The Stars, Like Dust is a 1951 science fiction mystery book by American writer Isaac Asimov.
The book is part of Asimov's Galactic Empire series and takes place before the actual founding of the Galactic Empire, before even Trantor becomes important. It starts with a young man attending the University of Earth. Biron Farrill is the son of the greatest nobleman on the planet Nephelos, one of the Nebula Kingdoms. The story starts with the news that his father has been caught conspiring against the Tyranni.
The Tyranni, who come from the planet Tyrann, rule a minor empire of 50 planets near the Horsehead Nebula. Tyrann suppressed science and space navigation training in the kingdoms to help maintain control over its subject worlds. The ruler of Tyrann in the story is called the "Khan," suggesting that Asimov took the Mongol dominion over the Russian principalities as a model, much as he used the declining Roman Empire for his Foundation series. (See the "Golden Horde" for the real-world history that Asimov drew upon and adapted.)
Asimov once called it his "least favorite novel."
Publication history
The story was first published with the title Tyrann in Galaxy magazine. It was serialised in three parts in the January, February, and March 1951 issues. It was published as a novel on February 15 of that year by Doubleday with the title The Stars, Like Dust. It was first published as a paperback in 1954 with the title The Rebellious Stars: but this version of the story was heavily cut without Asimov's permission and was bound together with An Earth Gone Mad by Roger Dee.
Context
The story is set long before Pebble in the Sky, but it was written one year later. The Trantorian Empire is not directly mentioned; it would be located far away, having been settled not long beforehand and before its first great wave of territorial expansion. Earth's radioactivity is explained as the result of an unspecified nuclear war.
That contradicts what Asimov later wrote in Robots and Empire. One could suppose that history has become muddled over the intervening centuries since the final Robot novel: "many of the inhabitants of the planets near the Horsehead Nebula now believe it was named after an explorer called Horace Hedd." Other theories exist, and when Biron pretends on Rhodia that he comes from Earth, the Earth is not recognized, and he has to identify it as "a small planet of the Sirian Sector."
In contemporary terms, however, Asimov wrote the Empire series in the early years of the Cold War, when a nuclear World War Three seemed a realistic future; its widespread and enduring radioactive contamination might be remembered, at least in folklore, for thousands of years. By the time he wrote Robots and Empire, that was no longer so. However, in the intervening years, he had mentioned the contamination and the resulting abandonment of Earth in many stories. He therefore retained both elements but gave a different cause than nuclear war.
Plot
Biron Farrill, about to complete studies at the University of Earth, is told by Sander Jonti that his father, a rich planetary leader who is known as Lord Rancher of Widemos, has been arrested and killed by the Tyranni and that his own life may be in danger. On Jonti's advice, he travels to Rhodia, the strongest of the conquered planets. There, from the Director of Rhodia's cousin Gillbret, he hears rumours of a world on which rebellion against the Tyranni is secretly being plotted.
Escaping with Artemisia oth Hinriad, the daughter of the Director of Rhodia, and her uncle Gillbret in a Tyranni spaceship, they travel to the planet Lingane. It is not part of the Tyranni conquests but maintains "peaceful" relations with them.
There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane, who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth, who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula as they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula.
The Tyranni spaceship that was stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about the well-being of his daughter and his brother. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of discovery until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula.