1. “Against Stupidity…”
Anyone who’s paying attention to modern science fiction should be worried. Wokeness is infiltrating the fan community left, right, and centre (but mostly left). To make matters worse, it goes back farther than anyone’s willing to admit! We need to take a step back, reconsider the genre’s past and future, and then get back to classic science fiction tropes, like alien threesomes.
The Gods Themselves was published in 1972 by Isaac Asimov, who, along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was credited with kick-starting the golden age of science fiction (SF). All three authors were prolific, but Asimov was the most so: he wrote almost 500 books between about 1950 and 1990. From his breakout short story “Nightfall,” published in 1944, through his last novel, Forward the Foundation, published in 1993, his writing career lasted about fifty years.
Fifty years is a long time; doubly so when those fifty years comprise the second half of the twentieth century. Do early-career Asimov and late-career Asimov even count as the same person at that point? After all, they lived in two very different worlds: one had the Internet, and one had WWII. Might Asimov’s style have shifted over time, until one had to classify his works differently depending on their time of writing? In fact, what are the odds that his style didn’t shift? I wouldn’t take that bet.
2. “The Gods Themselves…”
The Gods Themselves opens with a petty academic dispute. A chemist discovers that the jar of tungsten on his desk has undergone a spontaneous transformation, becoming plutonium-186. Not only do elements not randomly transform like that, plutonium-186 isn’t even physically possible— it has way too few neutrons. Investigating this finding, the chemist soon learns that this plutonium isotope originated in a parallel universe, one where the strong nuclear force is far stronger, allowing such a thing as plutonium-186 to exist. The stable, non-radioactive tungsten on his desk was replaced with a parallel-universe plutonium isotope whose radioactivity would increase over time as its lack of neutrons, better suited to the other universe’s laws of physics, adapted to its new surroundings and lost stability as a result.
The chemist enthusiastically accepts credit for these findings, and humanity channels its efforts into constructing the Electron Pump, a way of taking advantage of this strange disparity between the physical structures of this universe and the parallel universe to produce unlimited free energy for everybody (in both universes). However, other scientists soon begin to doubt this project. The Pump, they project, will cause the intruding laws of physics to ripple outwards, eventually reaching our Sun, which, no longer being able to fuse hydrogen into helium due to the strength of the strong force, could die an explosive death.
What to do? Well, tungsten and plutonium aren’t the only things that can be transferred between universes. The scientists write out an explanation of this phenomenon and place a big, heavy jar of tungsten on top to draw the attention of the “para-men” in the alternate universe. Sure enough, the tungsten and the note disappear, to be replaced with more plutonium and a paper bearing a single word: FEER.
(That is, ‘fear,’ but universe-hopping aliens haven’t quite grasped English spelling.)
The message seems, well, fearful, but it’s also sort of ambiguous. The scientists puzzle over it for a while before shooting off another message asking for clarification. After a while, an answer comes back. Two words: PUMP BAD.
That’s probably enough support for their concerns, right? The scientists report these communications to the international committee in charge of the pump, who regretfully respond that they can’t stop work on the Pump. This is a huge source of free, clean energy— how can they just give it up for the sake of a tiny concern like the very unlikely possibility of the Sun going supernova? The Earth would blow its collective top at the thought. However, they reason, if the para-men were to stop initiating tungsten transfers, they might not even need to make such an unpopular decision. That would serve as a convenient excuse to the public.
Bolstered by this plan, the scientists suggest it to the para-men. No response comes, and they start to worry, but then they get a reply, far worse than expected. The aliens, much like the humans, can’t stop— they’re getting energy out of this transaction too, and they need it much more than Earth does, because— remember— their stars are working under the strain of too-much-strong-force and they can’t manage enough fusion to sustain the para-man population on their own. The titular quote, “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain,” starts making a lot more sense.
For better or for worse, that’s the last thing about this book that actually makes sense. The middle two-quarters of the novel are occupied by the equivalent of an extraterrestrial soap opera. (Minor spoilers follow, though nothing ruinous.)
