In Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves, a scientist discovers an opening, a small leak between this universe and another. And through this opening, matter begins to be exchanged—tungsten 186 from Earth is swapped for plutonium 186 from the parallel universe. This is quite odd because (outside of the fact that parallel universes are leaking into one another) plutonium 186 is theoretically impossible to exist on Earth due to the way nuclear fission occurs here. It would be far too unstable. This is explained, though, by the fact that as the tungsten is fed into the parallel universe and as the plutonium that migrates here transforms back into tungsten (which then gets fed back into the parallel universe, where it will, then, gradually transform into plutonium and on and on…), the law of conservation of energy is not violated. In fact, as this inter-universal commerce occurs, not only are scientific laws preserved, but each exchange catalyzes a small, but tolerable nuclear reaction which then results in free, usable energy. And it works that way for the beings that inhabit the parallel universe, as well—the “para-men,” as they are called. For them, tungsten 186 is theoretically unstable, but due to the fact that they’re getting rid of the particles from the plutonium, it all works out and the inhabitants of both universes get endless free energy. It’s a bonanza.
In near-future Earth, economies are revolutionized because of this “Electron Pump” and daily struggle is minimized for all. In its stead, though, something else has emerged. Just below this quasi-heaven atmosphere of “do whatever you want” on the surface, one finds a widespread complacency and moral pettiness—a certain malaise—below, in the hearts and minds of the population. When everyone has “everything” and no one encounters adversity, the preservation of the comfy status quo becomes paramount to everything else, including reasoned debate or the acknowledgment of genuine systematic crisis. Even among the scientific community, career advancement and the stroking of one’s own ego are far more treasured than something as nostalgic-sounding as the “good of humankind” (even more than in the already fraught present day).
Likewise, in the universe that the humans have made contact with, many of the para-men, an extremely alien sentience that respond to a different set of physical laws, suffer from what is in effect a similar problem: in this case, blind faith in the goodness of the Pump along with a strong fear of change prevents any of the “Hard Ones,” the top scientist-type figures in the universe, to feel ethically challenged by the idea that the pump will most likely cause the Sun of the other universe, the Earth universe, our universe, to go nova. Indeed, for the para-men, the Sun going nova just gives them more energy in an arguably safer manner. They don’t know us. They don’t care. They’re rationalism and inability to think of this “other”—us—as anything other than an object doesn’t allow them to feel any empathy for us at all.
Soon enough, though, back on Earth, a younger scientist crunches the numbers and realizes what the para-men already knew: the continued use of the Pump in its present state is not full proof and there is a high probability that nothing less than the explosion of the Sun and possibly even the creation of a gigantic black hole in that part of the Milky Way will occur. And he’s got hard data to back him up. However, no one, and certainly not the physicist who became famous the world over for his discovery of the leak between universes, will listen to him. Like the debates around Global Warming today, clear cut scientific evidence that the ship is headed straight towards Armageddon is no competition for the preservation of one’s reputation, political buffoonery, and the status quo.
In the end, it takes the pioneer spirit existing among the “Lunarites,” the recent colonists to the Moon, to allow some way forward to emerge from this crisis. It is there that, Dennison, a middle-aged man who, as a young radiochemist, witnessed the discovery of the universe leak in a laboratory, migrates because he can’t stand the oppressive materialism and blasé, play-it-safe attitude among the Earth’s population. While he’s there, though, he falls in love with a woman that reinvigorates his attitude for science. Using the fact that the Lunar surface is a near-perfect vacuum to his advantage (he can just step outside rather find a properly-equipped laboratory on Earth), he begins conducting experiments and discovers a way forward for the Electron Pump that drastically reduces the possibility that the sun would go nova.
The solution to the problem here is key for Asimov. The fact that there is a move forward rather than an attempt to squish reality backwards by ending the Electron Pump for good is a major theme of the novel. For Asimov, the proper response to a crisis is always an improvement or a fix rather than a prohibition. If cars are seen to be dangerous, that doesn’t mean you try to outlaw cars, you improve safety features. It’s not that Asimov is even necessarily suggesting that this is the ethically better option; more that it’s the only realistic one. The public will simply not stand for the end of something they love and depend on. The more you try to do this, the farther you’ll get from addressing the crisis because it will remain a fringe, “idealistic” concern. Instead, you need to hold your nose and build on what you’ve got. It’s pragmatism.
For Asimov, history does not reach a teleological end point, but continues to go through cycles of crisis and resolution ostensibly forever. In the Foundation novels, he called these sort of civilization-on-the brink crises “Seldon crises”—after the fictional “psychohistorian” Hari Seldon who developed complex mathematical models that could accurately predict when these crises would occur. At the end of The Gods Themselves, he writes, “…there are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass. We’ve passed this one safely, I think, and we’ll be sorry about the others as they come and pass and can be foreseen.” As a writer, Asimov also functions as a teacher. And his great subject is the perennial crisis of civilization and what to do about it.
The Gods Themselves, like much of Asimov’s fictional output, is heavy on dialogue and exposition, light on any visual impact. For a story about parallel universes communicating to one another, a lunar colony, and an Earth of unlimited free energy, there is little in the way of interesting imagery or stylistic pleasure here. One exception is Dua, the young “Emotional” from the novel’s second section that takes place in the parallel universe. As a way to hide in the caverns where the “Hard Ones” live and eavesdrop, she “melts” into the rock itself and hangs out there. Indeed, the characters that have the most to say about human nature are Dua and the other para-men from the second section.
That said, hard SF should not necessarily be evaluated in the light of literary fiction in the first place. Asimov’s style is not “bad” because he doesn’t know any better. Rather, he’s placing his work in the context of his field. Hard SF has its own aesthetic interests and values; it is its own medium. And in hard SF, when the puzzle of the science meeting the plot fits together and you can see it, it becomes its own sort of triumph. And, on that front, The Gods Themselves delivers.
A final note: the novel is broken up into three novella length sections, each analyzing the situation from a different point of view. Some commentary I’ve come across has complained about that because it disrupts the reader’s ability to engage deeply with a single situation. I can sympathize with that and, typically, prefer longer stories about one group of characters. Here, though, there seems to be a good, thematically-relevant motivation. Each of the novellas is itself a universe, parallel to the others, sharing data, just as Asimov envisions reality to exist in The Gods Themselves.