The Gods Themselves: A Novel by Isaac Asimov (EPUB)

Description

In the twenty-second century Earth obtains limitless, free energy from a source science little understands: an exchange between Earth and a parallel universe, using a process devised by the aliens. But even free energy has a price. The transference process itself will eventually lead to the destruction of the Earth’s Sun—and of Earth itself.Only a few know the terrifying truth—an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun. They know the truth—but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy—but who will believe? These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to Earth’s survival.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I chose this book as part of my ongoing goal to read every book that’s ever won the Hugo Award for Best Novel: this is the 1973 winner, one of Asimov’s five! I could tell right away that the book was worth my while, and it delivered right to the finish!BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The Gods Themselves tells the story of a not-to-distant future (though it was 100 years out for Asimov) in which a bumbling scientist (Frederick Hallam) stumbles upon a cross-universe transfer of energy that facilitates limitless clean energy for all mankind. The “science fiction” part of it is that the nuclear balances of protons and electrons are different between the two worlds, so when matter portals back and forth between the two universes its atoms produce continual energy as they work to adjust to the laws of their new universe. The problem, though, is a familiar one in science fiction: when man pushes against the laws of nature, nature pushes back. The story primarily follows two of Hallam’s academic rivals who thwart his desperate bid to protect his scientific reputation by successfully alerting the world about the downsides of the “electron pump” and proposing a mind-bending alternative.FANTASTIC, VARIED SCI-FI: Comprised of three overarching parts (which, when strung together, form the quote by Friedrich Schiller: “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”), the novel really has about everything a sci-fi reader could want. Part 1 tells the story of Hallam and his great detractor, Peter Lamont. Lamont offers a great lens through which Asimov helps introduce readers to the world of the novel and provides ample opportunities for Asimov to decry the downsides of defensive, politicized science. Part 2 is my favorite: a detailed, emotionally-evocative glimpse into the “parauniverse” (parallel universe) that sends its matter to our own universe. The beings and family units in that universe form “triads” comprised of one emotional intelligence, one rational intelligence, and one parental intelligence. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers here, but I will share that Asimov’s creation of a completely different universe with fundamentally different laws of biology and physics is SUPER compelling. Taken alone, it’s an absolutely first-class alien and worldbuilding short story of which I loved every second. I can’t recommend Part 2 enough. (Note: In his autobiography, Asimov wrote that the novel, especially the second section, was the “biggest and most effective over-my-head writing [that I] ever produced”.) Part 3 returns to our own universe and, to complete the sci-fi trifecta, is set on a human colony on the moon! Reminiscent of “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, the denizens of the moon have adopted a different familial and social order than that found back on earth, setting up quite an interesting set of political and scientific clashes that lead to the climax of the entire book.CONFUSED PHILOSOPHICAL “BOTTOM LINES”: As stated above, I sincerely enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to any sci-fi fan! But something didn’t sit right with me at the end of it, and I couldn’t figure out until the next day what it was–I didn’t really like that, at the end of the day, the human race didn’t face any consequences associated with the “stupidity” (Schiller/Asimov’s word) that they exhibited by failing to take the threat of cross-universe tampering seriously. It was like reading a novel about climate change where, at the end of the day, nobody does anything differently but all the denialists get the self-satisfaction of being proven right in their do-nothingism after all. That rubs me the wrong way. I understand that Asimov wasn’t really attacking that particular element of humanity (he instead focuses pretty extensively on the egoism of the scientific establishment), but it still got to me.My disagreement with the final resolution notwithstanding, this is an absolutely first-class sci-book and I enjoyed it fully! I will read it again, and put it on my short-list of classic sci-fi books to recommend.

⭐I read this book 45 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has very inventive universes. I reread it now knowing that I would love it again! Don’t miss this one!

⭐I’d prefer this to have ended after the second section. That would have left the main plot problem unresolved, but it’s resolved in the third section only through deus ex mechina, and quite a bit of the rest of the plot is unresolved anyway. The third section begins with a tangle of awkward exposition and stilted dialogue and unnecessarily introduces an extraneous plot having to do with lunar politics. It’s as if Asimov, two-thirds the way through his own novel, suddenly lurched into a rewriting of Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. What happens essentially in this story is that mankind hastily comes to rely on a transformative new technology without sufficiently considering the possible adverse consequences (sound familiar?). When a few scientists discover that the overlooked consequences will be catastrophic, they are hounded out of their positions and ostracized into obscurity—because vested interests and the public at large don’t want to believe them or even hear them out. So far so good, a parable for our time. But how does it end? The ending is so shabby that I feel I can reveal it here in good conscience: A newer and even more disruptive technology is even more hastily introduced and immediately implemented on a mass scale. This newer technology is supposed to neutralize the dangerous effects of the other without inhibiting the other’s benefits. The ending of this book, then, blithely ignores the lesson the first part of it tried to teach us. Asimov does not intend this ironically, unfortunately, and it’s too bad because that could have made for a satisfactory resolution. Oh well, against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

