by James Gunn
Thus Part I of The Gods Themselves has no women characters, and Part III has a woman in an important role (and significantly, in terms of sexual differences, as an "Intuitionist") but working as a tour guide.
Part II, however, is focused on Dua, for whom Asimov used the pronoun "she." Tritt and Odeen are referred to as "he." It is the Emotional who is necessary for sex, who has the power to say "yes" or "no." Most Emotionals are foolish, silly, empty-headed creatures, who are concerned mostly with coquettishness, gossip, and basking in the sun; they are even described as gluttonous. They like the company of other Emotionals: Odeen reflects that ''the Rational had his teacher . . . and the Parental his children but the Emotional had all the other Emotionals." Odeen finds them incomprehensible. "Who could tell what any Emotional thought?" he asks himself. "They were so different they made left and right seem alike in everything but mind."
In the Rational, Asimov surely identified himself, the rational man, who loves to learn and to teach and who is puzzled by the irrationality of the people around him, by the stubborn parental drives that have created the most serious problem facing the world, and most of all by those emotional responses to situations that cannot be reached by reason. In the novel, Rationals have little understanding of emotional matters. Odeen reflects that "there was almost a perverse pride among Rationals in their relative poverty of perception. Such perception wasn't a thing of the mind; it was most characteristic of Emotionals. Odeen was a Rational of Rationals, proud of reasoning rather than feeling. . . ." Rationals are embarrassed by experiencing emotions. Odeen, for instance, when he first meets Tritt feels embarrassed by an inner warmth and the feeling that there was something Tritt wanted that was utterly divorced from thought.
Rationals are not without flaws. Asimov portrayed them as unable to imagine the agony of an Earth destroyed by a nova, or even, in their lack of empathy, being unable to conceive of the humanity of an alien. The final melting of the triad into a Hard One may not be so much the uniting of the parts of the psyche but the blending of flawed humans into a unified whole person combining male and female attributes, as well as jointly shared parental instincts, into one rational being.
The Parentals are less easy to assign sex. Asimov calls them "he," and Dua calls her Parental "Daddy." It would be too easy to assign them female roles; in any case, such an assignment rings false. Perhaps the Parental is an amalgam of the male and female impulses to procreation and family building. Asimov himself, according to the evidence of his autobiography, was a concerned and devoted father. The characteristics displayed by Tritt seem relatively unappealing; he is stubborn and uncaring about anything except his own satisfaction; to be sure, his satisfaction is essential to the continuance of the species, which otherwise might well have died out long ago. In the para-Universe, with its falling birthrate, this instinctive behavior seems essential, and Asimov grants it its necessary place.
Finally, Dua, the focus of Part II, is different from other Emotionals. As a female, Dua is concerned with rationality. She finds Odeen more fascinating, much more interesting than Tritt, and her fellow Emotionals are hopeless. "Dua was so non-Emotional an Emotional!" Odeen thinks. She is curious, she wants to find out why things are as they are, and she enjoys having Odeen teach her as much as Odeen enjoys teaching her. Odeen is pleased that she is different, pleased that she wants to share his intellectual life, and pleased that he is pleased. Without going too far into an analysis of Asimov's personal life, one might speculate that he was comparing his first wife and her lack of interest in his work with his second wife (a physician, a psychiatrist, and after their marriage a novelist as well) and her ability to share his interests and intellectual life.
These attitudes may not endear Asimov to feminists. But if Part II has a human message as well as a novelistic one, it may be in support of the feminist position that traditional sex roles should not keep men from expressing their emotions or women from areas of life traditionally considered closed to them by biology or character.
Asimov always insisted that he had no style as a writer, that all he wanted to do was to write clearly. Joe Patrouch (in his 1974 book, The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov) pointed out, accurately, that simple sentences and clear statements are in themselves a style. At times Asimov allowed himself to criticize writers who seemed to value style over content. His famous categorization of science fiction into periods ending with style-dominance scarcely concealed a note of disappointment; he valued the sociology-dominant period into which most of his own work fell.
