This 1951 Science Fiction novel by Isaac Asimov is the second-published (but first by internal chronology) of The Empire Novels, a loosely-connected group of three books that are distant Prequels to his Foundation Series.
It is many thousands of years in the future. Biron Farrill, a young man from a distant planet who has spent several years on Earth as a university student, is awakened by what seems to be an assassination attempt. He soon learns that his father, a nobleman on his homeworld of Nephelos, has been executed by the Tyranni (who conquered Nephelos and the rest of the "Nebular Kingdoms" several generations ago). Biron is soon plunged into a web of political intrigue alongside fellow-student Sander Jonti (a fellow-countryman from the Nebular Kingdoms) and a beautiful aristocrat, Artemisia oth Hinriad, and her uncle Gillbret oth Hinriad (an inventor and seeming dilettante), respectively the daughter and cousin of Hinrik, Director of Rhodia (an important vassal of the Tyranni). All of them—pursued by the agents of the Tyranni, most notably Simok Aratap, the Comissioner of the Great King (effectively the viceroy of this part of the Tyrannian empire)—are searching for a "rebellion world" which is the center of an underground resistance movement against the Tyranni, and for a secret document from Earth's ancient past that may hold the key to a weapon powerful enough to overthrow the Tyranni.
The Stars, Like Dust provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Despite being the antagonist of the book (not to mention a high-ranking official of a people who are literally called "the Tyranni") Simok Aratap is a rather mild-mannered and courteous fellow, who takes no pleasure in some of the more unpleasant things he must do as part of his duty to his empire, and is at times genuinely friendly to Biron and Artemisia.
- Agony Beam: The neuronic whip is an energy weapon that causes the pain nerves of its victims to be "universally and maximally stimulated". When one character is hit in the foot with one, the resulting sensation is compared to stepping into a bath of boiling lead, or that foot having a granite block dropped on it, or it being bitten off by a shark.
- Agri World: Gillbret laments that the worlds of the "Nebular Kingdoms" are doomed to become these. Normally, newly-colonized worlds progress naturally from farming simply to feed themselves, to farming (and mining) for export to more advanced planets in exchange for industrial products, to developing budding industrial civilizations of their own, to eventually becoming advanced industrialized planets that import food and raw materials from less developed planets while investing in their farming and mining economies (thus aiding in the future development of those planets). But the Tyranni, as conquerors, have stymied this natural progression for their own reasons, and even after the Tyranni inevitably become soft and lazy and are overthrown, "we will still all be agricultural worlds with no industrial or scientific heritage to speak of".
- Arranged Marriage: Artemisia has been betrothed to a powerful Tyrannian nobleman, a much older man who is much shorter than her and (according to Artemisia at least) has bad breath. She makes it clear that she regards this marriage as essentially a Fate Worse than Death.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Biron and Artemisia, both of whom are rather prideful aristocrats. Biron immediately finds Artemisia to be very physically attractive. Two chapters later, Artemisia is calling Biron a "big, ugly fool" to his face, but she quickly apologizes and soon after is thinking to herself that he is "quite pleasant looking". Biron not long after refers to Artemisia as a "childish girl". The next chapter after that they're kissing. They have an on-again off-again relationship for the rest of the book (including Artemisia petulantly wishing she could hurt Biron) although from this point on the quarrelling is in large part due to Biron conducting political intrigues involving Artemisia without bothering to let her in on his plans. By the end of the book they're married.
- Bizarre Instrument: Gillbret oth Hinriad is the inventor of the visisonor, which produces a synesthetic array of sounds, colors, and other sensations by remote stimulation of the brain cells. (This visisonor plays an important role in Asimov's novella "The Mule", written some years earlier but set thousands of years later in the internal chronology of Asimov's future history.)
- Blind Jump: In the backstory, Gillbret oth Hinriad accidentally found "the rebellion world" when the ship he was on was hit by a small meteorite; it's assumed that said meteorite interfered with the ship's systems, resulting in an accidental Blind Jump.
- Bulletproof Fashion Plate: After forty-eight hours on a rather cramped spaceship Biron wonders to himself how Artemisia's white blouse is still smooth and unwrinkled. Her hair is a little bedraggled, though.
- Conveniently Close Planet: After Gillbret's ship went off course twenty years earlier, he found himself in the presence of a planet, and an inhabited one no less (which turned out to be the Rebellion World). Biron lampshades how lucky this was. It actually ends up being a plot point at the end. After Jonti observes that the odds of randomly showing up within a billion miles of any star are 250 quadrillion to one against, Biron realizes that it couldn't have happened this way — unless the ship simply continued on its course and ended up in the system it was originally aimed at, meaning the rebellion is actually based in the Rhodian system.
- Disintegration Chamber: Biron's father was executed for treason against the Tyranni by being "blasted to bits in a disintegration chamber".
- Eagleland: The "secret document" everyone is looking for turns out to be the United States Constitution, which by providing a blueprint for democracy will enable the overthrow of not only the Tyranni but of all the other monarchical states which now rule the human Galaxy.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Earth's radioactivity is expressly stated here to be the result of nuclear war (which was seen as more or less inevitable at the time it was written), with the narration at one point stating that its patterns mark out the points where the bombs landed. Later books set in the same universe would establish that said war never actually happened, and that it was caused by Spacer saboteurs accelerating the natural radioactivity in the soil.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: Much of Earth's surface is now radioactive due to an ancient nuclear war, and it is very far from being the political center of the human-settled Galaxy.
- Elective Monarchy: In spite of the rather un-royal title, the Director of Rhodia and his family are consistently referred to as "royal". The Directors of Rhodia are however elected—from within the ruling family, the Hinriads—rather than succeeding by any straightforward means of hereditary succession (such as primogeniture). In earlier times, this was used to ensure that the Directorship would pass down to the ablest members of the ruling dynasty; adoptions into the royal family had also once been common to further ensure effective rulers. After their conquest of the Nebular Kingdoms the Tyranni are able to influence the elections to ensure that the most pliable and easily controlled of the Hinriads will become Director.
- Electronic Telepathy: A "personal beam" allows someone to receive an electronic message sent through hyperspace across interstellar distances. Within a particular volume—an ordinary room—"space itself" is "polarized", and because the message is tuned to the unique brain waves of its recipient, the messages are practically impossible to intercept. Receiving requires no equipment, with the recipient of the message merely thinking "purposefully and with concentration". Sending—or simply engaging in two-way communications—does require the use of a "mechanical contrivance", which is small enough to be worn as an "ornamental button".
- Entertainingly Wrong: Aratap, who is noted to have a need to find pattern and order in everything, spends most of the book under the assumption that Biron is an agent of the same anti-Tyrannian conspiracy as his father, and that everything he does is in accord with some prearranged plan. In fact, Biron doesn't even learn that any such conspiracy exists until about halfway through, and his actions are all dictated by circumstance and the machinations of others (mostly Jonti).
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Like many of the future societies depicted in Asimov's books, the Nebular Kingdoms are inspired by one from Earth's history, specifically the Rus' principalities under the Mongol rule of the 13th-15th centuries. The Directorship of Rhodia in particular, with its head of state elected from within the ruling family, is strongly reminiscent of the Novgorod Republic.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: The book acknowledges that "in the fabric of space-time, it is impossible to travel faster than the speed a light" (a fact discovered by "one of the ancients, the traditional Einstein, perhaps, except that so many things are credited to him"). Interstellar travel is therefore accomplished using "the Jump" through hyperspace, allowing many light-years to be traversed in zero time. Ships require multiple Jumps to reach their destinations (although Tyrannian ships can automatically make multiple pre-progammed Jumps, something the ships of other planets in the setting are unable to do).
