Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)

by James Gunn

  In addition, he had more writing projects than he could handle, and he was involved in a lengthy and disturbing divorce negotiation with his wife. He also found writing science fiction more difficult than anything else.

  In the introduction to Nebula Award Stories Eight, which he edited for the Science Fiction Writers of America the year after the publication of The Gods Themselves, he compared science fiction to other kinds of writing and wrote, "A good science-fiction writer can, very probably, write anything else he wishes (and for more money), if he decides to take the trouble to do so. . . . It is uphill to science fiction; downhill to everything else."

  He went on to offer himself as the world authority on this subject:

  I began by writing science fiction, yes, and for over thirty years I've found that my training in science fiction made it possible for me to write anything. I have written mysteries, both novels and short stories, for instance. I have also written nonfiction books on every branch of science, both popularizations for the general public and textbooks at both the graduate level and the grade-school level. I have written history books, discussions of the Bible, Shakespeare, Byron, and Milton. I have written satires and jokebooks. I have written about 150 books as of now, and I tell you, that of all the different things I write, science fiction is by far the hardest thing to do.

  The introduction was entitled "So Why Aren't We Rich?" It was a bit ironic, since Asimov was one of the few science-fiction writers who was rich probably he was a millionaire by that time. In his autobiography he totaled his income at the end of each year. It revealed increasing financial success that brought him from the uncertainty of the early days when he waited anxiously for a check from Campbell to a growing bank account and growing confidence that he could leave his salaried position at Boston University with scarcely a thought about financial insecurity. He stopped revealing his annual income with the year 1962: 1961 had amounted to $69,000; 1962 to $72,000. In 1970, his divorce trial revealed his annual income as $205,000.

  By almost any measure (and certainly his own, since he did not have expensive habits), he was financially secure, even though some of his savings were invested in (then shaky) New York City bonds and a generous settlement with his wife was ahead. His income came mostly from books other than his science fiction. None of his books was a best-seller though his science fiction continued to remain in print and to sell steadily but the sheer volume of the nonfiction had brought him to his present financial status. Only about 30 of those first 150 books he wrote or edited were science fiction. Books such as The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, his first major science-popularization success, brought him a single royalty check of $27,600.

  So it was that The Gods Themselves came to represent a return and a confirmation and a risk that Asimov found himself willing to take. It was an act of daring that deserved the rewards it earned. The novel sold well, was critically well received, and won both Nebula and Hugo Awards. Asimov had received the approval of his fellow fans and his fellow writers.

  The novel also has particular merits as a summing-up point. Asimov had told Silverberg that he would show "what a real science-fiction writer can do. . . ." He meant that he would write a science-fiction story in which the science was at least as important as the characters, a story which could not happen without the scientific content. It would conform to the definition he had used in 1951 in an article for The Writer and had repeated in his frequently reprinted essay, "Social Science Fiction," in Reginald Bretnor's 1953 collection, Modern Science Fiction: "Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings." In the Modern Science Fiction essay, he inserted the word "Social" before "science fiction.''

  In spite of the definition, scientific advance was not always at the heart of Asimov's science fiction. Occasionally, a hard scientific datum or development would inspire a short story. But Asimov's novels were more inspired by history than science; they were more speculative than extrapolative.

  The Gods Themselves was to be different. The idea had sprung from a scientific anomaly the impossibility of plutonium-186 and it was to develop into a story whose science was as hard as any conceived by Harry Stubbs, whose carefully extrapolated alien environments had begun to be published in Astounding in June 1942 (only three years after Asimov's first publication), under the pseudonym Hal Clement. The impossibility of plutonium-186 was basic to the story. For readers to understand this, Asimov had to educate them in the complexities of nuclear physics.

  One important fact was the structure of the atomic nucleus, which is composed of neutrons and protons, identical in weight but differing in charge. Both are massive as atomic particles go many times more massive than electrons, for instance, which orbit in "shells" around the nucleus, give the element its chemical properties, and balance, with their negative charge, the positive charge of the nucleus. Ordinarily, like charges repel each other. The protons clustered together in the nucleus ought to push each other away, but they are held together by what is known as the strong nuclear interaction, the strongest known force in the universe. This interaction seems to be exerted by the neutrons because a number of protons in the nucleus need a larger number of neutrons to hold them together.

  Elements are placed in the periodic table of elements according to their charge, that is, the number of electrons they possess as well as the corresponding number of protons in the nucleus. Their atomic weights, however, are the total of protons and neutrons in the nucleus; sometimes this is not a simple number when an element has isotopes (different forms of the same element with one neutron more or less in the nucleus), whose natural atomic weights average out as a fraction.

  Plutonium-186, then, would have a charge of 94, which makes it plutonium, and its atomic weight would be 186. The number of protons in the nucleus would be 94, to balance the negative charge of the electrons. If one subtracts 94 from 186, one arrives at the number of neutrons in the nucleus: 92 not enough neutrons to keep the protons from repelling each other. Thus plutonium-186 is impossible. The plutonium nucleus that we can analyze in our world has an atomic weight of 242, which means that the 94 protons have 148 neutrons to hold them together.

