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"Trends" is a 7500-word short story by Isaac Asimov, about a man who builds the first rocketship into space, in spite of growing public pressures against scientific research. The story was first published in the July, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

In the year 1973, John Harman has spent half his inheritance and ten years of labor building the world’s first rocketship to the moon, which he has named The Prometheus. His misfortune is that he is finishing his project at the same time that the world is entering an age of violent religious reaction against scientific research, which many people blame for the horrors of the first and second world wars. Some editorials, spurred on by their religious leader, Otis Eldridge, have called for the murder of Harman and the destruction of his rocketship. Harman’s partner, Howard Winstead, comes to him the night before takeoff and urges him to cancel, because he is worried that they might be provoking the populace into a reaction against all scientific research, which could send the world into a new Dark Age: “We are living now in a second Victorian age; and naturally so, because human history goes by swings of the pendulum and this is the swing toward religion and convention.”

Harman insists on going ahead with the launch, but the next day the launch is sabotaged by one of Harman’s own assistants, Shelton, who had been a follower of Eldridge. Shelton is killed in the ensuing explosion, and both Harman and Rev. Eldridge (who attended the launch) are wounded as well. The anti-science forces now gain complete control of the government, and pass laws forbidding any rocket research at all. Harman, however, defies those lies by building another rocketship, the New Prometheus, in secret. By 1978 Harman is ready to launch, and he insists that Winstead’s analysis of society was wrong: “Trends are things of centuries and millenniums, not years or decades. For five hundred years we have been moving toward science. You can’t reverse that in thirty years.” This time his launch is successful. He circles the moon, and then returns to Earth, where he lands safely and then defies the mob and the government to prosecute him. To everyone’s surprise, however, the pendulum has already swung away from the religious camp and toward the acceptance of scientific research.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939).