- Feudal Future: In the far future the human race has colonized many worlds, which without exception are ruled by various Khans, Autarchs, hereditary Directors, or "Ranchers" (the title of a sub-planetary hereditary ruler on the planet Nephelos, one of the worlds of the Nebular Kingdoms that is now ruled by the fifty-planet empire of the Tyranni).
- Force-Field Door: The prison cells aboard a Tyrannian warship don't have doors, but instead "a force field stretched from side to side, top to bottom". This field is described as having "a tiny resilience" when touched, causing a tingling to the hand, and being completely impenetrable by material objects (though the beams of energy weapons — such as the guard's neuronic whip — will pass right through the field).
- Future Imperfect: Several examples come up of modern knowledge being lost to time, including a reference to "the traditional Einstein" to whom "so many things are credited" and the discussion of the alleged etymology of the Horsehead Nebula, where one character claims that it was named after "Horace Hedd", the first person to travel through it, while another recalls that Earthmen describe it as resembling a local animal called a "horse".
- Hegemonic Empire: The Tyranni are outnumbered "hundreds to one" by the subject populations of their empire, and must therefore resort to "devious methods" (such as assassination) to maintain their rule. Their conquest of that empire evidently involved a good bit of taking advantage of the disunity of the Nebular Kingdoms—"the opposed Kingdoms toppled one after another, singly; each waiting (half joyfully at the discomfiture of its neighbors)". But they also rule with a relatively light touch, leaving previous rulers in place to serve as vassals, and mainly concern themselves with collecting tribute—"taxes"—from the subject worlds.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The "rebellion world" is actually somewhere in the Rhodian System itself. Biron even points out:There are two ways of hiding an object. You can put it where no one can find it...Or else you can put it where no one would ever think of looking, right in front of their eyes in plain view.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: This is how the Tyranni conquered the Nebular Kingdoms two generations before the action of the book: Squadrons of "small, flitting ships that had struck and vanished, then struck again" were able to defeat the "lumbering titanic ships" of their enemies, which "found themselves flailing at emptiness and wasting their stores of energy" before the Tyranni ships reduced them to scrap. Even fifty years after the conquest, Tyrannian cruisers are still notably small and fast.
- Inertial Dampening: Rather than any fancy "force-fields" spaceships (at least when taking off from a planetary surface) counteract the effects of the "sickening pressures of the take-off" by having all passengers don "acceleration suits"—"cold, tight, uncomfortable"—which cradle the passengers in a hydraulic system to protect them from the forces of acceleration.
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Although scholars at least do still know that Earth is the planet of origin of the human race, Artemisia has never heard of it, and Biron merely tells her it is "a small planet of the Sirian Sector".
- Just the First Citizen: With the exception of Tyrann, whose ruler is known as the "Khan" and is also dubbed the "Great King" and "King of Kings", none of the rulers of the Nebular Kingdoms appear to have traditional royal titles. The subplanetary rulers on Biron's homeworld, Nephelos — who seem to combine the roles of king and lord of the manor — are known as "Ranchers". Lingane is ruled by an "Autarch" (which does signify an absolute ruler, but not specifically a royal one). Most notably, the head of state of Rhodia, the largest of the Kingdoms, is known as the "Director", which usually isn't even a political title; despite this, his family, the Hinriads, are outright referred to as royalty on several occasions.
- King Incognito: Or rather, Autarch incognito. It turns out that Sander Jonti is actually the Autarch of Lingane (ruler of the "planet state" of Lingane, an "Associated State" of the Tyranni).
- La Résistance: The novel's plot concerns an underground movement seeking to overthrow the rule of the Tyranni over the Nebular Kingdoms, the quest to find "the rebellion world" that is the secret center of this resistance movement, and a search by multiple characters for a "secret document" from ancient Earth that will give the resistance an unstoppable weapon against the Tyranni.