  Asimov was faced with the logical problem of rationalizing the existence of plutonium-186. It could exist, he realized, only in an alternate universe in which the strong nuclear interaction was even stronger than in our universe perhaps one hundred times stronger in order to keep the protons together. Asimov could have written a story about such an alternate universe a place in which plutonium-186 could exist and eventually he did. But that alone would not have met the challenge. A universe such as that, with no connection to our world, would have been remote from the concerns of the reader. Asimov wanted to bring the plutonium-186 into our universe, and he did by exchanging it for an isotope of tungsten with an atomic weight of 186. Tungsten-186, which has a charge of 74, has 74 protons in the nucleus but 112 neutrons to hold them together. How could it become plutonium-186? By changing twenty neutrons in its nucleus into twenty protons.

  The scientific background of the story must have taken shape in Asimov's mind in much this way: in an alternate universe that has a much stronger nuclear interaction, plutonium-186 could exist but tungsten-186 could not. It would be unstable because it has too many neutrons (or too few protons). In our universe, tungsten-186 is stable, but plutonium-186 is unstable. If quantities of the two elements were exchanged between the two universes, power would be released in each of them: in our universe plutonium-186 would emit positrons, as protons within the nucleus were converted into neutrons, and in the alternate universe tungsten-186 would emit electrons, as neutrons were changed into protons. In each universe positrons would annihilate electrons and produce energy. In the process, our universe would lose twenty electrons and the alternate universe would gain twenty. The exchange could mean a clean, inexhaustible power source for both universes.

  One question Asimov did not raise (or answer),
possibly because it might sabotage the scientific basis for his novel, was the amount of energy required to transfer the materials between the universes. If the laws of nature (and human nature as well) hold true as we have experienced them, it seems likely that the transfer would use up more energy than it would produce. For this reason, perhaps, Asimov has the transfer effected, mysteriously, by aliens in the alternate universe; he thus avoids raising the question of the energy cost of transfer. The human characters can never know the alien situation, and the aliens have alien concerns.

  There is a cost involved, however entropy may not be violated after all and that cost becomes the dynamic force behind the narrative. Asimov commented once that when he wrote fiction he was delighted to find that an element he inserted into a story simply because it occurred to him, later came exactly to hand when he needed it. The complication of The Gods Themselves must have delighted him.

  All of this interesting, even fascinating, speculation, however, was esoteric and difficult fictional material. Asimov worked it into fiction by focusing on the nature of discovery. The process by which plutonium-186 was introduced into our universe became the substance of the first half of Part I of the novel.

  The Gods Themselves, as Asimov promised Ashmead, is divided into three roughly equal sections. The title of the novel is taken from a line in Friedrich von Schiller's play Jungfrau von Orleans (Joan of Arc), "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain,"1 and each of the three parts has a phrase of the quotation as an epigraph. The first part, "Against Stupidity. . . ," describes how Frederick Hallam discovers plutonium-186. An old reagent bottle labeled "Tungsten Metal" that had been on the desk he had inherited when he came to work at the university one day contains a clear iron-gray metal instead of dusty gray pellets. Hallam takes the metal to be analyzed and discovers that it is the impossible plutonium-186. In subsequent days he discovers that the substance, originally non-radioactive, gradually becomes more radioactive; it emits positrons. For safety, the plutonium-186 is powdered, scattered, and mixed with ordinary tungsten and then, when that grows radioactive, with graphite.

  Eventually, at a seminar organized to discuss the problem, the possibility is raised that the plutonium-186 may have come from a parallel Universe (which comes to be called the para-Universe) and then that it may have been sent deliberately into our Universe by an intelligent agent. After some experimentation, Earth sets up a power system to make use of the new energy. Apparently, the aliens in the para-Universe do the same thing with the tungsten. The process on Earth comes to be called an Electron Pump, since in effect it pumps electrons from our Universe into the para-Universe; more formally it is called the Inter-Universe Electron Pump. It becomes a major project, associated with a university, and eventually the source of plentiful, non-polluting energy at almost no cost.

  1. The German quotation has been translated by Bartlett's Familiar Quotations as "Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain," and by The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as "With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain." Asimov must have obtained his translation from another source.

  This much of the story could be the beginning of a utopian novel that describes how humanity uses the new energy to improve its condition, or a dystopia that shows how humanity misuses the energy to turn a blessing into a curse. Neither would make a particularly different nor particularly promising novel. Asimov turned it into something unique, something with the special substance of hard-core science fiction, by dealing with the scientific consequences of the Electron Pump and the human difficulties of the people in charge to perceive these consequences and to act upon them.

