Book of the week

 

Title : Pebble in the Sky
Author: Isaac Asimov

Published in 1950, Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov makes for racy reading! It has an optimistic projection of the future.

Most of the story is set in a galactic empire, where Earth is but a pebble in the sky. Mankind has spread through the galaxy as Earth has become radioactive. A small population lives in the unaffected part of the contaminated Earth, which has become a part of a large galactic federation ruled by a representative of the galactic government, the procurator.

Joseph Schwartz, a sixty-two year old tailor from 1949 Chicago, is transported in time through eleven millenia into the radioactive Earth by some mysterious force.The people from the future initially regarded Schwartz as an imbecile as he did not comprehend or speak the common language. They used him as a guinea pig in an experiment to enhance brain powers. After the experiment, he not only picked up their language, but could read others thoughts and even kill without touching a person. His intellect was enhanced to a point that he uncovers and prevents a plot to destroy all the planets except Earth. The brotherhood that rules the earth, the Ancients, had developed a biological weapon to destroy mankind that living in the extra terrestrial world.

The Ancients were power brokers who sought to be exclusive.They had even installed euthanasia as a practice for majority of people over sixty, arguing that as most resources on Earth were contaminated and radioactive, they could at any point support only twenty million people. To make space for the younger population, at sixty, people were sent to die. However, some people, like the rulers themselves, were exempt of euthanasia.

Schwartz, with his enhanced intellect that he christens  Mind Touch , towers above the normal Earthmen and brings peace and sanity back to Earth. At the end, the new forces that govern the Earth set to rebuild the planet by replacing it’s radioactive top layer with healthy soil so that it could support more people and become self-sufficient.

The book starts and ends with a refrain from Robert Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra(1864). Shwartz is reciting these lines as he walks, ruminating on the hope for a happy retired life with his wife at the start of the book before he travels into the future.  At the end of the book, as he walks the new Earth that is being rebuild he again recalls,

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made…

The Ancients had taken away this privilege of growing old from Earthmen. In a way, Schwatrz, an old man from the past, returns it to them and the future that the best is yet to be. There is hope again for a wonderful future.

Interestingly, a year before Asimov published this book, Goerge Orwell published 1984. In 1984, Earth post world war is painted as bleak and hopeless. To love or live outside the box created by the Big Brother is hopeless and leads to death and desolation. There is no hope for the future. It is frightening in it’s depiction. In Pebble in the Sky, Asimov has started with a depiction of a bleak Earth but has ended his book giving hope for a fantastic future among the stars where mankind can flourish with his dreams and visions and look forward to an infinite of space and time… suggesting the best is yet to be.

Book of the week

 

Title: Nineteen Eighty-four
Author: George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-four is a well-known and much-read classic by George Orwell published in 1949. It is a post World War scenario. Life is ruled by poverty, fear and hatred. In reality, the year 1984 has come and gone and we still have the old order of things. Have we actually evaded all the realities faced by the post World War society projected in the novel?

In the novel, as an outcome of the World Wars, the world has been divided into three parts, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Each zone has the same ideology but the ideology is given a different name by the political party that runs the show in that region. To retain power, the three regions always play at being at war. People are obsessed with hating their enemy and bringing them down. Citizens of each zone are kept apart so that none discover that all mankind thinks in the same way.

“Even the official ally of the moment is always regarded with darkest suspicion. War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, as he is forbidden the knowledge of foriegn languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself…”

Winston Smith, the protagonist, finds it difficult to conform to the ideology which is summed up in three slogan-like statements:
 

                                  War is Peace
                            Freedom is Slavery
                          Ignorance is Strength

He also commits the error of falling in love with a woman called Julia. The Thought Police tracks them, breaks them up, brainwashes them and kills them at the end. When the prisoners are annihilated in mind and spirit and love only  Big Brother, the supreme leader of Oceania, are they allowed freedom through death. Winston’s spirit is finally broken and crushed after years of torture and brainwashing and he looks forward to his annihilation at the end.

It is a society based on ‘hate’. The emotions encouraged by the party are “fear, rage, triumph, and self abasement”. The politicians or the power brokers of the three states encourage these emotions and an endless war to keep people busy so that they can retain their own power, supremacy and wealth. They live in luxurious homes, with cars and servants, whereas the rest live in squalid conditions ruled by terror.

History is re-written to suit the party needs. The past is said to be mutable and is changed often to set up the realities the politicians want to project. Buildings and roads are all re-named beyond recognition. No one knows what happened before the party took command. People have been terrorised into having short-term memories. So, if the enemy switches from Eurasia to Eatasia, all the newspapers and journals of the earlier times are re-written. People suffer from hunger and shortages as during wars. To maintain ‘peace’, a state of war is maintained all the time in all the three regions.

The power brokers of the three regions have given three different names to the same ideology and have created barriers of culture, language and hatred to keep the citizens apart. People of each zone hate the citizens of the other regions and can tear apart their ‘enemies’ with their frenzy of hatred and anger. They celebrate ‘hate’ week. The identity of the enemy is immaterial. They just need someone to vent out their anger born of hunger, frustration and fear.

Children spy on parents. They are bred on violence…their entertainment involves watching people hang, beating up people, betraying adults. Blood and gore and squalid living is the norm of such a society. Beauty and  nobility have been eradicated from this society. All history and literature from the past has been wiped out. The fabric of family and decency have been completely demolished. It is in my view a terrifying book. In certain ways, the catharsis we experience after coming to the end of  the book, would inspire us on to reaching out for the positives around us. I would say it is a must read in today’s conflict-riddled world.

Sometimes one wonders if the terror which has started invading a large part of the world, our obsession with borders, the flux of refugees, the anger and helplessness of people is bringing Orwell’s nightmarish vision closer home to us…