#19 = Volume 6, Part 3 = November 1979
Ina Rae Hark
Unity in the Composite Novel: Triadic Patterning in Asimov's The Gods Themselves
Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves has a singular history.1 The novel is composed of three parts, each bearing as its title one third of the line from Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans which Mike Bronowski quotes at the end of the first section: "Against stupidity/the gods themselves/contend in vain [?]" It began when Robert Silverberg requested that Asimov write a story about an impossible isotope; Asimov responded with the material that now constitutes "Against Stupidity," originally titled "Plutonium 186." But "Plutonium 186" grew so long that it exceeded Silverberg's needs, so Asimov decided to incorporate it into a novel about an energy crisis.
The Electron Pumps, which have provided free, clean energy to Earth through an exchange of electrons with a parallel universe, threaten such an imbalance of electrical charge in our own universe that its total annihilation is imminent. All three of the stories (set on Earth, in the para-universe, and on the Moon, respectively) portray the efforts of individuals who have divined the threat to avert the catastrophe. These efforts are blocked by the self-interest — this rather than stupidity is the real danger in the novel — of those for whom the free ride of the present cancels out concern for potential disaster in the future.
Yet despite their interrelationship in the plot, the three sections do not fit together comfortably to form a unified whole. (Even in magazine publication they were separated; the first and last parts appeared in Galaxy in March and May, 1972, the middle one in If in April 1972). The central story, the best in the book, uses the plot as an excuse to let Asimov prove that he can write a New Wave brand story, dealing with aliens and sex.2 And he effectively creates a universe in which an individual's intellect, emotions, and instinct lead separate lives, mature, and reproduce themselves in triads before, in a grand consummation, they "melt" and "pass on " to form a fully realized adult. The experiences of Odeen, Dua, and Tritt also provide an amusing and touching allegory of all the pains human beings endure in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Yet the strongest features of this socio-biological parable have little to do with the problems of the Pump. One often resents the intrusions of the main plot into the lives of the triad, particularly when Odeen lectures Dua on the laws of physics in the best manner of Asimov explaining science to the layman. Furthermore, after all the build-up given to the character Estwald — the adult formed by the Odeen-Dua-Tritt union — he disappears from the novel, having no apparent part in Ben Denison's eventual solution of the Pump problem.
Joseph Patrouch's thorough analysis of the major faults (as well as the virtues) of the novel places great emphasis on this lack of unity among the parts, particularly the unsuitability of the concluding section: "Nevertheless, in context 'Contend in Vain?' does not work. Surprisingly — I would have said impossibly earlier — the first two sections are so good that they make the typically Asimovian last section look weak." The first two sections fit together, despite the hard science emphasis of the one and the New Wave trappings of the other, as the same events are detailed first from the point of view of Earthmen and then of para-men. On the other hand, with "The Gods Themselves" omitted, sections one and three would form an intelligible narrative — although a much lesser piece of imaginative writing — about the discovery of the Pump problem by Peter Lamont and its solution by Ben Denison. (References to both characters appear in both sections.) But the para-men, left hanging at the end of section two, have no part in that solution.
Admitting that the novel lacks unity in this respect, one should then consider whether, given its structure, unity should be expected, and if so, whether there are other levels upon which that unity might be found. This endeavor leads first to consideration of a somewhat wider question, the prevalence in SF of longer narratives, constructed like The Gods Themselves from a number of smaller ones: the composite novel. Although this form occurs outside of speculative fiction, and although, conversely, SF includes many novels that are not composite, the proportion of composite novels in the genre is rather high. Several reasons, both practical and philosophical, account for this phenomenon. For those writers who achieved prominence during and immediately after the "Golden Age," novel-length publication in the predominantly hardcover market was simply not a possibility. They confined themselves to short stories, or at least highly episodic narratives, for the SF magazines. When book-length publication later became a reality, the first move for many writers was to collect several short stories, perhaps with minor changes, to form a more or less coherent narrative. Asimov's I, Robot and Bradbury's Martian Chronicles are two such collections of stories masquerading as novels manqué. Other novels more tightly unified but with origins in separate short stories comprise a distinguished list of SF: A Canticle for Leibowitz, the Foundation trilogy, City, to name just a few.
