I'm sorry, folks.
I'm sorry I'm delusional about the number of readers I have, and I'm sorry that for that tiny handful (as in, the hand of a tiny person, not a small handful in a regular size hand – think Lego minifig hands) that do read, but I haven't been as productive as I had been in the past.
I think, in fact, going forward, I'm going to try for a more weekly thing, and see how that goes.
What I will say, though, is that in that week, you might get a thick, chunky stew of reviews, instead of just the singular, well thought-out essay. Not really sure if that's a selling point or not. But here we go.
First up, my man Asimov. I will probably say this every time I mention Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkien, and Bradbury, but these guys aren't just masters of the science fiction, they are masters of literature. Asimov, perhaps one of the most prolific writers ever, is most renowned for his Robot and Foundation series, and rightly so. He pretty much set the groundwork for the sweeping historical fiction (in any genre), creatively appropriating Gibbons' Rise and Fall of Rome to extrapolate a future with a similar problem. And the Robot series are the rules to follow if you're going to write accurately about robots – if you don't follow the Three Rules, then your robots simply don't make sense.
Like all great science fiction, the story, while creative and interesting, takes a seat behind the message. Asimov was great at this; his stories were fairly basic—generally hinging on a rather small problem that “If only people would understand!” everything would be resolved. That's not to say there wasn't complexity, but that the complexity was more an exploration of a man's imagination rather than an intricate plot or characters of outstanding depth.
Such is the case with The Gods Themselves, a novel that won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards – the biggies when it comes to science fiction. It is basically the story of individuals who are jilted because their ideas go against the status quo. All of them are concerned with the Electron Pump, a device that exchanges material with another universe to produce unlimited and pollutant-free energy. It seems too good to be true, and they struggle trying to convince others that such is the case.
Told in three parts, the first is of a human scientist who, in researching a history of the Pump discovers that the man revered as the “Father of the Electron Pump,” Frederick Hallam, is almost certainly a fraud. It's not that he didn't discover the phenomenon that led to the pump, but that his discovery was an accident based on the stubbornness of a slighted man. More importantly, the idea is presented that if it wasn't for the beings in the other universe (the “para-Universe”), the pump could never work. This of course gets the researcher, Lamont, blacklisted.
The second part focus on the para-Universe and this is where Asimov shines. Here he develops a group of sentiences called the “Soft-Ones” that are at once individuals and parts of a collective being. Separate, they are Rationals (Lefts), Emotionals (Mids) and Parentals (Rights), and their personalities match these labels: Rationals are thinkers, delighting in learning and curiosity; Emotionals are flighty and silly, enjoying the physical above all else; Parentals are single-minded in their concern and love of their off-spring and the properness of the triad. Dua is an Emotional in a triad with Odeen (Rational) and Tritt (Parental), but she is no ordinary Emotional. She is derisively called a “Left-Em,” because she too has a strong desire to learn as much as possible. This inquisitiveness leads her to figure out that something is wrong with the Pump on their end and she has to figure out a way to stop it.
The last part is set on the Moon, and tells parallel stories of a Moon that is ready to be separate from the Earth and of an immigrant trying to redeem his name by proving that the Pump is harmful.
What makes this book so amazing isn't the story, though. It is the message underlying the story. Take this passage for example:
“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.”
Sound familiar? Maybe because the mythical “environmental crisis of the twentieth century” Asimov writes about is exactly what is happening right now? Remember, though, that this book was written in 1972. Moreover, it isn't just the prescience of an environmental crisis that makes this book so great: it is the fact that he is aware of how closely linked the environment and energy are. But, even still, that isn't enough to make me feel such a connection with this novel.
No, it is because Asimov understands that it is not that we don't recognize the problem, we simply don't like the idea of the solution. This isn't a book about greed: Hallam isn't wealthy, and for the most part, wealth is being created for all with the Electron Pump. What it is about is comfort. And, with that comfort, is the conservatism that comes so naturally to those who see no need to rock the boat. For the world, they are content when the scientists say that: Yes, this will destroy the solar system, but not for trillions of years – well beyond the life expectancy of the entire universe. By accepting this as given, the society is saying it is lunacy to look for flaws.
Well, clearly we are far from a solution that, on the surface, is perfect. But what we do know is that what we have works. I know that if I get in a car and fill it up with gas, that I can deliver myself to where I need to go. I also know that, sure, I'm hurting the environment, but I'm hurting it in the future. For most people, ten years might as well be a trillion years. Logically, it makes sense: changes that climatologists are talking about are supposed to take hundreds, thousands, even millions of years. That's what we've always been told.
What The Gods Themselves points out is that it doesn't matter. What's important is not dismissing the warnings of others because it might take a little (or a lot) of sacrifice. It's ironic, then, how the situation is almost opposite in our world as it is in the book: they have unlimited energy and what seems to be a ton of time to work with; we have an energy crisis and almost no time at all.
And yet, what are we doing? We're trying to create non-polluting internal-combustion engines. We're trying to solve the problem with non-carcinogenic cigarettes. Last week it was sixty-one degrees Fahrenheit (289 Kelvin, for those keeping track). In January. In New York City.
That's not science fiction, folks.
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