by James Gunn
The major problem of the novel is that it proceeds by concealment of information from the reader and by misunderstanding. In the best Asimov fiction, characters may try to deceive others, but their own motives are clear. In The Stars, Like Dust nobody has sound motivation for what they do, with the possible exceptions of Aratap and the Autarch, both of whom intend to repress or use to their own advantage whatever is going on, and both of whom lose. The novel is a mystery. It offers three questions: 1) what is the mysterious document for which Biron and the Autarch are searching, why is it missing, where is it, and why is it important? 2) who betrayed the Rancher of Widemos? and 3) where is the rebellion world? The answers to some of these questions, such as the name of the mysterious document, are known to the characters but concealed from the reader; other answers are known by some characters, who are never asked the right questions; and still other answers are known by Biron long before they are revealed.
Lack of a clear narrative focus leads to false climaxes. The phony attempt on Biron's life is typical: it leads to Jonti's warning that Biron's life is in danger (but mostly from Jonti); to the statement by Jonti that Biron is expendable and to the kind of Mary Roberts Rinehart school of foreshadowing that ends Chapter Two with "Nothing had been left to chance" and Chapter Six with "then he knew what he had to do"; to the statement at the end of Chapter Three that "the ship was carrying him politely, but surely, to his death"; and to Aratap's revelation that his concealed knowledge of Biron's identity had been ''careful maneuvering" that was "cruel" and yet "necessary," while the reader learns, the next time Biron is encountered, that Biron knew Aratap was not deceived. Who is maneuvering whom? Asimov and the reader seem to fit best into that equation.
The novel has rewards. The characters are interesting particularly those of Aratap and the Autarch, and, in a lesser sense because more derivative, those of Hinrik and Gillbret. Aratap is a kind of Balkis (of Pebble in the Sky) without Balkis's weaknesses. Aratap also is a manipulator. He too suspects plots and conspiracies. He too believes he has everything under control. The difference between the two is that Aratap does not act rashly or foolishly, and in the case of The Stars, Like Dust a conspiracy of sorts actually exists. Moreover, Aratap is not vindictive, and at the end he is not certainly defeated.
Biron, the juvenile lead, grows in a way that resembles Schwartz more than Arvardan. At the end, Biron's insights bring the novel to a satisfying conclusion, though at the sacrifice of some credibility because the reader cannot see Biron grow in stature and wisdom as he or she can see Schwartz develop.
The novel has a few other redeeming aspects, particularly the explanations of physical and social phenomena that may foreshadow the science popularizer to come: a good explanation of hyperspace; a justification of government; a description of the difficulties of stellar navigation; and a discussion of how a plutocracy becomes an autocracy. Finally, the novel offers an effective climactic scene in which Biron resists Aratap's manipulations.
The Currents of Space led Asimov back to the theme and substance that he was to celebrate in his two robot novels. He described his next novel as "a complicated story of interstellar intrigue and racism." It too began as a novel for Doubleday, which Bradbury approved in idea form on December 28, 1950. On April 4, 1951, he offered Asimov a contract on the basis of the material he had seen, skipping the option phase. It was another step forward for Asimov. Asimov decided to offer the serialization rights to Campbell, since he felt guilty about the frequent appearance of his work in Galaxy.
The novel took Asimov more than a year to write. He was also busy with his first textbook, a collaboration with two Boston University School of Medicine colleagues, William C. Boyd and Burnham S. Walker, that soured him on collaborating but whetted his appetite for science writing; the first of the juvenile novels he would write under the name of Paul French, David Starr: Space Ranger; and various shorter projects. He finished The Currents of Space on March 30, 1952, and learned on April 17 that Campbell had accepted it for serialization.