Long form publication is now quite accessible to SF writers, but their affinity for the short story form and the fragmented narrative has not disappeared. In some ways the exigencies of early SF publishing only complemented some basic tendencies of the genre. On the one hand, the simplest space operas, as well as many more complex works, follow the narrative pattern of the quest, which divides an overall movement towards a specific goal into a number of discrete, preliminary adventures. Furthermore, because SF writers often create new worlds, races, and future societies, the delineation of much of this new territory through discrete, interconnected stories often takes precedence over the linear and lengthy development of a few characters from beginning to end of their adventures. The composite structure creates a hybrid that well serves this preoccupation of SF with expanding spatial and temporal horizons.
Pre-New-Wave composite novels tend to emphasize temporal expansion. Stories are related to each other through being arranged in a chronological progression. (Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles is careful to tag each episode with a specific future date.) In addition one or two continuing characters may be retained or at least referred to, and a narrative frame added: see, for example Susan Calvin's interview in I, Robot, and the comments of the doggish editor in City. In New Wave novels, however, the fragmentation more often derives from the experimental techniques of modern fiction: multiple points of view, flashback time shifts, the McLuhanesque mode suggested by John Brunner in Stand on Zanzibar.
Here perhaps lies the root of Asimov's problems with unity in The Gods Themselves. The book is schizophrenic, a "Golden Age" story with a New Wave center, and it is the first of Asimov's composites to jump from place to place to place without making corresponding leaps in time. Because he has here adopted a more New Wavish form of fragmentation, his more traditional concluding section does not fit. In the Foundation series the reader regretted losing characters like the Mule or Arkady from the narrative just as they were gripping his interest; but the reader will accept the loss in a work spanning centuries. In The Gods Themselves Asimov drops Estwald as if "Contend in Vain" took place several centuries after the events described in the first two parts: in fact, Ben Denison's efforts coincide with, or follow by only a few months, those of Lamont and Dua. Thus Estwald's disappearance threatens unity in a way it would not in a type of composite novel that did not base its plot upon the collaboration of spatially and structurally separated characters in the resolution of its central problem.
In light of this, Asimov could have tried to minimize the reader's expectation of unity, presenting the book as a novel in only the loosest sense. However, he goes out of his way to call attention to his patterning through the encompassing quotation, the unusual numbering of chapters according to position in time in "Against Stupidity" and according to point of view in "The Gods Themselves." Has Asimov simply botched the novel then? In terms of immediate emotional response he has. The concluding section comes as a terrible disappointment, leaving one wondering what significance for the narrative as a whole the intensely involving middle section was supposed to have. But while unity of action fails here, Asimov is perhaps experimenting below the surface with a structural principle more typical of the New Wave he evokes in his depiction of the parauniverse. After all, the title of the seemingly anomalous central section is that of the book as a whole, so one might expect that Asimov would endow it with more general significance than is at first apparent. Let us examine this further.
The theme of "The Gods Themselves," aside from the dilemma of the Pump, involves the achievement of an optimum balance between individual and communal needs. The conflicts in the triad illustrate the need for this balance. Dua's non-conformist "Left Emishness" threatens the completion of the triad's reproductive duties and its final melting, but her uniqueness will also make Estwald an almost messianic figure. Tritt's Parental obsessiveness keeps the triad on its appointed track, but his efforts to initiate the baby Emotional almost destroy Dua. In the end, however, all three agree to combine, having accepted the truth of Losten's earlier assurance to Odeen that "a triad doesn't preclude individuality."
The key to the individuality in unity that the story advocates is found in the principle of three-in-one that the triad represents. Maxine Moore has demonstrated that this three-in-one structure — modeled, she believes, on the electronic concept of the triode — pervades Asimov's fiction from the Three Laws of Robotics on. She sees it as expressing flexibility in a deterministic universe, and its combination of diverse elements as providing patterns by which man can overcome the "culture-bound morality" of "diode thinking." For example, writing of The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, she notes: "The anode-Olivaw and the cathode-Baley, played against the yes-no grid of humankind, are able to expand beyond such insularity into a life-promoting ethic."3 The Gods Themselves certainly carries on this theme. The names of Asimov's main triad are obvious sound alikes for one-two-three. At different times they suggest id, ego, and superego; body, mind, and soul; and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — without being a strict allegory for any of these. More importantly, the idea of the triad dominates the construction of the other sections of the novel. The method Denison discovers to eliminate the dangers of pumping is a triad writ large: our universe will act as a neutral way-station for electron transfers from the para-universe to the "cosmeg" universe. The three part structure of the novel is similarly triadic. Emotion prevails in the actions of the Earth scientists of the first section; the para-men concern themselves most with parenting while in the "Soft Ones" stage; and reason, via Ben Denison, finally wins out on the Moon in the concluding section. So while the left-center-right configuration is scrambled, the novel as a whole has its Rational-Emotional-Parental division. Furthermore, within each section there are three main characters whose personalities express this division that the para-men literalize within what will ultimately develop into a single individual.