The para-men are actually two species, referred to in this section as “Hard Ones” and “Soft Ones,” the latter of which are more numerous than the former, and divided into three sexes: Rational, Emotional, and Parental. The plot follows a complete alien triad, composed of a Rational named Odeen, an Emotional named Dua, and a Parental named Tritt. (Odeen and Tritt are both referred to as ‘he,’ while Dua is ‘she.’)
The parallel universe is dying, it seems. There are few stars, and they must be enormous to cope with the impossibility of fusion under such physical conditions. The populations of Hard Ones and Soft Ones are dwindling as they cling to their failing photosynthesis processes under their dimming sun. They can barely muster enough energy for their alien threesomes!
Did I mention the alien threesomes? When three Soft Ones love each other very much, they do a special kind of hug called a “melt” where they literally intermingle their atoms (this is possible due to the stronger strong force!). I’ll give Asimov credit where credit’s due; there are several on-page melts, and as written they do come off kind of hot, despite the utterly alien biology at play.
Parentals can’t get pregnant without all three partners being at high enough energy levels pre-melt to make it work, a source of tension in the soap-opera aspect of this plot: Dua doesn’t eat enough to impregnate Tritt, partly due to her coquettish tendency to feed at dusk rather than high noon, partly due to a fear of her inevitable death after their third and final child is born. She’s the one sending the messages about the Pump— Odeen, as the Rational, might be foremost in the triad in terms of intellectual ability, but Dua is right behind him, and eventually she develops an understanding of the terrifying power of this new energy source. Concealing her discovery from her triad, she manages to convey it to the humans, though only by means of emotions (hence the, uh, syntactic struggles).
The third act is less relevant. It follows a disgruntled ex-scientist and his Lunar girlfriend as they try to figure out a solution to the whole Pump problem. Not necessarily the most compelling section, especially following the cliffhanger at the end of the second act— though it does wring a conclusion out of the A plot, which I’m told is a good thing for a novel to do. If you like moon colonies a whole lot, though, this will be your favourite part.
3. “Contend in Vain”
This novel is the kind of well-polished, clean storytelling that earned Asimov his fame, though it’s hard not to notice differences between The Gods Themselves and his earlier works, or contemporary SF. For instance, take “Nightfall,” his first big short story. As I read it, I had three main questions in mind:
- Why is everyone smoking so much?
- Where are the women?
- Is that reporter just… taking notes on a pad of paper?
Now, to be fair, I’m young, so I’ve mostly read more modern SF— stuff like The Three Body Problem and Project Hail Mary, both of which boast a character population that’s reliably 10-40% female. And I didn’t grow up in an era or an area where smoking was a common habit. Still, these anachronisms were striking. They’re lighter in The Gods Themselves (adorably, the scientists must send in a request for “computer time”) but still there. Time marches on, and with it social and technological trends.
Do these trends count as woke, or proto-woke? Or are they just politically-neutral signs of a work from a different age? Of the three questions above, one (the gender ratio) seems to fall under the SJW purview, but the other two don’t. But asking whether a novel’s anachronisms are driven by wokeness misses the point, because all aspects of a novel are, to some extent, affected by society. Narratives bear the fingerprints of their milieu, and in the 1940s, mainstream media was full of men, and smokers, and low-tech reporters. All the ephemeral tendencies of a work of fiction are just pins in the corners of a map, anchoring it in the time and place it was written.
“Nightfall” was published in 1944, marking the beginning of Asimov’s career; The Gods Themselves was published in 1972, solidly mid-career, twenty-five years later. Is it even possible to write in a consistent style over a period of twenty-five years? And if not, to what extent do authors end up bowing to current trends rather than following their own artistic compasses? Is that something that can be measured?