The Currents of Space is also a novel that conceals information from the reader. In the Prolog, a character identified as "the man from Earth," who works for the Interstellar Spatioanalytic Bureau (I.S.B.), is being detained by an unnamed man. The Earthman wants to broadcast information that a planet named Florina is to be destroyed. The second man thinks that would cause panic and do no good. The second man says he will remove the Earthman's anxiety with a psychic probe, but darkness comes over the Earthman's mind. "Some of it never lifted again. It took years for even parts of it to lift."
Rik, a mentally incapacitated man known to others as "Crazy Rik," has turned up on a planet that the reader soon learns is Florina. He has been adopted by a childless woman named Valona March, who has nursed him back to health and to some awareness of what is going on around him. She knows Rik's mind has been "turned off," that he once was an educated man. She gets him a job in the kyrt mills, where a kind of miracle fiber is made into cloth. Gradually he begins to remember things from the past: first, that he had a job analyzing "Nothing," and second, that everybody on Florina is going to die. Valona wants him to forget and to stay where he is because she has found out from a doctor she took him to see (who died a week later in a gyro-crash) that Rik had been psycho-probed; she is afraid of losing him. But Rik insists that he must leave the mill and the village and find out more about himself.
Valona goes for help to Myrlyn Terens, the Townman who is the local representative of the absentee landlords, the Squires of Sark. Terens takes Rik to the City. All other cities on Florina have names, but this one is simply the "City" and is shadowed by Upper City, "a horizontal layer of fifty square miles of cementalloy resting upon some twenty thousand steel-girdered pillars" where the citizens of Sark live while on Florina, along with a sprinkling of mercenary "patrollers." Terens is a Florinian native who was educated on Sark, the home planet of the Squires. He hates them and plans to use Rik to get revenge on them. He takes Rik to the Upper City library where Rik, with help, discovers the Encyclopedia of Sark article on Spatio-analysis. The article mentions that the Spatio-analyst is "an introverted and, often enough, maladjusted individual." The official slogan of the Spatio-analyst Institute is "We Analyze Nothing.'' Rik realizes that he was a Spatio-analyst. But when he tries to consult other books, instructions direct him to the Librarian. The Librarian accosts him and Terens, and they are confronted by an overage patroller before Valona shows up and knocks out the patroller with his own neuronic whip.
The three escape from Upper City by elevator but are pursued by patrollers. A passerby tells them to seek help at Khorov's bakery, where they slip through a dummy radar furnace (a foreshadowing of the microwave oven) into a hidden room. The baker, Khorov, seems to know a great deal about the situation. He leaves a door open so that Terens can leave and tells Valona she can leave but that Rik must stay.
Meanwhile, on Sark, Dr. Selim Junz, a Spatio-analyst from Libair (a planet perhaps originally settled by blacks fleeing Liberia), has been searching for a Spatio-analyst who disappeared nearly a year before and was last reported in space near Sark. A message had been received from a field man that "the life of every human being on Florina was in danger" and "All Galaxy affected," but field men are considered strange, if not psychopathic. The Sarkites, however, insist that the Spatio-analyst did not land on Sark. In previous consultation with the old Trantorian ambassador, Ludigan Abel, Junz revealed his conviction that the Spatio-analyst landed on Sark and was imprisoned and probably killed because the Sarkites could not stand to have the whole dirty mess of Sark-Florina political relationships exposed to the Galaxy. Junz had asked Abel to find out if the Spatio-analyst was killed. Junz asked the Sarkites to place standard works about Spatio-analysis on reserve in libraries and to report non-Sarkites who ask for them. If the Spatio-analyst has become psychotic, the details of his job will return to his mind first.
More than eleven months later no sign of the missing field man has been found. Junz
is almost ready to quit when he receives word that someone has requested two standard Spatio-analysis texts at the Florinian branch of the Public Library of Sark. In discussion with the clerk who reveals this information, Junz learns that the fugitives have been traced to the Khorov bakery and have been allowed to remain there because Khorov is a well-known agent of Trantor.
