Description:

For 14 years of a career stretching from 1939 to his death in '92, Isaac Asimov wrote little SF & instead produced popular non-fiction in enormous quantities. The Gods Themselves ('72) was his "comeback" SF novel, welcomed by both Hugo & Nebula awards. It opens in the world of Big Science that Asimov knew well, full of in-fighting & the race to publish first. The Inter-Universe Electron Pump sucks unlimited energy from nothing, making all power stations obsolete & bringing a new golden age. No one--especially not the scientist who got the credit--wants to listen to the doomsayer Lamont who calculates that the pump's side effects may detonate the Sun. Worse, there's no kudos for him: "And no one on Earth will live to know I was right". Part two moves to the dying parallel universe whose hyper-intelligent aliens actually invented the pump & don't care what happens to our Sun. Asimov cleverly focuses on three immature aliens whose intelligence is less daunting & who slowly learn--with very different personal reactions--about their race's weird analogue of sex, about the pump's moral implications, & eventually about the unexpected meaning of maturity. These are the most original, engaging aliens Asimov ever created. Part three is set in a carefully worked-out Moon colony & grapples with the "para-physics" of inter-universe loopholes. Can a politically acceptable replacement for the pump be developed? Solid, workmanlike SF with far more talk than action: one of Asimov's rare standalone novels.--David Langford