06 January, 2019

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov


Outside of his short stories, my appreciation for Asimov remains pretty low. This novel helped me like Asimov more. I actually liked this novel more than Foundation’s info dumping and The Caves of Steel’s unbelievable police work. There were still some major problems with this novel—both in story and writing—but there were also positives that surprised me.
It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. [...] Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer.

First, the biggest problem: the verb “was” appears more than any other word in the book. Whole paragraphs only use this verb. The repetition of “was” bores as the novel continues, and I wonder that Asimov can’t be bothered to put more effort into the writing itself. This mono-verb-use betrays even the alienness of the middle alien section, helping the aliens feel human. I applaud aliens that feel alien to human readers, and these aliens do not, largely because the writing so rigidly utilizes “was”. Nothing has caused me to stop reading any novel more that poor writing. I almost stopped reading this one.
Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

The book is composed of three novellas, and I think this novel shows how fixups can achieve cohesion.
—The first deals with Lamont discovering that the greatest boon to humanity ever, the electron pump, reflects the genius of parallel-universe beings, and not humanity—specifically not Hallam, who claims discovery and invention of the electron pump. Lamont also believes that the pump will blow up our universe much more quickly than Hallam believes. Through Hallam’s influence, Lamont is frozen out of important positions and outcast.
—The second novella deals with those parallel universe beings who exist in three genders that eventually melt together to form one. One of the three main characters wants to shut down the electron pump to save humanity, one of the others masterminded the pump in the first place, and the third tokens traditionalism. They eventually coalesce into a unified being that continues the pump’s usage.
—The third part of the book deals with humans again, as Ben Denison tries to escape earth to rehabilitate a scientific career shuttered by Hallam. Denison has similar concerns as Lamont and has been similarly frozen out by Hallam. He eventually wins the intellectual contest and gets the girl.
—I don’t feel that a fixup is necessarily a bad novel, and I’m actually pretty happy with this one as a fixup. One of the things that separates this fixup from bad ones is that these three novellas work together—they make sense to put together because they share a main theme and tension.
There's a certain drama in going down in a good cause. Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. But, Dr. Lamont, to do that one has to have a fighting chance. One has to have something to fight for that may—just may—win out.

The main driving theme in all three surrounds ideas of the dangers of scientific advances being exacerbated by the ugliness of people’s behavior. It’s like Frankenstein, but the monster is a machine and Dr. Frankenstein is still Dr. Frankenstein (Dr. Hallam here). Asimov does a good job creating and not forgetting the central tension of the electron pump destroying the universe—his writing’s focus on science means that it’s pretty detective-novel-esque how he doles out terms and explanations to readers. Yet he doesn’t belabor the point too much, and gets on with the story. You know, instead of spending 600 pages setting up the central problem of the book, Asimov does it effectively much more quickly, and then writes the book.
His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I’d say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop.

The one place where Asimov’s characterization really shines portrays the scientific community as a cut-throat place of backroom politics and conspiracies, most scientists searching for personal glory, and outliers appreciating scientific truths for their own sake. Considering the peer-reviewed, hierarchical nature of this scientific community, Asimov’s design of it rings true to human experience. When people are promoted for publicity and length of service instead of merit, these types of infighting always happen. Asimov did a great job here—Lamont being interviewed by the senator, Denison’s desperation for a fulfilling job in the sciences, Neville’s distrust of everybody but himself. This part of the storytelling or world building is the strongest I’ve seen Asimov do, though I haven’t read too much of him. Each of the characters reacts to this overall tendency in scientists in different ways—Lamont’s rage, the senator’s political calculations, Ben’s stoic acceptance, Selene’s spark to work around the problem, Neville’s secretive conspiring—they all end up different characters, but unified into a group by reacting to the same force of the group itself. I need to be better at this and here Asimov shows one way how. He focuses on the group dynamics in explaining character emotions. Like the following quote, which is Lamont reacting to the backroom politics of these scientists.
"I'm going to see Hallam again."
Bronowski's eyebrows lifted. "What for?"
"To have him turn me down."
"Yes, that's about your speed, Pete. You're unhappy if your troubles die down a bit.”

That said, the rest of Asimov’s characterizations are weak. Not as weak as other novels, but still weak. The characters are so consumed by their work that Asimov disallows them depth of personality. Selene and Ben end up in love, but this "romance" arises coincidentally, rather than naturally. I’m not even sure what either sees in the other—a break from the manipulation of her current man for Selene, and a nymph for Ben maybe? It’s thin, whatever it is, and it reads more like pulp fictional writing than an exploration. Dua ends up subverted completely by Odeen and Tritt in a way all to familiar to how women are consistently represented in fiction, again with no exploration at all—boring. Lamont’s great triumph is off-scene and the reader ends up as wistful as Denison that they may have been allowed to see this scene—probably because the rigidity of the novella structure Asimov set up disallowed him from going back to Lamont. And that’s a big problem. The structure might be a cool concept, a cool idea, but if it doesn’t let the author tell his story in the best way possible, why keep to it so rigidly? It hurts his building of characters.
“Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"
"As long as possible. Sometimes longer."
"What about you?"
"You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.”

The biggest problem is that the main tension in the book, people discovering that the electron pump will destroy the universe much faster than they had thought, gets forgotten by the end. This search for evidence drives Lamont, Dua, and Denison, but they never discover conclusive evidence. Yet the book assumes they have and concludes as if they have won, without the main thread of tension actually resolving. Instead, Selene and Denison solve the problem that should have been proven, while the problem is never proven. This plot-hole is gaping and obvious and I am stumped as to why any author would let that slip past them.
There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

In all, this is a better Asimov book than any I have read yet. Though big problems remain, at least I now have something other than his short stories to point to when people ask me about Asimov. I look up to his writing of group-individual dynamics in here, and I’m thinking of reading more Asimov eventually.

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