  Asimov tells the "Against Stupidity" part from the third-person viewpoint of an antagonist, Peter Lamont, who sets out to write a history of the development of the Pump. Lamont's first approach to Hallam, however, infuriates Hallam and embitters Lamont. Hallam is delighted to cooperate until Lamont innocently suggests that the para-men are more intelligent than humans, since they initiated the exchange and even sent directions on iron foil for building the Pump. Hallam calls such notions "mysticism" and shouts Lamont from the room.

  Lamont, determined to pick holes in the project, recruits a new University scholar, Myron Bronowski, a translator of ancient Etruscan writing, to aid him in communicating with the para-men. And Lamont tries to find some unforeseen problem with Pumping. "Everything in history had had a catch," he thinks. "What was the catch to the Electron Pump?"

  One possible problem with the Pump lies in what happens during the process of Pumping. The effect of the transmission of electrons had been considered and discarded: the electron supply would last for a trillion trillion trillion years, and the entire Universe wouldn't last a tiny fraction of that. But Lamont perceives that the physical laws of the two Universes are being exchanged as well, and that could mean trouble. Because the significant difference between the two Universes is the strength of the nuclear interaction, nuclear fission is more likely in our Universe, nuclear fusion in the para-Universe. As the nuclear interaction grows stronger in our Universe, the sun may turn nova. And as the reaction weakens in the para-Universe, their small suns will have greater difficulty sustaining the fusion reaction and will cool down.

  Bronowski gets a message from the para-Universe. It says: "F-E-E-R." Lamont tries to persuade the influential Senator Burt, head of the Committee on Technology and the Environment, to intervene, but Burt feels that he cannot succeed against Hallam. Lamont also fails with Professor Joshua Chen, who prefers the possibility of immortality implied by the cheap energy of the Pump. Then Bronowski gets another message:

  PUMP NOT STOP NOT STOP WE NOT STOP PUMP WE NOT HEAR DANGER NOT HEAR NOT HEAR YOU STOP PLEASE STOP YOU STOP SO WE STOP PLEASE YOU STOP DANGER DANGER DANGER STOP STOP YOU STOP PUMP.

  Bronowski, however, sees the futility of trying to convince the world of the danger. He quotes Schiller and leaves Lamont alone, frustrated, and without hope.

  Asimov uses a couple of narrative devices to involve the reader quickly in Part I. Rather than beginning with the discovery of plutonium-186 and working forward to the period thirty years later when Lamont's involvement begins, Asimov, true to Campbell's ancient advice, begins not even with Lamont's entry upon the scene but as Lamont's and Bronowski's efforts to communicate with the para-men are about to succeed. Actually, Bronowski has received the first message and is waiting to tell Lamont.

  Asimov starts the novel, in fact, with a segment numbered "6." A note facing the contents page tells the reader that the book begins with section 6. "This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. . . ." Then the book picks up section 1, as Lamont learns how the discovery of plutonium-186 occurred. Subsequently, fragments of section 6 alternate with sections in numerical order up to the end of section 5, in which Lamont presents his theory to Hallam in a way he knows Hallam will not be willing to consider. Section 6 then concludes with the "F-E-E-R" message, and Part I continues to its conclusion in straightforward chronological (and numerical) sequence. Asimov had carried the method of The End of Eternity a step farther to a sharing of his flashback methods with the reader.

  These devices would not be sufficient to sustain the narrative without the details Asimov supplied on the nature of scientific discovery and the inner workings of the academic and scientific establishments. At last Asimov had turned to writing science fiction out of his own experience, which he had not done in earlier stories. His description of the discovery of plutonium-186 drew not only upon his extensive research into and writing about science, but surely, for characters as well as events, upon his experiences within the academic world.

  Hallam, for instance, pushes his investigation into the metal that has changed within the reagent bottle on his desk because he had said, when he discovered it, "That's not the tungsten," and his colleague across the hall, a more highly regarded young scientist named Benjamin Allan Denison, had challenged him with, "How would you know?" If Hallam had not been pushed, the pluton
ium might simply have become more radioactive until it exploded with catastrophic results. Later in Lamont's investigation, he discovers that official accounts credit Hallam with speculations about the origin of the plutonium although others had actually made the remarks. Hallam, however, headed the team to investigate the plutonium, and Hallam received the acclaim and the power.

  Later Asimov described a similar sequence of events. Lamont is set in opposition to Hallam by Hallam's reaction to his innocent suggestion about the superiority of the para-men, and again when Lamont reaches his inspiration about the Pump after a colleague remarked that Hallam was untouchable "as long as the Electron Pump is the key to human paradise." Still later Asimov describes the process of discovery as Lamont follows the elusive train of thought that begins with "what was the catch to the Electron Pump?" and ends with the gradual equalization of natural law: "Within a month he had that feeling that every scientist recognizes the endless click-click as unexpected pieces fall into place, as annoying anomalies become anomalous no more It was the feel of Truth." Asimov seems to be saying that discoveries begin with accidents, but that those accidents happen to people who are prepared by education and temperament and ability to recognize them when they occur and to follow them to their ultimate meanings.