- Lost Superweapon: Both in the backstory and in the main action, multiple people are trying to track down a document from Earth's history, which they are convinced contains the secret to an extraordinarily powerful weapon. Sander Jonti for one is skeptical—he points out that pre-spaceflight Earth was "a primitive place, militarily speaking" and specifically calls out as ridiculous the common notion of "lost arts and lost sciences" that somehow surpass those of the present day. Yet even he is not really convinced that the document in question does not exist—because someone has gone to the trouble of stealing it, which surely no one would do if it were worthless. It turns out the document in question is the United States Constitution, and the "strongest weapon in the universe" that can defeat the Tyranni—and destroy all the rest of the Galaxy's aristocratic and autocratic rulers—is the idea of democracy.
- Mugged for Disguise: With Biron a fugitive from an arrest order, he, Artemisia, and Gillbret are seeking to flee the Palace on Rhodia. Biron jumps a guard and takes his uniform so he can pose as a common soldier escorting the two members of the royal family. The issue of finding an enemy mook whose uniform fits is addressed: Gillbret carefully maneuvers the captain of the guard into leaving a suitably large soldier "on guard" outside Artemisia's room (where he can be easily lured in for Biron to attack). Gillbret later also mentions the "advantage of a uniform", that anyone will see only "a soldier and nothing else". The hapless guard is naturally left Bound and Gagged.Gillbret: I would suggest you leave a guard at Lady Artemisia's door... pick a large one. Take that one. A fine uniform our guards have, Artemesia. You can recognize a guard as far as you can see him by his uniform alone.
- Namesake Gag: Biron and Gillbret discuss the etymology of the Horsehead Nebula (through which they are traveling at the time). Gillbret confidently asserts that the name actually comes from a man named Horace Hedd, who was the first person to explore the nebula; the name "Horsehead" Nebula is thus presumably an example of folk etymology. Biron, who has recently visited Earth, notes that Earthmen explain the name as the nebula resumbling the head of a certain Earth animal, a "horse". As Biron points out, the name could only have arisen on a planet that looks at the Nebula from the correct angle, and that perhaps there never was any such person as "Horace Hedd".
- "No Peeking!" Request: Artemisia is changing from a very revealing nightgown to street clothes while Biron is hiding in her quarters; she makes "a little whirling gesture with her forefinger" and says "Do you mind?" to get Biron to turn his back. Artemisia is clearly trying to stoke the belligerent sexual tension between the characters—as the narration notes, she could have used a separate dressing room, or changed clothes before opening the door.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Gillbret oth Hinriad, the cousin of Director Hinrik, speaks of his need to play the part of an effete dilettante twenty-four hours a day so that everyone will underestimate him. The character who is actually most thoroughly using this trope is Director Hinrik himself, who plays the part of a doddering old fool and fearful puppet of the Tyranni with far greater consistency than Gillbret ever has, while actually being the leader of the underground resistance movement.
- Our Showers Are Different: At one point Biron uses a "detergent mist", described as "fine, suspended droplets that shot past him forcefully in a warm air stream". A "momentary passage" through this mist leaves him not only clean, but dry as well, without any "separate drying chamber".
- Planetary Nation: The planet Lingane is a "planet state", while the rest of the human-colonized Galaxy has "passed beyond that stage of economic and political development" and most other states are "conglomerations of stellar systems".
- Ray Gun: Various characters threaten each other with the hand weapons called "blasters". One is also used to blast down a locked door with "sharp, cracking sounds". When a blaster is used on a person, it blasts away his right shoulder and half his chest, leaving behind "a black ruin...a charred remnant".
- Rest-and-Resupply Stop: Although Lingane is a "planet state" it does also control a number of strategically located small planetoids (incapable of supporting any independent populations themselves) on which the Linganians have built servicing stations which provide anything passing ships might need "from hyperatomic replacements to new book reels".
- Sensor Suspense: In an audible version of the trope (rather than the more usual visual trope) the very first sentence of the book is "The bedroom murmured to itself gently" (and the title of chapter 1 is "The Bedroom Murmured"). This "murmuring" turns out to be the sound of a radiation detector; the level of radiation it's detecting isn't enough to be harmful—yet—but what's making the detector "murmur" are the initial radiations from a "radiation bomb" that will soon reach the point of releasing a burst of radiation that will be deadly to, at the very least, the room's occupant.The bedroom murmured to itself gently. It was almost below the limits of hearing—an irregular little sound, yet quite unmistakable, and quite deadly.
