The Gods Themselves–A Review

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

The book is, I daresay, as profound as the quote.

Authors come, authors go, but few, I think, can become immortal through their words. And no reader can deny that Asimov is one of those authors.

My father, from whom I have inherited this love for reading, now reads little outside his subject area. One of these rare excursions of his back to the world of fiction was Asimov's ‘The Gods Themselves’. The relatively small book has ever since been on his suggestion list to me, ranking up there with epics such as ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Godfather’.

Last month I read it. And boy, oh boy, did I love it.

Almost everything was perfect with that book. The storyline was awesome. The imagery was so tastefully done <insert italian chef kiss>. The pace of the story was the most unique one I have ever come across. And I noticed no literary devices to make the story sound any more nail biting that it actually is.

Yes. None at all. Just the story, and Asimov, very objectively, narrating it.

Usually, in thrillers, the pace of the story quickens as it nears the climax- the author employs less flowy, more jarring language, shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, more ‘he could feel the blood rushing into his ears. He could hear nothing. Somebody was behind him.’ kind of stuff… nah, none of that in this book. From the beginning to the end, the characters talked with no hurry in their tone, had fun, had tantrums, had their own issues, and handled them like any normal person. And this happened right up to the climax, if you could call it that, because surely there was no sense of climax. The story ended like it began. The only sense of climax was at the end of the second chapter, but that, I think, was only by virtue of the story, and not by any extra effort by the author to spice anything up. 

Which brings me to the sheer creative prowess of the brilliance that was Asimov's mind. This second chapter so effortlessly transports the reader to a whole new universe, where there are three genders (four, if you count the hard ones), and completely different social rules and structure. Not to mention physical laws, chemical laws, biological processes- where everything is so utterly different from the universe we are in. Yet, Asimov not only paints it in our mental scape, but conducts a drama in it- a drama so exhilarating you don't even notice that it is happening on a stage in your headspace designed only with indirect descriptions and character interactions supplied to you by the author?

This is truly insane. It is one thing if we can watch those creatures on a screen, as in a movie- there, the director supplies you with their visualization of things, and you just passively take it in. But in fiction (especially fantasy), the author has to create a suitable imaginary environment in your mind, and stage a story in it, while you, the reader, are free to fill in the details- the shape and size of a flying mountain, for example. 

It is one thing if the environment created is based on the real world- even though it is flying, it is still a mountain, and mountains still exist in the real world- but it is something else if the environment has to be built from scratch, with only a vague framework taken from the real world to work with!!! Asimov uses only the bare minimum, such as rocks, speech, the physical laws of gravity, etc. in the creation of this environment that is the para universe. The rest is all the fabrication of an imagination, that only has to be somewhat possible within the boundaries of physics.

And this is what the human mind, Asimov's mind, has achieved when it is limited only by the laws of physics. Not only does he think this all up, he makes us think of all this. The second chapter, I must say, is a work of art.

Back to our universe.

The characters are all normal humans, with no extreme eccentricities and no superhuman brilliance. The story, as I said before, is moderately paced, just like people are moderately paced- there are no epiphanies, no knee jerk responses, no strokes of brilliance. That's what makes this book so special to me–Asimov narrates this in the most normal, the most nonchalant, the most human way possible.

Overall, this is one of the best books I have ever read. Asimov never fails to deliver. Us mere mortals can only try and imitate–and marvel at–his mastery.