The Stars, Like Dust-Isaac Asimov

The Stars, Like Dust
Isaac Asimov
Orb (Tor), Sep 2009, $14.99
ISBN: 9780765319159

Biron Farril is on earth attending college while his father rules the planet Rhodia. When someone tries to kill him at the school with a radiation bomb and he also learns his popular dad was assassinated, Biron flees with the help of Sander Jonti. The Tyranni arrested his father, charged him with treason, and executed him for his seditious acts. , The diabolical Tyranni want Biron dead preferably away from his home so he can never achieve hero status.

The Tyranni occupy Rhodia, but Biron makes it home. He pleads with the elderly mentally incompetent planetary supreme ruler the Director of Rhodia to replace his father although he knows the Tyranni control him. The Director betrays him to his masters the Tyranni; but with the help of his cousin Gilbret and the Director’s daughter Artemisia, he escapes. Gilbret insists he knows where an off world cache of weapons exist that will enable the overthrow of the Tyranni.

This is a reprint of an early Isaac Asimov entertaining science fiction thriller in which the story line has been used a zillion times since the 1951 printing and probably a thousand times before. The story line is thin looking back through the unfair myopic lens of Star Wars (1977 movie), but is still fun to read as the first Empire novel is an exciting thriller based on a power struggle between a mighty galactic galaxy empire and a tiny rebel force from some backwater planet. Any moment the reader will expect the crawl: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", but THE STARS LIKE DUST was a quarter of a century before.

Harriet Klausner