648040.jpg\" alt=\"Pebble in the Sky\" width=\"234\" height=\"215\" \/>Pebble in the Sky<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1950<br \/>\nAuthor: Isaac Asimov<br \/>\nLength: 487 minutes \/ 8.12 hours<\/p>\n<p>As I pulled together some of the information for this review, I became aware that\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>\u00a0was Isaac Asimov\u2019s first novel. To be honest, that explains a lot. I\u2019d read a few Asimov books before\u2014<em>I, Robot<\/em>\u00a0being a personal favorite\u2014so I was a little disappointed with this story. If anything, it showed Asimov\u2019s potential for bigger and better stories, or at least stories that were a little more focused. As it is,\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>\u00a0provided the groundwork for prequels and some of Asimov\u2019s best writing, but it remains fairly rough in comparison.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the ideas in\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>\u00a0are certainly noteworthy, including an age limit for humans and telepathic abilities. We also see here the ability of science fiction to address social issues as well. In this case, racism was the\u00a0<em>topic du jour<\/em>, which was definitely in the early edges of revolution in 1950. And yet, the political commentary wasn\u2019t nearly as subtle here as it could have been. Furthermore, while the more fantastical ideas presented here had some merit, their execution probably needed a little extra work. It\u2019s a good first book, but it\u2019s far from perfect.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s weird to me that I found a book by Isaac Asimov so mediocre, but I suppose that merely accentuates how great an author he eventually became. His future works would subsequently have the greater depth of thought that went into their premises and science, but as\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>\u00a0shows us, that wasn\u2019t always the case. There almost seem to be too many ideas crammed into this book to allow adequate time to explore each one. Consequently, when it jumps around from one subplot to another, it can be a little easy to get lost in the transition.<\/p>\n<p>Isaac Asimov\u2019s adequate first novel, I give\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>\u00a02.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pebble in the Sky Year: 1950 Author: Isaac Asimov Length: 487 minutes \/ 8.12 hours As I pulled together some of the information for this review, I became aware that\u00a0Pebble in the Sky\u00a0was Isaac Asimov\u2019s first novel. To be honest, that explains a lot. I\u2019d read a few Asimov books before\u2014I, Robot\u00a0being a personal favorite\u2014so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,54],"tags":[1422,55,1421,1423,8,337,235],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-5-stars","category-book","tag-1422","tag-book","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-pebble-in-the-sky","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}