The first two parts of The Gods Themselves seem unusually style-conscious for Asimov. The sentences are straightforward, and, except for the scientific explanations, the vocabulary is unadorned. A sense of place is no more evident than ever (and less so than in The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun) even the alien landscape, often the colorful foreground of science fiction, is described simply as rocks and caverns. But the conscious arrangement of narrative elements and the way in which Asimov shares this artfulness with the reader is clearly a matter of style. Part I starts with section 6 and then flashes back to pick up the beginnings of the plutonium-186 story. In Part II, Asimov echoes the tripartite nature of the aliens by dividing the narration into segments labeled "a" for those in which Dua is the viewpoint character, "b" in which it is Odeen, and ''c" in which it is Tritt, with numbers to designate the progressing sections as "1a," "1b," "1c," "2a," and so forth. In their individual narratives, Dua, Odeen, and Tritt recall the parts of the story that are appropriate to each Dua, the parting with her Parental; Odeen, the meeting with Tritt; Tritt, the asking for an Emotional who turned out to be Dua and each subsection moves the basic story forward as well. The logical progression falters only after "6b," at which point it skips Tritt's narrative segment (all three view-points are represented at the end of "6b," as the melting into the Hard One occurs) and moves directly to "7abc," in which Estwald steps forward. This is fully as stylist a device as any cast up by the New Wave.
Part III is neither as involving nor as intriguing as Parts I and II. Perhaps it succumbs to Gunn's Law, which asserts that science-fiction novels tend to fall apart at the end. Asimov confronted the novelistic imperative to wind up the threads laid out with such care in the first two parts. But the winding-up process is seldom as exciting as the laying-out, and Asimov has an entire third of the novel devoted to it.
Part III is titled ". . . Contend in Vain?" with the question mark added to provide a suggestion of hope that is ultimately justified by the resolution. The scene is Earth's Universe about a year after Lamont tried to convince Senator Burt that the Pump should be stopped. The narrative is straightforward. Two people traveling on the same vessel arrive on the moon with a group of tourists. One is described only as a middle-aged tourist. The other is Konrad Gottstein, Commissioner-Appointee to the Moon. He was formerly on the staff of Senator Burt and had been assigned an investigation of the Electron Pump for waste and personal profit-taking. The middle-aged tourist makes friends with the Lunarite tour guide Selene, pronounced SELL-uh-nee (Asimov often made a point of how his characters' names were pronounced Gla-DI-a and Da-RI-us come to mind), and arouses her interest by asking to see the Earth-controlled proton synchrotron.
Selene is the sexual partner of Lunarite physicist Barron Neville, who is engaged in research later revealed as involved with creating an Electron Pump, or something like it, on the Moon. The Moon has no Electron Pump because the para-Universe will not accept tungsten made available there. Neville hopes to be able to learn enough to initiate an exchange from Earth's Universe rather than depending upon the para-people to do it. He also believes that Earth is conspiring to keep the Electron Pump from the Moon. He asks Selene to see the middle-aged tourist again, to play up to his growing romantic interest in her, and to find out what he is doing on the Moon and why he is interested in the proton synchrotron.
Later, after Selene has shown the middle-aged tourist something of life in the man-made tunnels of the Moon (there is
some resemblance here to the caverns of the para-world) and reported on their conversations to Neville, Gottstein confronts the middle-aged tourist with knowledge of his identity: he is Benjamin Allan Denison, the once-promising radiochemist whose challenge to Hallam (described in Part I) resulted in Hallam's stubborn pursuit of the plutonium-tungsten exchange, the development of the Electron Pump, and Denison's fall from science into male cosmetics as a result of Hallam's enmity. Denison rose to a vice-presidency, which he has given up to immigrate to the Moon, where he hopes to reestablish himself as a physicist.
