Through the 1940’s, Astounding Science Fiction under editor John W. Meanwhile, the science fiction landscape was changing in the world of magazines. It wasn’t until Asimov submitted the third version of the novel’s opening in the spring of 1950 that Bradbury was willing to give him a contract and advance. Margaret Mitchell is probably the best-known of these.)Ī second attempt fared no better than the first. (A related problem is that of the writer who is terrified of writing a second novel because they don’t think they can ever approach the first in terms of quality. Rather than his sticking to his usual sparse prose, he was getting distinctly florid, and he needed to tone things down. It seems that Asimov was falling prey to “second novel syndrome”-now that he was a Novelist, Asimov was thinking he needed to write like one and was getting carried away. Asimov started work in November 1949, but Bradbury was unimpressed. He was willing to consider a contract for a second novel by the Good Doctor, but he wanted to see an outline and a couple of sample chapters first. Walter Bradbury, Asimov’s editor at Doubleday, was pleased with Pebble in the Sky even before its publication. Why? Well, let’s be like the Good Doctor and start our story at the beginning. I, myself, tend to agree with this assessment. He himself disliked it intensely and thought it the worst of his novels. It’s generally accounted one of his weaker efforts.

The Stars, Like Dust is Asimov’s third book, his second novel, and the earliest (chronologically) of the three “Empire” novels. Publishers generally leave the em-dash out, and so will I. Nota bene: Asimov’s preference was for this book’s title to be written with an em-dash, thus: The Stars, Like Dust.

The stars like dust