Stars End: A Foundation Podcast

d novel! Join us for The Stars, Like Dust—! In this episode, we sift through chapters one through eight.

The Stars, Like Dust is book #003 in the Asimov canon. That's a little misleading. Book #002 I, Robot is a fix-up; most of it had been written years before. This was the second time the Good Doctor sat down to write a book and he intended to write a Novel with a capital "N." He wasn't having a good time of it. Walter Bradbury, Asimov's editor, had liked Pebble in the Sky and wanted a follow-up but he also wanted an outline and a couple of sample chapters. Bradbury rejected the first two proposals. John Jenkins of AsimovReviews.net put it this way.

"...now that he was a Novelist, Asimov was thinking he needed to write like one and was getting carried away. Rather than his sticking to his usual sparse prose, he was getting distinctly florid, and he needed to tone things down."

That's what comes from trying to write a Novel with a capital "N" I suppose. To make matters worse, when Galaxy Science Fiction bought the right to serialize the novel Horace Gold insisted on a subplot that Asimov really didn't care for.

But now it was time to sit down and write, which is what our good friend Isaac does best. Join us to see how the book turned out! This reading coincides with the installment published in the January 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction under the title Tyrann.

We encounter the back cover of the Good Doctor's first actual book as we wrap up The Pebble in the Sky with chapters 14 through 22.

If you've been around for a while you probably remember our discussions of the "Great Man Theory of History" vs the "Bottom-Up" paradigm. In other words, do remarkable individuals with unique characteristics write history or is it driven by powerful historical forces that generate great leaders when needed? It's a false dichotomy, but a useful one. In the Foundation Universe, the bottom-up theory must dominate otherwise psychohistory could not work the way it does.

But Joseph Schwartz is just the right Jewish tailor with a special kind of trick memory who is accidentally thrust to an exact moment in Earth's future. Once there he is brought to the only scientist on Earth doing a particular type of brain research. He then survives a dangerous experiment that gives him an unlikely set of psychic powers which he uses to save the lives of nearly every human in the galaxy.

Put those numbers into your Prime Radiant and crunch them!

This probably delayed the creation of psychohistory by hundreds of years. "I just don't understand it, Hari, the math says everyone in the galaxy should be dead right now."

For additional content check out Of Pebbles and Pulps, exclusively at StarsEndPodcast.com.

Here's your chance to join the discussion about Pebble in the Sky, Chapters 7 through 13! Also, we'll open up the Stars End Mailbag and talk about Star Trek: Discovery!

A lot of us who are past the point where we would be culled by the 60 take supplements to, theoretically, help improve our memory. Just the other day I couldn't remember the title of the Star Trek episode "Return to Tomorrow." That was no fun. I think most of us would like to be at least a little smarter and maybe some of what would come from a device like the synapsifier could be helpful.

I'll pass on the parts about being lost in the department store, wandering about the automat, or being driven mad by the thoughts of strangers. Those don't sound fun either. "Lost in the Supermarket" by the Clash might sum up all of these potential side effects.

It would though, improve a podcast, to a point. Remembering what we want to say would help quite a bit. And having perfect recall would save a lot of note-taking. But telepathic communications would ruin things even with state-of-the-art recording equipment unless an hour of silence would be an improvement.

In the meantime, we'll muddle through and bring you the best podcast possible with regular brains and imperfect memory!

We begin our conversation about Pebble in the Sky with Chapters 1 through 6.

Isaac Asimov is famously prolific; if you know one thing about the Great and Glorious Az it might be that he wrote more than 500 books. Asimov-Reviews.net puts the number at 514 counting the Good Doctor's dissertation. Asimov.Fandom.com puts the number at a much more modest 506.

Why is this relevant? Well, Pebble in the Sky is Asimov Book #001; it's the first thing he wrote that got stuck between its own two covers (unless you count his dissertation, which he did not). It's also only his first novel even though he had already been writing professionally for eleven years. Most of I, Robot and the Foundation Trilogy were in the rearview mirror; those quickly became books 002, 004, 006, and 009. Pebble in the Sky is also a lot of fun!

Don't miss it as we delve into this significant moment in Asenion history! Let's GO!

In which we talk about "Cal" and "The Fun They Had" with special guest Rachel from the Menuscript Podcast.

"Cal" has been called "the last great Asimov short story" and it looks like it's his very last robot story. Cal is a robot who learns how to write ficton and over the course of the story becomes an odd sort of Asimov avatar.

"The Fun They Had," is one of the Great and Glorious Az's most reprinted works featuring a student thinking back to how great school must have been back in the long, long ago of the 20th century.