- Shaving Is Science: While aboard the stolen Tyrannian warship Biron shaves with "Tyranni erosive spray", an "extremely fine air-blown abrasive" that removes hairs without harming the skin. Although it is "undoubtedly the quickest and closest non-permanent shaving method in existence" it makes Biron uneasy—there are rumors the stuff causes "face cancer". Biron also considers having permanent "depilation" done, but rejects the notion as the fashion in facial hair might shift.
- Space Sector: The Nebular Kingdoms are also referred to as the Nebular Sector, while Earth is described as being in the Sirian Sector.
- Standard Time Units: At one point Biron realizes he forgot to reset his watch to local planetary time from "Standard Interstellar Time", in which system "one hundred minutes made an hour and a thousand made a day".
- Statuesque Stunner: Artemisia is only two inches shorter than her father (who is himself nearly six feet tall), a "smoldering girl" with "clear, fair skin" and dark hair and dark eyes who makes an immediate impression on Biron.
- Subspace Ansible: The "personal beam" sends a signal through hyperspace, allowing for real-time verbal communication with "a world half a thousand light-years away".
- Tastes Like Purple: The description of the effects of the visisonor:It wasn't really a color, but rather a colored sound, though without noise. It was tactile, yet without feeling.
- Title Drop: While looking at the stars from the view-room of a starship, Biron thinks of the opening lines of a poem he had written a few years earlier (as a sentimental nineteen-year-old):The stars, like dust, encircle me
In living mists of light;
And all of space I seem to see
In one vast burst of sight. - Tracking Device: Biron, Gillbret, and Artemisia have stolen a Tyrannian cruiser—the personal vessel of Simok Aratap, no less. Unfortunately for them, every such Tyrannian warship is fitted with a device which allows it to be tracked across interstellar distances. Had they stolen an ordinary freighter, it would have been far more difficult—or even impossible—to track them.
- Undercover When Alone: At one point, Gillbret says that he has to pretend to be loyal to the Tyranni, even when alone, so that he never slips up. Biron later observes that Gillbret isn't really very good at this sort of role-playing; he's too quick to reveal his true self to newly-made acquaintances. The book's real master of the trope is Director Hinrik, the true leader of the rebellion. At certain points we see Hinrik's thoughts, but Asimov is careful to portray these in a way that leaves it ambiguous as to whether—as it initially seems—they are the fearful thoughts of a cowed vassal of the Tyranni...or the fear of a rebel leader who knows he is being watched at every turn, and that he must be prepared to sacrifice his own family for the cause if he has to.
- Vehicular Sabotage: Gillbret sabotages the hyperatomic motors on the Tyranni ship which is taking him, Biron, Artemisia, Director Hinrik, and Simok Aratap to the last candidate planet for the rebellion world, with the intention of sacrificing all their lives in order to save the resistance movement's hidden base. Biron must undo the sabotage — at the cost of poor Gillbret's life, as it turns out — because he knows they're on a wild goose chase and that Director Hinrik is the true leader of the resistance and mustn't be killed.
- Video Phone: The novel opens with Biron Farrill receiving a visiphone call. (The phone doesn't work, as the elaborate plot which Farrill is the victim of evidently included sabotaging the visiphone in his college dorm room—Farrill can both hear and see the caller, but the person on the other end of the line can neither see nor hear Farrill.)
- World War III: In the distant backstory of the novel nuclear war left Earth devastated, with much of its surface a radioactive Polluted Wasteland (and visitors to the planet correspondingly obsessive about the dangers of radiation).
- Worthy Opponent: By the end of the book Colonel Rizzett (a fierce enemy of the Tyranni) says of Simok Aratap "You know, if the Tyranni were all like him, damned if I wouldn't join their fleet".