On Earth Peter Lamont, an "intense and very emotional fellow," fills Dua's role. She and he appropriately act in tandem as the discoverers of the Pump dangers, communicating their fears to each other but unable to compel those in authority to act on their findings. Both need the expert help of their Rational counterparts, Odeen and that patient decoder of ancient languages, Mike Bronowski, to give factual solidity to their intuited sense of danger. And both find a stumbling block in the Parental. Like Tritt, Frederick Hallam is dull and stubborn, intent on protecting his own narrow interests at the expense of anyone and anything else. Asimov more overtly links him with Tritt by mentioning his sobriquet, "the Father of the Electron Pump," at every opportunity. (This may provide another reason, besides an attempt to make points with feminists, that Asimov uses the male pronoun to designate Parentals in the para-universe.)
The correspondences between the Odeen-Dua-Tritt triad and the main characters in "Contend in Vain?" are even more obvious.4 Selene, as an "intuitional, " perceives aspects of the Pump problem which escape the Rationals, just as Dua does. In fact, an "intuitional" appears to be simply our own universe's equivalent to a Left-Em. Barron Neville has set himself up as guardian of the welfare of the Lunar populace, and like other Parentals he poses the main obstacle to the neutralization of the impending danger, although his experiments do give Ben Denison help in locating the "cosmeg" universe. However, he does not really represent the best interests of the Lunarites because he is an inverted Parental, interested not in new birth but in a return to the womb. As Denison remarks: "There's something intense about you, Neville. You won't go out on the surface. Other Lunarites do. They don't like it particularly, but they do. The interior of the Moon isn't their womb, as it is in your case. It isn't their prison, as it is yours."5 His first name, Barron, also suggests failed parenthood.
Ben Denison, the expatriate scientist whose scornful remark set Hallam on the trail of the para-universe and subsequently ruined Denison's own Terran career, is the Rational in the Lunar triad. Unlike Odeen and Bronowski, who play secondary roles, Ben is the hero of "Contend in Vain?" and the individual who has recognized the consequences that continued pumping may bring about. By shifting this role from Emotional to Rational in the section in which the dilemma is finally solved, Asimov implies that reason, not emotion, must be the key to dealing with mankind's problems. An exchange between Ben and Barron supports this interpretation:
'No, I'm sure Lamont is sincere. In fact, in my own bumbling way, I had similar notions once.'
'Because you, too, are driven by hate for Hallam.'
'I'm not Lamont. I imagine I don't react the same way he does. In fact, I had some dim hope I would be able to investigate the matter on the Moon, without Hallam's interference and without Lamont's emotionalism.' (p. 220)
In "The Gods Themselves" the final melting which forms Estwald resolves the individual/communal split with an explicitly sexual metaphor. Since humans don't normally mate in threes, Asimov could not duplicate this feat in the last section, but by having Barron's former sexual partner Selene at long last consummate her relationship with Ben at the novel's end he comes as close to it as his fairly conservative views on sex — and the traditional proprieties of the genre — will allow. Since Barron is distinctly opposed to their actual union and to the symbolic melting which will unite Earth, Moon, and the planets — he is last seen sinking defeated into his chair — the triadic compromise appears less satisfactory here than in the central story. Perhaps, since we are only human, this is the best Asimov can grant us. But the ultimate melting of the para-men is not without its sense of loss also, for like Barron's neurosis, aspects of their personalities must be denied for the greater good, the harmonious being of Estwald:
He was Tritt, too, and a keen sharp sense bitter loss filled his/her/his mind. Oh, my babies —
And he cried out, one last cry under the consciousness of Odeen, except that it was the cry of Dua. 'No, we can't stop Estwald. We are Estwald. We —'
The cry that was Dua's and yet not Dua's stopped and there was no longer any Dua; nor would there ever be Dua again. Nor Odeen. Nor Tritt. (p. 167)
Only in "Against Stupidity" is individuality so strong and so stubborn that a common consensus, however grudging, remains impossible. Personal pique motivates almost all the major actions which occur in the story.6 Such spite can lead to marvelous discoveries — a timely reminder from Asimov that the motivations behind advances as well as regressions in human history are rarely pure — but when it goes too far it becomes potentially lethal. Thus of all the sections, only the first ends in total despair. And since the author will use sexual union in the following portions of the novel to symbolize the overcoming of selfish stupidity, it is also the only section in which Emotional, Rational, and Parental are of the same male gender. No generative consummation can take place.
