The Gods Themselves

Boring Kindle book cover.

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The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

1973 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

314 Pages

Separated into three different but parallel stories, The Gods Themselves begins when scientists have discovered a way to exchange energy with another universe, the para-universe.  Things get dicey when what is at first possibly the single greatest scientific achievement in history, threatens to become a horror story as it is understood that not only the two universes exchanging energy, but also physical laws which could result in our sun going nova.

Eternal contemporaneity

Published in ’72, winner in ’73, this is another title that it seems difficult to separate from the public scientific discourse of its time.  The early 70’s marked the passage of some of the most monumental environmental protection regulations in American history.  I saw The Gods Themselves very clearly drawing on the experience of environmental and consumer protection messages being hashed out on the national political stage.  But before I’ve got you thinking this is a book about vast conspiracies and coordinated cover-ups, rest assured Asimov elevates his discussion to broader epistemological concerns and again draws on the sentiment of the times as he pulls in questions that, given the 1962 publishing of Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, spoke to the very heart of the philosophy of science in his day.

Where Asimov approaches the masterful with The Gods Themselves, is not just the incorporation of some pretty elusive and theoretical subject matter, but in that he makes it genuinely fun and doesn’t ever come off overly-intellectual or supercilious (not that Kuhn’s thoughts on non-linear paradigm shifts and the role of subjectivity/objectivity in science aren’t fun).  Without much thought, this could be a pretty great weekend read, but a little more attention also turns up some steamy philosophizing too.  Sure, Asimov touches on elements of Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions, but I also found The Gods Themselves was especially poignant in an age of vehement and politically motivated skepticism.

“Oh, it was turning sour anyway.  It’s lasted long enough.  What bothers me more—much more—is that he violently refuses to accept your interpretation of the Pionizer experiments you ran after the surface observations.”

“I told you the way it would be.”

“He said he had seen your results.”

“He glanced at them and grunted.”

“It’s rather disillusioning.  Does everyone just believe what he wants to?”

“As long as possible.  Sometimes longer.”

Part 3 – Chapter 12

The Gods Themselves is also strikingly apropos of issues of privatization and commercialization science which have been in the news rather frequently of late.  England recently decided to give the entire country access to its top science journal and the arguments for the free and open sharing of all information and media – including science – seem to be gaining in popular appeal.

“An odd thought.  But perhaps it was that the fewer who knew of your Intuitionism, the fewer would suspect your contribution to what would otherwise be put to his sole credit.”

Part 3 – Chapter 12

Being broken up into three parts, I was most attracted to this theme.  The intrigue of trying to uncover scientific mystery whilst averting possibly serious calamity was really fun, and the juxtaposition of the separate struggles in the normal and para-universes with the same problem was great (even if Book II was something of an unneeded break).

Asimov was also writing this just 10 years shy of the centennial of Henrik Ibsen’s, Enemy of the People, which was published 90 years earlier in 1882.  In fact, I read this as a great update (intentional or otherwise) to the classic which so accurately portends the future struggles to be faced by environmental and consumer advocates of the 60’s and 70’s, and really enjoyed pulling out those connections.  There are characters who just don’t want to believe the worst will happen.  Those who refuse to believe the worst won’t happen, and those who set out to prove the worst could happen. Then of course there are the spineless media and politicians.  In Asimov’s tale though, the scope has expanded by orders of magnitude.  Instead of the threat of pollution that could ruin a growing town, Asimov has threatened the destruction of the world, the entire spiral arm of our galaxy to be exact.  That the consequences couldn’t possibly affect us in our lifetime is big here and Asimov very clearly has little respect for those willing to externalize such consequences.

Recommendation

Now having read every Hugo Award winner through 1979, this book felt very much a part of the genre.  It is certainly not to say that The God’s Themselves was derivative or overly referential, but it recalled this or that from a number of the earlier winners and as I mentioned above, of non-SF titles too, and the effect was something akin to a pleasant reminiscence.  I liked a lot about this book but pulled-up short of seriously falling in love with anything.  I haven’t read much of Asimov, but this makes me want to read more.

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 22/25

The role of the die...

This week’s book is Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh.  This is a pretty long book, so I’m gonna be devoting a lot of time to reading this week.

Next week’s book is Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh.  This book is extra-long, so I’m probably gonna die of starvation or my eyes will fall out or something.