On the one hand, everyone changes over time, even authors. The William Shakespeare who wrote Titus Andronicus wasn’t the same as the one who wrote Cymbeline two decades later. The Charles Dickens who wrote The Pickwick Papers had aged and grown in the twenty-five years before penning Great Expectations. That’s the point of dedicating one’s life to something. A long career gives an author time to mature stylistically… or time to wither into cliché and self-parody.
Did Asimov suffer from such withering? Hardly. The Gods Themselves is recognizably better in quality than, say, Foundation, the first installment of his eponymous trilogy, published in 1950. At that time, Asimov was clearly an able storyteller, but his grasp of pacing was skewed from his previous career as a short story writer. Foundation doesn’t suffer too badly from this skew due to the nature of its content, but The Gods Themselves is more evenly paced, with a leisurely but interesting progression. There’s not much more you can ask for in a novel.
But there’s also the cultural changes. Can that really be chalked up to “he just got better at writing?”
There are three forces that could’ve shaped those little temporal inconsistencies. First, brute-force practice— anyone who writes hundreds of novels over decades can reasonably expect to have improved by the end of their career. Second, cultural shift— maybe any story written in the ‘70s is by definition better than any story written in the ‘50s, whether because of a sort of objective artistic advancement akin to scientific progress, or because ‘70s stories have less value dissonance to us compared to ‘50s ones. Third, maybe it was intentional— maybe Asimov himself grew as a person (gracious) or got co-opted by some specific agenda (cynical).
My money’s on all three. Maturation of style due to practice is inevitable. So is cultural shift; a habit that was normalized in the ‘50s might have become less common by the ‘70s, leading to overall fewer smokers in Asimov’s works as time went on. This wasn’t necessarily intentional on his part, merely a result of a lower prevalence of smokers in general, which might have made the thought of a character smoking less likely to pop into Asimov’s head as he wrote. But some of the shift probably was intentional.
Reading Foundation, I kept thinking to myself “this guy would be really enthused to learn about gene editing.” The structure of DNA hadn’t been discovered yet in 1950, sadly, but sure enough, Asimov managed to sneak in a reference to genetic engineering later on in The Gods Themselves. That in itself points to a degree of internal consistency. After twenty-odd years, he kept his taste for scientific advancement.
Asimov’s style and substance might’ve changed drastically over the course of his career, but for all intents and purposes, he was still the same person— still curious about science and social science, still attuned to the nuances of interpersonal power struggles, still a maverick able to write journalists, psycho-historians, and three-sexed aliens with an even-keeled and vivid pen. So of course his personality would manifest differently from 1944 to 1993, and of course it would, underlyingly, stay the same. Sure, he got woker, in some sense. Sure, other authors are in the process of becoming even more woke, stumbling over themselves to appease current social trends even at the cost of some embarrassment. But a writer’s personality shines through no matter the form.
So what’s the best way to avoid the cringe that comes from twisting one’s values to match publishing trends? Well, I’m no expert; I also tick all the boxes for “pretty damn woke,” so I’m a biased source. But the best way for writers to handle encroaching social trends breathing down their necks is to incorporate them, consciously, into their writing. Seriously. Whether it ends up as a satire or a real consideration, wrestling with new or alien values, if it’s done with integrity, can never ruin a story.
The same goes for writers trying to harken back to the values of a previous golden age. It’s incredibly rewarding when an author takes time to weave genuine value dissonance into the characters or setting. Lip service and mockery are easy to pick out, and I for one don’t appreciate crude, cursory skirmishes with strawmen in my fiction. But any story that honestly explores a value system that the author doesn’t endorse can, if done well, win my unflinching respect.
There’s something timeless about weighing age-old ideas with new ones. SF authors have always been asking, “how might aliens be similar to us, and how might they be different?” Asimov had an answer, but so did Star Trek before him, and so did Three Worlds Collide after him. So engage with flashes in the pan or don’t, because they’ll be gone before you know it, and the SF genre will be back to the classic, universal themes it’s always loved.
Like alien threesomes.