We're joined by special guest Rachel Schwartzbard who has just started her own podcast, the Menuscript, which is excellent. She'll talk about it in this episode. You don't want to miss that and afterward, you'll want to checkout her podcast!

The stories and Rachel's pocast can be found right here.

Let's GO!

We finish our discussion of Foundation and Earth with Part VII: Earth. That includes chapters 19 — "Radioactive?" 20 — "The Nearby World," and 21 — "The Search Ends."

I haven't bothered with spoiler alerts for a while. This time, though, if you haven't finished the novel and don't want to be spoilered, seriously, don't look even at the link below.

And speaking of things we don't quite understand, this is a musical intro to a non-musical episode. Because, c'mon, if we're wrapping up Foundation and Earth, how can we fail to reference Man on the Moon by REM?

Here are some Foundation-specific alternative lyrics.

Golan started searching for the psychohistoric.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Fallom playing music making Alpha euphoric.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Bliss is along and that means Gaia is here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Janov got to Earth because he centered the sphere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Now, Daneel, did you hear about this one?

Tell me, are you upgrading soon?

Danny, are you goofing on Seldon? Hey, baby, can you carry the boon?

If you believed they put a man in the moon, man in the moon,

If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, Then nothing is cool!

If you like that, we have a bonus verse on our website.

And a quick show note; in our next episode we'll be talking about two short stories, "Cal" and "The Fun They Had." Plus a special guest!

But right now, the Man in the Moon! Let's Go!

Here we go again! Let's talk about Foundation and Earth, Part VI: Alpha!

If you like...

complex calculations in a cross between archeology and astronavigation, agrarian societies that nonetheless have advanced weather control and bioengineering, and telekinetic performances on woodwind instruments then chapters 16, 17, and 18 are bananas!

Also, Trevize gets lucky and is it just me or is he getting too much stuff wrong for the man with the magic intuition?

Plus, some Foundation show news from the long, long ago back before the interregnum! And we open up the Stars End Mail Bag! Don't miss this one! Let's GO!

We're back and we're diving back into Foundation and Earth! This time we're discussing chapters 13, 14, and 15 or, if you prefer, Part V: Melpomenia. This is all of Part V and nothing but Part V.

In this section, we bid a not-so-fond farewell to Solaria as our little trio becomes a quartet with the addition of Fallom. We travel to the third and final Spacer world for which we have coordinates. What do we learn on Melpomenia? Does that help us in our quest to find Earth? And what's bothering Trevize this time? Listen and find out!

Also Star Trek, non-Euclidean geometry and marsupials. You can't miss that, right? Let's go!!

Join the conversation as we discuss Foundation and Earth chapters 10, 11, and 12 which is to say, the entirety of Part IV: Solaria.

I began our description of S3E18, with "You know what? Solaria is weird."

And here we are again on Solaria. It's been twelve millennia and in the meantime, they've really leaned into the weirdness. The Solarians have been busy genetically engineering themselves into the quintessential Spacers. They've gone so far as to grow their own Tesla coils inside their own brains so that they can wirelessly power their robots. And that isn't all! But don't take my word for it! Read "Robots," "Underground," and "To the Surface" and see for yourself! Then join us here for the episode!

On another note, our first episode dropped on 26 April 2021. Thus, this episode marks the third anniversary of our podcast! Thanks to everybody who has joined us for the ride!

In this episode, we talk about Chapters 7, 8, and 9 of Foundation and Earth, "Leaving Comporellon," "Forbidden World," and "Facing the Pack."

I've largely stopped bothering with the spoiler warnings, but I'm going to spoiler enough in this episode description to warrant one. If you want to discover things as you read and you haven't read these chapters yet, you know what to do.

Tau Ceti is the nearest "sun-like star" to Earth that isn't in a multiple-star system and so it's been a frequent locale in Science Fiction over the years. It was a natural choice for Asimov to place Aurora, the first of the Spacer Worlds, in the Tau Ceti system.

Since Asimov made that decision, we've discovered and cataloged thousands of exoplanets, that is, planets orbiting stars other than our sun. Several of them are in the Tau Ceti system and two, Tau Ceti d and e, are super-Earths that appear to be at the outer edges of Tau Ceti's habitable zone. That seems to fit what we learn about Aurora in this book; it was a terraformed world that, without humans to maintain it, was slipping back into uninhabitability.

There is another, proposed, exoplanet orbiting Tau Ceti, called PxP-4. That one could be smack in the middle of the habitable zone.

In any event, it's time to return to the Tau Ceti system and take a good look around. Also, there are dogs! So Let's go!