Terens, during his escape from the bakery shop, reflects on his experience of being taken to Sark as a boy and being so disillusioned by discrimination against Florinians that he learned to hate the Sarkites. He also learned to shun Sarkite agents provocateurs and the conspiracies of Trantor, the gigantic Empire that has expanded to encompass half the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy. Then Rik, the Spatio-analyst, fell into his hands as the ultimate weapon against Sark.
As Junz goes to see Abel again, Abel reflects on the progress of the Trantorian Empire, which has grown from a republic of five worlds five hundred years earlier to a Trantorian Confederation and now a Trantorian Empire trembling on the verge of becoming a Galactic Empire. Abel is uncertain what to do about Junz and the I.S.B. and the missing Spatio-analyst. Even if Sark could be proven to be guilty of killing or imprisoning the Spatio-analyst, Abel does not want to provide an occasion for the remaining non-Trantorian half of the Galaxy to unite against the Empire. He is upset about Junz's obsession with exposing and destroying the relationship between Sark and Florina rather than the larger Galactic issues of unification or war. Junz feels so strongly about Sark's tyranny over Florina because he is dark-skinned and Florinians are unusually pale. When faced with Junz's anger, Abel reveals that Khorov is dead, and the fugitives are apparently in the hands of the Sarkites. But in an Asimov novel not everything is what it seems: Khorov had helped Rik and Valona on their way to the spaceport by giving them identification documents. Khorov is killed by a patroller, and Rik and Valona get away in the crowd. Rik persuades Valona to sneak aboard a spaceship with him, but not the one to which Khorov had directed them because he does not trust Khorov and patrollers might be waiting there. Rik's returning memory about spaceship construction and procedures allows them to stow away. After takeoff Rik explains to Valona that his job used to be analyzing "the currents of space," the small differences in trace elements that pervade space. He gathered information that is important to ships in calculating their Jumps and is also of possible help in explaining the creation of the universe and its evolution. In the midst of his explanation, Rik remembers the face of the patroller who shot Khorov; it was Terens. They had made a mistake stowing away on a ship.
Meanwhile, on the spaceship Captain Racety has relayed to Lady Samia of Fife an order from her father, the Great Squire of Fife, to return to Sark. She is reluctant to interrupt her research on kyrt. Kyrt is a variety of cotton that on Florina becomes a shining miracle fiber stronger than steel alloys that is used mostly for luxury fabrics. It provides the source of Sark's wealth and the reason for Florina's subjugation. No one knows why kyrt seeds grow into kyrt on Florina and into an inferior grade of cotton anywhere else. Captain Racety discovers the two stowaways.
Back on Florina, Terens learns that Rik and Valona have stowed away on board the ship belonging to the Squire of Fife, one of the five Great Squires, each of whom has his own continent. They have grown powerful in the kyrt trade in a way that Trantor cannot match. They will risk Galactic war rather than give up Florina. Fife is the most powerful of the five. Almost a year ago he had called a meeting by trimensic personification (a process used again later in The Naked Sun), in which he shared a blackmail note containing information about the impending destruction of Florina. Fife also told the Squires that a Spatio-analyst had disappeared and sent a message mentioning the destruction of Florina. Fife suggested that Trantor was trying to blackmail them, that they should try to find the Spatio-analyst, and that they should await a second message. It never came. Now Fife calls them together again and speaks of high treason.
Meanwhile (there are many "meanwhiles" as the point of view shifts chapter by chapter and even within chapters to pick up another part of the action), Terens has taken an elevator to Upper City, goes to City Park, stuns a Squire with his neuronic whip, dresses himself in the Squire's clothing, and then incinerates the Squire to delay pursuit.
Lady Samia, on board the spaceship, insists on talking to Rik and Valona. Under questioning, Rik remembers that he is from Earth. Lady Sarnia and the Captain have never heard of Earth, but the Captain has heard of the Sirius Sector and subsequently remembers that Earth is the planet that claims to be the birthplace of humanity. Rik also remembers being a Spatio-analyst, that Florina and possibly the Milky Way are in danger, and the interview on Sark described in the Prolog. He doesn't remember, however, what was done to him or by whom. Before he can be questioned again, Captain Racety receives a message to hold the two for the Department of Security (DepSec).