To demonstrate the symbolic connection between the triad of "The Gods Themselves" and the overall construction of The Gods Themselves does not in any way absolve Asirnov of his grave miscalculation in writing the conclusion of the novel. His own literary melting does not totally succeed. The letdown the reader experiences when Estwald fails to reappear cannot be assuaged so easily. One must agree with Joseph Patrouch, who declares: "When the para-man Estwald stepped forward and said, 'I am permanently with you now, and there is much to do . . .,' we were led to believe that he would do something" (p. 268). Nevertheless, it provides some small comfort to realize that, metaphorically at least, Estwald does do something, because, in the terms of the novel's symbolism, Ben, Selene, and Barron are Estwald — a triadic unity of the qualities Asimov sees as the necessary components of human nature.
NOTES
1. I am indebted to Joseph Patrouch, Jr.'s The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 263-264, for information about the writing and publication of The Gods Themselves.
2. See Asimov's letter on the subject in Patrouch, pp. 266-67.
3. "The Use of Technical Metaphors in Asimov's Fiction," in Isaac Asimov, ed. Joseph Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg (NY: Taplinger, 1977), p. 79.
4. Donald Watt in "A Galaxy Full of People: Characterization in Asimov's Major Fiction," in Isaac Asimov, p. 156, notes these correspondences and the repetition of groups of three but writes them off as either coincidence or "subtleties which escape most readers."
5. The Gods Themselves (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1973), p. 285. All references to the novel are to this edition. Asimov has Denison use the womb image negatively again when he describes Lamont's failure to stop the pumping: "Lamont's solution is to force abandonment of the Pump, but you can't just move backward. You can't push the chicken back into the egg, wine back into the grape, the boy back into the womb" (p. 237).
6. Watt discusses this aspect in detail in Isaac Asimov, p. 152.
ABSTRACT
Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves has a singular history. The novel is composed of three parts, each bearing as its title one third of the line from Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans which Mike Bronowski quotes at the end of the first section: "Against stupidity/the gods themselves/contend in vain [?]"
Yet despite their interrelationship in the plot, the three sections do not fit together comfortably to form a unified whole. The first two sections complement each other, despite the hard science emphasis of the one and the New Wave trappings of the other, since the same events are detailed first from the point of view of Earthmen and then of para-men. On the other hand, with "The Gods Themselves" omitted, sections one and three would form an intelligible narrative.
Admitting that the novel lacks unity in this respect, one should then consider whether, given its structure, unity should be expected, and if so, whether there are other levels upon which that unity might be found. This endeavor leads first to consideration of a somewhat wider question, the prevalence in sf of longer narratives, constructed like The Gods Themselves from a number of smaller ones: the composite novel. Although this form occurs outside of speculative fiction, and although, conversely, sf includes many novels that are not composite, the proportion of composite novels in the genre is rather high. Several reasons, both practical and philosophical, account for this phenomenon. For those writers who achieved prominence during and immediately after the "Golden Age," novel-length publication in the predominantly hardcover market was simply not a possibility. They confined themselves to short stories, or at least highly episodic narratives, for the sf magazines. When book-length publication later became a reality, the first move for many writers was to collect several short stories, perhaps with minor changes, to form a more or less coherent narrative.
Long form publication is now quite accessible to sf writers, but their affinity for the short story form and the fragmented narrative has not disappeared. In some ways the exigencies of early sf publishing only complemented some basic tendencies of the genre. The composite structure creates a hybrid that well serves this preoccupation of sf with expanding spatial and temporal horizons.
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