Isaac Asimov wrote The Gods Themselves partly as a response to critics who said he couldn’t write about aliens or about sex. The resulting 1972 novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and contains, in its extraordinary middle section, some of the most inventive science fiction Asimov or anyone else ever produced. It’s a deeply uneven book, brilliant in parts and conventional in others, but its peaks are so high that they compensate for the valleys.
The novel is structured in three parts. The first, set on Earth, follows physicist Peter Lamont as he tries to convince the scientific establishment that a miraculous new energy source, the Electron Pump, which exchanges matter with a parallel universe, will eventually destroy both universes. The second takes place entirely in the parallel universe, following three alien beings whose species has a radically different biology and social structure. The third is set on the Moon and resolves the crisis through the efforts of a lunar-born scientist. Community discussion overwhelmingly focuses on the middle section, which is where Asimov’s ambition reaches its fullest expression.
The Para-Universe and Its Alien Miracles
The second section of The Gods Themselves is Asimov’s masterpiece. He creates a species of beings in a parallel universe who are completely unlike any aliens in prior science fiction. They exist in three sexes, called Rationals, Emotionals, and Parentals, who must merge together in a “triad” to reproduce and who eventually fuse permanently into a single “Hard One.” Asimov doesn’t just describe this biology. He builds an entire psychology, sociology, and emotional world around it. The Emotional, Dua, becomes a fully realized character whose curiosity and dissatisfaction with her prescribed role drives the narrative with genuine dramatic force.
This section is remarkable because Asimov, known primarily as a writer of ideas and puzzles, achieves something deeply human through radically inhuman characters. Dua’s longing to understand more than her role allows, her growing awareness that her society is hiding something fundamental from her, and her relationships with her triad partners Odeen and Tritt create an emotional arc that many readers find more affecting than anything in Asimov’s human-centered fiction.
The scientific framework underlying the plot, the exchange of matter between universes with different physical laws, is handled with Asimov’s characteristic lucidity. The concept is complex, but the explanation is clear enough that the stakes are always comprehensible. The parallel-universe physics serves both the intellectual and emotional dimensions of the story, as the energy exchange that threatens to destroy both universes is also the mechanism that powers the aliens’ biology.
Earth and Moon in the Shadow of the Para-Universe
The first section, set on Earth, is widely considered the weakest. Peter Lamont’s struggle against scientific bureaucracy and institutional ego is competently handled but reads as a fairly standard tale of a lone scientist fighting the establishment. The human characters are functional, the political dynamics are familiar, and the section primarily exists to set up the physics that the second section will make extraordinary.
The third section, set on a lunar colony, is more engaging than the first but still can’t match the middle. The protagonist, Denison, and his relationship with lunar-born Selene provide some character interest, and the scientific resolution is clever. But after the radical imagination of the para-universe, the return to human characters in a relatively conventional setting feels like a step down.
Asimov’s prose throughout is his standard clear-but-flat style. The ideas are vivid. The sentences that convey them are not. This matters less in the second section, where the aliens’ strangeness generates its own energy, but in the more conventional first and third sections, the lack of stylistic distinction makes already familiar territory feel even more ordinary.
Against the Stupidity of the Universe
The novel’s title comes from a Friedrich Schiller quotation: “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.” Asimov applies this observation to institutional science, where the Electron Pump’s obvious danger is ignored because it’s too profitable and too convenient to question. The novel argues that intelligence alone is insufficient to prevent catastrophe if the intelligent are also comfortable. This is a message about human nature delivered through parallel-universe physics, and it resonates well beyond its science fiction context.
Should You Read The Gods Themselves?
If you’re interested in hard science fiction that takes alien life seriously, if you want to see Asimov at his most ambitious and most creative, the answer is unequivocally yes. The middle section alone justifies the book. Skip it if you need consistent quality across an entire novel, if flat prose is a dealbreaker, or if the promise of extraordinary aliens makes the return to ordinary humans in the surrounding sections feel like a disappointment.
The Verdict on The Gods Themselves
The Gods Themselves is a novel of extraordinary peaks and ordinary valleys. Its middle section, set in a parallel universe among convincingly alien beings, is among the finest things Asimov ever wrote, combining radical imagination with unexpected emotional depth. The surrounding sections are competent but conventional, and the novel’s structural unevenness prevents it from achieving the unified impact of the genre’s best works. But the para-universe sequence is so remarkable, so completely unlike anything else in Asimov’s career or in science fiction more broadly, that the novel earns its awards and its enduring reputation on the strength of those pages alone.