Stand On Zanzibar

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Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

1969 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Our Library

507 Pages

(HIPCRIME      You committed one when you opened this book.  Keep it up.  It’s our only hope.

(The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)

Page 8

No introduction.  No preamble.  You open your eyes and the world is teetering on the brink of population induced collapse.  The response: mass hysteria, mass drug use, paranoia, eugenics.  Cats and dogs are living together.  Non-breeding sexuality has women living as second-class citizens.  Abstracted pop culture and everything! creates superhuman, super-crazy “muckers”.  There are too many people in the world and it seems we are powerless to do anything about it.  I didn’t get the sense that things had eroded into Malthusian collapse yet, but stang were they right on the edge.

Barcode FAIL.

A damn frightening thing

A goodly portion of this book seems to be quite distinctly not SF.  As it is hailed, it feels much more like a sociological thriller, giving special attention to scientific or astro-achievements, but to the supreme difficulty of making your way in not only the modern world, but an overpopulated one.  So much of the book is devoted to worldbuilding and very little of that has anything to do with science.  Instead they were (usually) short personal experiences or excerpts from some other text or pop culture phenomena.  Sure there are some SF elements that are quite important, especially later in the book, but they are nothing compared to those worldbuilding elements.

But at the same time, it does have that SF outlook that I have come to recognize in the Hugo winners of the 50’s and 60’s.  Namely, that within the realm of a wildly expanding field of science, anything is possible and given human nature, given our history, that can be exhilarating or it can be a damn frightening thing.

I wouldn’t dispute that this is a work of science fiction.  Population dynamics, ecology, economics, psychology, etc., it’s all there.  Especially in the case of the most modern of the sciences, SOZ certainly relies on a scientific understanding of the world, but how Brunner experiences that and makes sense of our place in the world seemed to me something else entirely.  I’m also reticent to say it is the great sociological text that the back cover copy called it.  To me it was something more of a mix of sociology, phenomenology and politics.  Phenomenosociolitics.  Coined it.

In all seriousness, SOZ is more akin to novelized science if that were a thing.  Science has been warning of collapse and population bombs for many years and Brunner was no doubt aware and it shows.  I don’t get the sense that Brunner was dreaming of what could happen.  He was just painting the picture everyone had been talking about.

Losing our place in the world

Reading SOZ is disorienting to say the least.   The extensive worldbuilding not only does the job of places you within a context, but it also forces you to experience that context of a world gone nearly mad.  The result is to pass along, so completely that feeling of alienation that many of the characters struggle with.  The result is unique and I’m glad to have read it, but it also makes it quite difficult to trudge through sometimes.  It felt like trying to watch a movie with a crowd of people shouting at you – which pretty much reflects how the characters were living.

The cover calls SOZ a “novel of the future”, but it is most unsettling because it is not actually a novel of the future.  It exaggerates current (1960’s) trends and sometimes doesn’t even exaggerate them but placed in the context of an overpopulated earth (a very real possibility) they seem stupefying and horrific.  How many people have not complained about the social bankruptcy of the times?  Cynicism is always vogue.  Every generation seems to see the next generation as hopelessly lost to the juggernaut that is “progress”.  This is why, even though there are elements that are quite dated, the fear, the cynicism, the apathy comes through loud and clear and still cuts to the bone.

Recommendation

I’m pretty ambivalent about this book as a literary work.  I thought the story suffered for the commitment to worldbuilding in that sometimes entire chapters were devoted to just experience the scatterbrained, over-stimulated, over-populated view of the world.  And then some of those chapters might only be a paragraph long and the characters or sub-plots are so minor that it’s hard to really care about what’s happening.  I do give Brunner credit for the experience he created though.  I felt his world sufficiently built.  I didn’t feel like I had read about an overpopulated earth and could imagine what Brunner imagined that place to be.  I felt I had literally experienced the horror for myself.  I was right there with him so much that I feel like I have this lingering sense of dread and pessimism that I can’t fully blame on just being over-tired.  Check out some of my posts from this week to get a sense of how this book can read at times and just be aware of what you are about to step in before it’s already all over your shoe.

