THE GODS THEMSELVES

Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972. First edition. Some very light foxing to top page edges, a fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket with mild shelf wear to spine ends. (31941). Octavo, cloth. "In the twenty-second century, Earth and men of a para-universe establish an ideal energy exchange. Through Earthmen's electron pump and the para-men's position pump, the energy needs of both worlds are satisfied without energy loss to either. A few probing skeptics, men and para-men, learn that in time the exchange will explode our Sun, but both scientific establishments ignore their alarm. The 'fathers' of the energy pumps, puffed with pride and selfishness, will not allow their reputation, doctrine, and achievement to be jeopardized ... The blind egotism and leaden conscience of his [Asimov's] scientific establishments offer no promise that a world ruled by scientists rather than politicians would be more free of it." - Berger, Science Fiction and the New Dark Age, p. 130. THE GODS THEMSELVES ... which was only the second genuine singleton of his career and which won both Hugo and Nebula awards, proved to be his finest single creation, a complex tale involving potentially catastrophic energy transfers between alternate universes and -- rarely for him -- intriguing alien beings (they are considerably more interesting than the humans in the cast)." - John Clute / Malcolm J. Edwards, SFE (online). Written with a verve and economy that are missing from Asimov's later novels." - Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-48. Winner of the 1972 Nebula award and 1973 Hugo award for best novel. Survey of Science Fiction Literature II, pp. 909-14.