Book Review: The Stars, Like Dust

 

© 1951 by Isaac Asimov

 

Like thousands – perhaps millions – of SF fans around my age, I cut my teeth on the works of Isaac Asimov. By the time I reached the Golden Age of Science Fiction – that’s twelve for a boy – I put away six of his novels. Santa had brought me five in a package deal on Christmas:

   The Bicentennial Man

   Nine Tomorrows

   The Gods Themselves

   Pebble in the Sky

   The Caves of Steel

and I read each and every one, one after the other, by that summer. A sixth my mom bought me after I broke my arm the following year:

   I, Robot

and I remember the agony of trying to dive into that anthology of stories and being unable to because I could not hold the paperback open with my injured paw. But after a day or two I was able to keep that paperback book open (man, does that sound wimpy!) and knocked that one out.

As an adult sometime in the ’90s, in a fit of nostalgia, I read Asimov’s novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage. I also tried my hand at his much-praised Foundation, but only got about a quarter in before losing interest. Curious.

Since then I’ve read a scattering of his short stories here and there, plus I reread most of the aforementioned books. To mixed success: The Bicentennial Man I loved; Nine Tomorrows I just couldn’t get back into. About a decade ago I read The Robots of Dawn and was almost moved to tears at the revelations near the end of the story. I think it’s reviewed somewhere on the Hopper. But then I started its sequel and dropped it in boredom. I also gave Foundation a second try last year, and still could not take to it.

So, for me, Asimov was perhaps my number one favorite SF author as a kid. As an adult, I find him a hit or miss proposition, probably around 50/50.

It was with this feeling in mind that I bought The Stars, Like Dust at a used book store a week and a half ago. Truth be told, I picked it up because it clocked in at a manageable 231 pages, and I was a little sick of reading epic nonfiction tome after epic nonfiction tome.

Well, did this book fall into the beloved Asimov of old or the how’d-I-ever-read-this-guy category?

A little of both, with a slight edge, maybe 60-40, towards the sad possibility that perhaps I’ve outgrown Asimovian fiction.

The tale starts out exciting enough, with young college student Biron Farril awakening to a radiation bomb in his room. After narrowly escaping, Biron is encouraged to flee the earth (a nuclear wasteland which happens to be home of a respected university). His father, a “Rancher” – a regent of an agricultural planet, I suppose – has been executed for treason and the powers-that-want-to-be are convinced that Biron is next on the kill list of the powers-that-be. What follows is a whodunit slash futuristic political thriller that shows Biron’s growth as a man of courage and intelligence as he solves who’s behind his attempted assassination and plays the great game of espionage of interstellar politics with finesse.

All well and good. Not the level of a Tom Clancy or John Le Carre, but it certainly would snare the interest of a Golden Age fan.

Me, not so much. But … why?

Perhaps I could say my reading tastes have evolved, have become more sophisticated, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I’ve revisited many books from my past and have enjoyed them yet again. I think the problem I have with Asimov is that he’s a product of his time. He is eminently readable. He deserves every accolade hoisted upon him. He was groundbreaking, for his time, in a field that is constantly evolving because the science of science fiction constantly evolves.

But … everyone in this story talked and acted straight out of the ’40s, as if they lived and grew up in Queens, New York. Especially Arta, the female protagonist, a tough-minded princess who immediately falls in love at the feet of an immature Biron. The revealed bad guy could be seen a mile away twisting his moustache. And though there were some fine instances of behind-the-scenes machinations I did not see coming, it was a fairly straightforward story.

As far as the science went, I did enjoy how the ships “jumped”, i.e. entered hyperspace to traverse vast distances of interstellar space. This was done by comparing three coordinates found in huge books – I immediately thought of the thick old telephone books we had as kids. I thought Uncle Gil’s device that messed with one’s mental facilities –disorienting sights like colors never before seen implanted in the victim’s brain – was neat. I wish the political situation was more fleshed out, the worlds and alliances were stated and explained, but perhaps Asimov saved that for his Foundation series, of which The Stars, Like Dust is but a prologue of a prologue.  

All in all, though, it was a quick read, better than, say, watching the same amount of your average TV fare. And I’ll still try Foundation again in a few years.

Grade: B.

 

[As a side note, Asimov wrote over 500 books, roughly split equally between fiction and nonfiction. It’s said he wrote a nonfiction book in every category of the Dewey Decimal System except 100 – philosophy and psychology. Anyway, I did read his excellent book on the atom, Atom (1991) and about half of his comprehensive work on physics, Physics (1966) and even cracked his work on Biblical study, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (1968). All good, readable stuff.]