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 3/5

Scientific Wonders 3/5

Characters 2/5

Overall 16/25

The die being cast…

This week’s book is Gateway by Frederik Pohl.  Pohl’s name has been coming up ever since I started reading SF a few years back.  For whatever reason, I’ve never gotten around to him though, so I am really excited to cross another name off my list.

Next week’s book is Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre.  My first female author!

This Immortal

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…And Call Me Conrad (This Immortal) by Roger Zelazny

1966 Hugo Award Winner

Published by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

174 Pages

After The Three Days, Earth was changed into a radioactive wasteland and a relatively small core of remaining people, the least mutated anyway, have become island dwellers to avoid the hotspots scattered across the rest of the landscape.  Most humans though, have left Earth which has essentially become a museum for visiting Vegans.

Conrad Nomikos a very mysterious person.  He’s apparently extremely old and we know he possesses superhuman strength.  He is also the Arts Commissioner of the museum that is Earth and now he’s been given the job of escorting one of those Vegans on a tour of some of the most important remaining cities and landmarks.  He resents his task though and resents the danger he must face for an alien who has motives he distrusts. 

The first rule about being immortal is…

You don’t talk about being immortal.  Conrad’s history quickly becomes suspect and stays that way.  He may have had more than one name.  He may have lived more than one century.  He’ll never tell.  Conrad keeps everyone in the dark about everything that he can, and the mystery is agonizing – in a good way.

The party continues their tour and at every stop some new tension is added.  Occasionally some act of violence occurs that as it is unfolding serves to lower your guard with the expectation that there might be some release of the tension that just keeps building and building.  But instead, these incredibly raw, epic fights (or natural disaster or whatever is happening) only set a new floor for the drama and probably also introduce some new problem as well.  Of course there are some moments of slight tension release but for the most part the energy just builds and builds and builds forever.

But if you are going to talk…

Do it well.  Conrad is such a fun character.  I came to think of him as a kind of bruiser version of The Dude.  His attitude is so distrustful and so guarded yet he seems to go ahead with the tour despite his misgivings.  When he is confronted about his own motives, his ability to deflect is comical.  And this blitheness is really what gives us a break from the tension that just never ends.  At a time when the future of the planet is in jeopardy it should be difficult to make jokes without sounding insincere or like a poor writer made a poor joke.  Zelazny pulls this off SO WELL.  I really looked forward to every conversation Conrad engaged in, just waiting to hear what kind of goofiness he could come up with in spite of the circumstances.

If you didn’t see this before, check this week’s Epic Quote.

And if you really aren’t going to talk…

Then fight.  OMG the fight scenes are so raw and graphic in a way that was neither overly detailed nor overly stylized.  If weapons were used, they were usually primitive and fists were absolutely devastating.   The fighters and the circumstances were mythological (did I mention epic) and so freaking fun to read.  Hold on, I’m gonna go back and read one again now…

Then: “Look at me!  I am going to put the blade in very slowly.  I am going to dine on you one day.  What do you think of that?”

I laughed.  It was suddenly worth laughing at.

His face twisted, then it straightened into a momentary look of puzzlement.

“Has the fear driven you mad, Commissioner?”

“Feathers or lead?” I asked him.

He knew what it meant.  He started to say something, and then he heard a pebble click about twelve feet away.  His head snapped in that direction.

He spent the last second of his life screaming, as the force of Bortan’s leap pulped him against the ground, before his head was snatched from his shoulders.

My hellhound had arrived.

Pg 150

This one came at the end of a string of particularly brutal fights and I loved the finality of the last sentence.

Recommendation

I have few complaints BUT…nearly the first 70 and last 10 pages were a little tough to care about and for a long time, I was worried that this would be a total flop.  Zelazny spends so much time in the beginning giving half details that upon a re-read will probably be very meaningful, but just served to confuse and bore me this first time through.  Still, once the story picks up, I was drawn in quick and completely.   I would encourage anyone with a little patience to pick this one up.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 2/5 (this should have been a higher score but I don’t know how to include satyrs here)

Characters 4/5

Overall 21/25 (The first 20+ score!)

The Die Being Cast...

This week’s book is Dune by Frank Herbert.  My second re-read and the second book of the Deathmatch. 

Next week’s book is Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.  I’m not sure how many times I've read this one but in the context of the HEP I’m not sure if I’ll like it as much this time.  I’m sure it will still get a high HEP score though.