Meanwhile, the Squire of Fife tells the other Great Squires about the recent events on Florina and speculates about their meaning and the actions involving the Spatio-analyst that lie behind them. He suggests that one of the Great Squires intercepted the Spatio-analyst, intended to blackmail the other Squires, kept the Spatio-analyst around for further information, and used a psycho-probe on him before transporting him to Florina where he could be kept safely and checked periodically. Fife believes that his earlier conference scared off the blackmailer. He tells them that officers loyal to him have taken over the Navy and that he is taking control of a united Sark. Rik, Valona, and the Townman are in his hands. What he does not know is that the DepSec man bringing in the Townman is a Trantorian agent.
The Great Squire of Steen flees to the Trantorian Embassy to ask for Trantorian intervention in return for Trantorian participation in the kyrt trade, but Abel refuses, suggesting instead that he will ask to interview the Spatio-analyst, holding possession of the Townman as a threat to Fife. But at the spaceport Terens enters Lady Samia's car at her invitation. In a mad moment he kisses her just as a pursuing car catches up and Trantorian agents take a picture of them embracing before they make off with him.
Abel blackmails Fife into a meeting by threatening to release the picture, a threat that can work only in Sark's sick social system. Steen, who has gone with Abel, accuses Fife of being the guilty Great Squire. Abel questions Rik and asks what he remembers. The only thing Rik can remember is the word "Fife," then a man named Fife looking down at him. Fife, whose legs are much shorter than his torso, gets down from his chair to demonstrate that he could not have looked down at a seated man.
Terens, who is present in trimensic personification, is questioned by Junz about the Squires who might have come to the village where he was Townman to keep track of Rik. Terens cannot remember any Squires or any patrollers who exhibited an undue interest. Then Valona points out that Terens was the only one who knew everything and watched everything. Terens admits that he was the psycho-prober. He had been temporary traffic manager at the spaceport when the Spatio-analyst landed, had identified himself as the Squire of Fife, had sent the blackmail letter, and had used a psychic probe to remove the anxiety from the surface layer of the Spatio-analyst's mind. But because Rik was a Spatio-analyst, the anxiety went much deeper, and the probe dug out most of the conscious mind along with it. Terens then arranged to be transferred to Florina as Townman and took the Spatio-analyst along with him on forged papers. Terens reveals that, according to the Spatio-analyst, Florina's sun is in the pre-nova stage. All he can remember about the details is "the carbon current of space" and "catalytic effect."
Up to now, no one has been able to predict novas. Junz points out, however, that one of the two stellar nuclear transformations uses carbon as an intermediate stage, or catalyst, in the process of changing hydrogen into helium. He speculates that Rik has traced a carbon current in space and that a star passing through a current containing unusual concentrations of carbon becomes unstable, the star's radiation is boosted tremendously, and the outer layers explode into a nova.
Both Fife and
Abel raise doubts about the evacuation of Florina on the basis of such an unsubstantiated theory. Junz points out, however, that the matter concerns the whole Galaxy, since twenty full novas occur every year and another two thousand stars shift their radiation characteristics sufficiently to render their planets uninhabitable. Every fifty years, then, an inhabited planet becomes too hot for life, and every five thousand years some inhabited planet has a fifty-fifty chance of being puffed to gas by a nova. If Trantor does nothing for Florina, the other people in the Galaxy will feel that nothing will be done for them either if help is in the way of the economic convenience of a few powerful men.
Abel still is not convinced until Junz points out that Florina produces kyrt because its sun is in the pre-nova stage. With this information, it will be possible to produce kyrt anywhere. Junz suggests that Trantor buy Florina from Sark and evacuate it. Terens is put in charge of the evacuation.