Gottstein remembers him as a scientist who came to Burt's committee with the theory that Lamont later developed independently. Gottstein obtains Denison's agreement to keep him informed about anything he might discover in his dealings with the Moon scientists. The departing Commissioner has warned Gottstein that something might be going on that needed watching.
Denison tells Neville about himself and is told that he can work in the Lunarite laboratories. In the laboratories Denison is able to use a Pionizer, invented by the Lunarites, which does in a small space what the proton synchrotron does in a large one. With the Pionizer Denison gets results that he feels confirm the dangers he and Lamont have warned about: within a few years or a few decades, the growing strength of the nuclear force will lead to the explosion of the sun, perhaps even the entire arm of the Galaxy. Neville discounts Denison's findings, saying that they are within the limits of error of his process. Denison explains to Selene that people believe what they want to believe. Neville does not like to leave the tunnels in which he was born and raised (like the city-dwellers in The Caves of Steel, he suffers from agoraphobia). He wants the Electron Pump so badly because then the Moon will not be dependent upon solar batteries, for which people must go out on the surface. Denison suggests to Selene that Earth will not shut down the Electron Pump because it is dangerous; Earth must be offered something better. He offers a clue: the number two is ridiculous and cannot exist. Selene guesses what he means: if there are two alternate Universes, there must be an infinity of them.
The accuracy of Selene's guess surprises Denison. Selene reveals, in a conversation with Neville and later with Denison, that she is an Intuitionist. Genetic manipulation, some of which was aimed at producing more people with intuitional ability, was discredited on Earth after an (undescribed) time of troubles called the Great Crisis reduced Earth's population from six billion to two billion and left behind a permanent distrust of technology and a reluctance to risk change because of possible side effects. Although Selene is not the result of a genetic experiment, her ancestors might have been. Among other things, Selene's intuition led to the invention of the Pionizer. She functions as Neville's Intuitionist.
Selene speculates to Denison that the para-Universe might not care if the sun explodes, for then they might be able to get energy directly from Earth's Universe. Indeed, para-men might even prefer that the Galactic arm explode into a quasar and would like to keep Earth from stopping the Pump before that happens. In experiments on the surface of the Moon, Denison and Selene, who have grown more intimate, use the Pionizer to tap another Universe and succeed. Gottstein comes upon them while the experiment is going on. Later, Denison explains to Gottstein that they have tapped a Universe, which might be called an anti-para-Universe, in which the strong nuclear reaction is so weak that the entire Universe could consist of a single star. It would be a situation similar to that in Earth's Universe before the explosion of the cosmic egg, or "cosmeg." As humanity taps the cosmeg-Universe for energy, the seepage of natural law will counteract the effect of the Electron Pump and with proper coordination leave a net zero result. The cosmeg-Universe, on the other hand, might eventually explode as the strong nuclear force leaked into it. This explosion, however, would result not in damage but in conditions under which life eventually would be possible. This sequence of actions might, in fact, explain the explosion of the cosmeg in Earth's Universe, as some other Universe tapped it for energy.
Gottstein offers to take this information back to Earth in the form of a paper. Denison wants Lamont and Neville to be listed as co-authors. Lamont accepts (and receives appropriate honors and position, while Hallam is demoted), but Neville refuses. In a final wrap-up, Gottstein brings back from Earth plans for constructing cosmeg pumps on the Moon because they must be operated in a vacuum. Some of the cosmeg pumping will be used for energy, but most, for a while at least, will serve to counteract the changes in field intensities introduced by the Electron Pump. Neville, however, wants to use the cosmeg pumps to convert the Moon into a stellar ship. By transferring momentum to the cosmeg-Universe, the Moon could accelerate at any convenient rate without loss of mass.
