The Gods Themselves (Isaac Asimov 1972)
Posted on January 07 at 13.37, 2007 by Eric Mahleb
Isaac Asimov has published over 400 books in his lifetime. This is, apparently, more than anyone else has ever published, in any literary genre. My first reaction when I learned this, is that when someone churns out books so quickly, they are bound to come up at some point (or regularly) with less than average material. Stephen King, for example, is one of these authors whose great works are starting to become invisible in the middle of an ever-growing pile of nonsense.
The Gods Themselves is not one of Asimov’s bests (Asimov declared, however, that this was his favorite novel). It feels to me as if he came up with a great central idea but had to force himself to build a story around it.
This story revolves around the idea of parallel universes and the exchange of energy between these two universes.
‘Aliens’ in a parallel universe find a way to contact earth and to get the people of earth to build a Proton Pump. This pump allows each universe to get a free source of unlimited energy, something that, for different reasons, both sides need badly. But, in each universe, someone realizes that this will come at a cost and tries to stop the pump.
The central part of the book deal with the alien civilization and it does not feel properly thought through. The aliens act, behave, and think very much like humans. And perhaps they were once, but this is not hinted. The problem with describing aliens is that one must do so in ways that we can relate to, while at the same time describing something different, something other. It is a challenge, one that many science fiction writers have pulled off. But not in this case. These are some of the most boring aliens I have come across in literature.
Towards the end of the book, Asimov introduces additional concepts into the story such as intuitionism, genetic engineering, and a rebellious moon colony that wants to move the moon away from earth. While some of it is interesting, including the solution to the proton pump problem which entails creating another parallel universe, one that mimics our pre-big bang universe (thereby leading to the possibility that our universe may have been created in such a fashion), from which unlimited energy can be pulled, it all unfortunately continues to feel quite dilated and superficial.
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