The Gods Themselves
The Gods Themselves is a 1972 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov, and his first original work in the science fiction genre in fifteen years (not counting his 1966 novelization of Fantastic Voyage). It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972,[2] and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.[3][4]
Author
David November[1]
Science fiction
May 1972[1]
United States
Print (hardback and paperback)
288
Hugo Award for Best Novel (1973)
Nebula Award for Best Novel (1972)
Locus Award for Best Novel (1973)
The book is divided into three main parts, which were first published in Galaxy and Worlds of If[5] as three consecutive stories.
Plot summary[edit]
First part: Against Stupidity[edit]
The first part takes place on Earth, almost a century after the "Great Crisis", where ecological and economic collapse reduced the world's population from six billion to two billion. The timeline alternates between the events of the 2070s, outlining the discovery of the "electron pump," and events twenty-three years later.
Radiochemist Frederick Hallam discovers that a container's contents have been altered. He finds out that the sample, originally tungsten, has been transformed into plutonium 186—an isotope that cannot occur naturally in our universe. As this is investigated, Hallam gets the credit for suggesting that the matter has been exchanged by beings in a parallel universe; this leads to the development of a cheap, clean, and apparently endless source of energy: the "Pump", which transfers matter between our universe (where plutonium 186 decays into tungsten 186) and a parallel one governed by different physical laws (where tungsten 186 turns into plutonium 186), yielding a nuclear reaction in the process. The development process grants Hallam high status in public opinion; winning him power, position, and a Nobel Prize.
Physicist Peter Lamont, while writing a history of the Pump about 25 years later, comes to believe that the impetus of the Pump was the effort of the extraterrestrial "para-men". Lamont enlists the help of Myron "Mike" Bronowski, an archeologist and linguist known for translating ancient writings in the Etruscan language, to prove his claim by communicating with the parallel world. They inscribe symbols on strips of tungsten to establish a common written language as the strips are exchanged for ones made of plutonium-186. As Bronowski works, Lamont discovers that the Pump increases the strong nuclear force inside the sun, and thus threatens both universes by the explosion of Earth's Sun and the cooling of that in the parallel universe. Bronowski receives an acknowledgment from the parallel universe that the Pump may be dangerous. Lamont attempts to demonstrate this to a politician and several members of the scientific community, but they refuse his request. Lamont decides to tell the para-men to stop the use of the Pump, but Bronowski reveals that they have been in contact not with the other side's authorities, but with dissidents unable to stop the Pump on their side. The last message was them begging Earth to stop.
Second part: The Gods Themselves[edit]
The second part is set in the parallel universe in which, because the nuclear force is stronger, stars are smaller and burn out faster than in our universe. It takes place on a world orbiting a sun that is dying. Because atoms behave differently in this universe, substances can move through each other and appear to occupy the same space. This gives the intelligent beings unique abilities. Time itself appears to flow differently in this universe: the events take place in an apparently short space of time in the lives of the inhabitants, while more than 20 years pass in our universe, and a long feeding break of one of the characters translates into a two-week gap on Lamont's side.
Like the first part of the novel, this section has an unusual chapter numbering. Each chapter except the last is in three parts, named e.g. "1a", "1b", and "1c". Each reflects the viewpoint of one of the three members of the "triad" central to the story's theme.
The inhabitants are of two types: the dominant "hard ones," whose bodies are solid and of a fixed shape, and the more fluid "soft ones", whose bodies are mutable. The latter have three sexes with fixed roles for each sex:
Asimov's relationship to the story[edit]
In a letter of February 12, 1982, Asimov identified this as his favorite science fiction novel.[6] Asimov's short story "Gold", one of the last he wrote in his life, describes the efforts of fictional computer animators to create a "compu-drama" from the novel's second section.
Asimov took the names of the immature aliens—Odeen, Dua, and Tritt—from the words One, Two, and Three in the language of his native Russia, i.e. odin (один), dva (два) and tri (три).
Asimov's inspiration for the title of the book, and its three sections, was a quotation from the play The Maid of Orleans by Friedrich Schiller: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.", "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain" (quoted in the book itself).[7]
Asimov describes a conversation in January 1971 when Robert Silverberg had to refer to an isotope—just an arbitrary one—as an example. Silverberg said "plutonium-186". "There is no such isotope", said Asimov, "and such a one can't exist either". Silverberg dared Asimov to write a story about it.[8] Later Asimov figured out under what conditions plutonium-186 could exist, and what complications and consequences it might imply. Asimov reasoned that it must belong to another universe with other physical laws; specifically, different nuclear forces necessary to allow a Pu-186 nucleus to hold itself together. He wrote down these ideas, intending to write a short story, but his editor, Larry Ashmead, asked him to expand it into a full novel. As a result of that request, Asimov wrote the second and third parts of the book.[9]
In his autobiography, Asimov stated that the novel, especially the second section, was the "biggest and most effective over-my-head writing [that I] ever produced".[10]
References to science[edit]
At the time of writing, quasars had been only recently discovered and were not well understood. In the story Lamont suggests that quasars are in fact parts of galaxies that have undergone sudden increase in the strength of the strong nuclear force, resulting in an explosion of fusion energy. It is not certain if Asimov took into account the nature of solar fusion, where the primary reaction rate is governed by the weak nuclear force, transforming protons into neutrons, while the strong force governs the amount of energy released during reactions.
The book mentions quarks, but confines its discussion of the strong force to pions, which are the carriers of the force that binds protons and neutrons together, while gluons bind quarks within protons and neutrons. At the time, gluons were only suspected to exist while particles thought to be quarks had been observed directly.
Similarly, the Etruscan language and particularly Etruscan writings had not yet been translated and were enigmatic. As of 2022, the language's possible relation to any other known language remains unproven. The character Bronowski is imagined to have solved the puzzle by considering the Basque language, which is also unique in Europe, as a relative of ancient Etruscan. Bronowski decides to help Lamont when the president of the university refers to the language as "Itascan", confusing it with Lake Itasca. He resolves to do something that "even that knot-head will have to get straight."[11]