⭐The Gods Themselves has a reputation as Asimov’s best novel. In my opinion, that isn’t saying much: although Asimov’s short stories (particularly the Robot ones, and the Wendell Urth stories in ‘Asimov’s Mysteries’) are among the great works of science fiction, like many of his Golden Age contemporaries, he had trouble moving from the short story format or novella to the full-fledged novel. The novels written by these guys tended to be ‘fixups’ – short stories padded out to an unnecessary length. This book is an exception, since it seems to have been written with a novel in mind, but it still suffers from the problems of other novels by Golden Agers: it is episodic, split into three sections rather than a single coherent narrative, and it fails to maintain any sense of momentum from beginning to end. The central idea is interesting: a scientific advance called the Electron Pump, which may or may not lead to the end of the world. Asimov is at his most didactic in this book, and it is what he is good at – explaining complex ideas with a simplicity and enthusiasm that makes them, rather than people, the centre of the novel. Ah, yes: people. In a short story, you can get away with little character development, because the whole thing is over very soon. In a novel, this is problematic. Instead of character-building, Asimov has pages and pages of stilted dialogue, in which characters ‘infodump’ – i.e. either explain the plot, or just talk about what it’s like, for example, to live on the moon without advancing the story one iota. I have to say that I found long sections of the book a bit dull. The most interesting section of this novel is the middle part, where Asimov creates an alien society. It says a lot that the aliens are by far the most interesting characters in the book. They seem to allow the author to sidestep the 1950s scientist-hero cliche and do something interesting. The aliens sulk, get depressed, become elated, sexy, confused – in short, all the things that Asimov humans tend to forget to do. For true Asimov fans, I guess this is an interesting read. For more casual browsers, or especially those new to Asimov, I would start with his short fiction to really get a measure of the genius of the man, and if you want to move to the novel length, try the Robot or Foundation books rather than this.

⭐This is an excellent work by Asimov published in 1972 and his ideas are still relevant to how we see the world in this universe.In his own words, The God Themselves, is his favorite work among his abundant writings. It is very imaginative of him to conceive a pump that exchanges energy between the two worlds where diverse beings inhabit.In actual fact, this novel has intriguing subplots to keep readers hooked, which proves that he has learnt from his earlier novels. The presence of 2 female characters are almost dominant in the first 2 sections.A thoughtful and reflective work from the famous Asimov.

⭐For me, this has the classic ingredients for good sci-fi: only one significant deviation from the universal laws as we know them, and good development of plot and character from that one premise. There are sufficiently important, unanticipated plot developments for me not to include spoilers here, but I think the following are OK. The trilogy is takes as its starting point the widely discussed “multiverse” concept, in which the remarkable fact that the values of the fundamental physical constants in our universe are, to a high degree of precision, the only ones that could support a universe that could support stars, planets, life, etc. One way of dealing with this suspiciously improbable situation is to posit that in some sense there exist many other universes with all other conceivable values for these constants, and we just happen to exist in this one (a bit like happening to live in an age of mobile phones). This and other “anthropic” interpretations are not articulated in “The Gods Themselves”, but are elft implicit. Very slight differences from the strengths of the strong and weak nuclear force in our universe might, in fact, support predictable properties in alternate universes, such as more but fewer stars, shorter or longer lifetimes of matter, and so on. So far, so standard physics. The only deviation Asimov introduces is the idea that sufficiently adept denizens of one such universe might be able to find a way of making very small exchanges of matter with our own. he then allows the plot line to develop from that point: what would the effect be? How would it affect people and their interactions? How would it look like on the other side of the coin, etc. I found the character development and plot lines engaging, and in the second book particularly intriguing. The resolution to book 3 is very slightly weaker than teh rest, robbing it of the fifth star.

⭐Earth, the moon and a parallel universe. Asimov describes life on them all with great detail, bringing together a story that is fascinating as it is terrifying. His description of the life forms from the parallel universe and their interaction is incredible. A must read for anyone who is a fan of hard SciFi.

⭐As a fan of Asimov I was quite pleased to find a book that I had not yet read. It is rather good. There is a fantastic few chapters describing how an alien race acts and thinks from there prospective and then how they interact with our world. I would have liked to have read more about them which is why I did not give a full five stars. But an excellent sci- fi read all the same.

Keywords

Free Download The Gods Themselves: A Novel in EPUB format
The Gods Themselves: A Novel EPUB Free Download
Download The Gods Themselves: A Novel 2011 EPUB Free
The Gods Themselves: A Novel 2011 EPUB Free Download
Download The Gods Themselves: A Novel EPUB
Free Download Ebook The Gods Themselves: A Novel