Allowing the Moon to leave Earth orbit could create problems in balancing the Electron Pumping. Denison points out, however, that the problems could be solved by constructing space stations with cosmeg pumps attached. But, he says, the Moon won't leave its orbit because there is no sense in it doing so. It would be more efficient to build starships that would be easier to accelerate and require less energy. Neville wants to take the Moon because of his neurosis. It is Neville's prison, Denison says, but it need not be the prison of every other Lunarite.
Neville is adamant even when Selene, who has been waiting in another room and has heard everything, comes in and disagrees with him. Neville is outvoted decisively by the citizens of Luna City, and the novel ends with Selene asking Denison if he would be willing to contribute sperm toward her artificial insemination. A second son for her has just been approved. They end in each other's arms.
Part of the letdown in Part III is due to the speculative intensity of Part II, which is difficult to match. By comparison Part III seems uninventive. Even the reader's natural curiosity about the fate of Estwald and the triad, in which the reader has invested so much concern, is unrewarded; one does not know whether the part of Estwald that is Dua ever convinces the composite Hard One that survival should not be bought at the price of destroying the other Universe. One cannot conceive of an effective way in which the reader could be returned to the para-Universe, but this does not lessen the disappointment.
Part III does not even offer the scientific credibility of Part I. The ingenuity with which Asimov rationalized the existence of plutonium-186 and the attention he lavished on the accident-plus-preparation process by which the Electron Pump was created makes the development of energy from the cosmeg-Universe seem unlikely and unconvincing. The solution is ingenious but also convenient.
Without the intrinsic narrative interests that propel Parts I and II, Asimov resorted to artificial suspense in Part III. Instead of the natural mysteries that drive his best work, he offered concealed identities and information (the kind of substitute for the built-in puzzle that weakened The Stars, Like Dust). The only reason to conceal Denison's identity until section 6, for instance, was to paper over the lack of suspense with a contrived curiosity about who the middle-aged tourist is. For a while, the reader is tempted to believe that it is, and even wants it to be, Lamont. In a similar way, the information that Selene is an Intuitionist is hidden from the reader (and from Denison) until section 11, even though Selene and Neville converse privately in alternating chapters. The purpose of the Lunarite physicists is kept secret nearly to the end. Asimov tried to rationalize withholding information from the reader by establishing Neville as suspicious, even paranoid. At one point Selene chides herself for thinking of the secret purpose as "the other," rather than naming it, and she says she has been infected by Neville's chronic suspicions. All of this is weakness rather than strength.
The strengths of Part III are the descriptions of lunar life, the characterization, and the final solution to the Electron Pump problem. Much of Part III is a guided tour of Lunar City and environs. It seems little more than padding in the midst of the more pressing concerns about the Electron Pump, but the scenes are presented so winningly and so thoroughly imagined that they rival the similar presentations in Heinlein's The Mo
on Is a Harsh Mistress. Acrobatic performances and games ("a melee in the giant gymnasium") get almost an entire section, as does gliding (with the aid of argon-filled gliders attached to the shoes) on a lunar slope. Asimov describes the food (artificial and mushy, but the Lunarites, who have grown up on it, like it better than natural food), the language of contempt (Earthies, Lunies), the gravity (hard on Earthmen, even harder on anyone who tries to return to Earth), the difficulties of sleeping in one-sixth Earth gravity, and the problems of elimination. More importantly, he describes the social mores of the Lunarites: nudity is accepted as comfortable and natural; population is controlled by rationing the right to children; artificial insemination is the normal method of conception (although disapproved on Earth, it is allowed on the Moon for medical reasons; it is not clear whether artificial insemination is the custom among Lunarites or only between Lunarites and Earthie immigrants); and sex between Lunarite and immigrant or tourist is undesirable because of the possibility of injury to the slighter, less heavily muscled Lunarites as well as the difficulty of coordinating Earth-accustomed muscles to the Moon's gravity. This earned Asimov a pleasant reward at the end of the novel (as in The Naked Sun) when he brought Selene and Denison together.