Book Review: The Gods Themselves

As a fan of Science Ficiton, I've tried to make sure I've read the classics; Bradbury, Clarke, and Dick were all heavily featured in my reading habits as a young man, but I have to admit, aside from a few short stories, I had never read any Isaac Asimov before this week.

Before giving my review of the 1972 novel The Gods Themselves, here's what I knew about Asimov before reading the book.

1) Asimov created the three laws of robotics

2) His stories were behind the films Bicentennial Man and I, Robot

3) His Foundation series is a must read for Classic SF fans

My BFF Mike had read the book, but was pretty underwhelmed, although he freely admits to preferring Heinlein and Niven when it comes to classic SF.

For me, the book, separated into three parts looks at a suspiciously-perfect energy source which has recently arrived on a future Earth. We view the new device and it's potential problem from three different sources, one Earth-based, one Moon-based, and one based in another dimension from the point of view of three separate but connected creatures.

I loved how the structure of the story follows the structure of the alien creatures (three parts giving a whole picture) and was happy to see that for a Hard-SF book it looked at a lot of the reasons behind why different scientists acted the way they did.

A fun read, and honestly, a pretty decent introduction to Asimov.