In 1973, The Gods Themselves seemed poised to become a perennial classic and a major piece of the science fiction canon. Written by Isaac Asimov, an already acknowledged master of the genre, it won the two highest awards bestowed upon books of its kind: the Hugo and the Nebula. In recent years, however, other novels of its era have overshadowed it. Hollywood didn’t touch it, while filmed adaptations of 1968’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and 2001: A Space Odyssey found huge popularity. Meanwhile, mainstream critics delving into sci-fi preferred the postmodern flourishes of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Furthermore, Asimov’s fans had, long before the publication of The Gods Themselves, declared the Foundation series of the 1950s the author’s magnum opus, and when he resurrected it in the ’80s, it was as though the decades in between had never occurred. Thus, although it still has admirers, Asimov’s only science fiction novel of the ’70s seems in danger of slipping into the canon’s periphery, where readers may in time forget it. This would be a great shame, for it is an outstanding book.

The novel finds its inspiration and three-part structure in a proclamation by Friedrich Schiller: “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.” The first section — “Against Stupidity” — concerns a thick-skulled, egotistical scientist named Hallam, who finds success when a derisive remark by a smarter coworker, Benjamin Denison, leads him to stumble upon a seemingly endless source of energy that costs almost nothing and causes no pollution. When another scientist, Lamont, discovers that Hallam’s invention, the Electron Pump, will eventually, for reasons only Lamont has figured out, destroy mankind, Hallam uses his celebrity to turn the scientific community against the young man denouncing that which has brought Hallam fame.

Asimov describes the Electron Pump, which trades matter from our universe for matter from another universe, in terms scientific and simultaneously comprehensible, thereby lending the fantastical device a believable reality. And so, as the segment closes and still only Lamont’s friend Bronowski believes in him, “Against Stupidity” proves a strong indictment of a scientific community whose politics can stamp out genuine achievement and of scientists who value their reputations more than science itself. Not even the story’s hero is spared Asimov’s critical eye: Lamont’s eagerness to make his urgent discovery known seems borne not just of a desire to save humanity but also of pettier motives — to ruin his hated rival, Hallam, and to find renown of his own. To him, the greatest tragedy is that “no one on Earth will live to know I was right.”

For the titular section, which comes second, Asimov travels to the universe at the other end of the Electron Pump and, in doing so, produces the best writing in this book. Here he introduces an alien race, which consists of three types of beings: We meet Tritt, a Parental; Odeen, a Rational; and Dua, an Emotional. In addition, there are those known as the Hard Ones, who, due to their enormous intellectual capacity, stand above the rest and who are responsible for the trading of matter between our universe and theirs. Dua, a sensitive outsider, learns that the Hard Ones know that the exchange will obliterate our universe but, because it won’t harm theirs, simply don’t care. Tritt and Odeen also seem indifferent. Because this segment takes place concurrently with the first, we know that Dua’s efforts to stop the exchange will fail; nevertheless, the conclusion of her story does not fail to stun the reader.

Yet even more impressive than the ending’s surprise is Asimov’s ability to imagine a world so different from our own while still generating sympathy for its inhabitants. Particularly acute is his treatment of sex. These aliens reproduce in threesomes, by melting their bodies together; however, despite the differences between our method and theirs, their first awkward, painful attempts at sex resonate powerfully. According to Asimov, he penned this superb segment as a response to critics who claimed that he couldn’t write about aliens or sex, and I’m reminded of Hallam, who responded to the scorn of his colleague, Denison, by making the discovery that would bring him stardom. Perhaps Asimov put some of himself into his villain.

ov revisits Denison, who, like Lamont, saw his career ruined by Hallam. Now he wants to start anew by moving to a colony on the Moon. Although he still considers Hallam a fraud, he regrets the childish, self-righteous impulse that caused him to lash out at the lesser scientist and led to his professional ruin. He agrees with Lamont’s assessment of the Electron Pump, but, wiser now, he realizes that the correct course of action is not to attack his enemy but to find a scientific solution to the problem, which, with the help of lovely, Moon-born Selene, he strives to do. Although this section at times feels merely like a functional wrap-up, rather than a continuation of the second section’s brilliance, Asimov keeps the reader’s interest by providing an unusually realistic portrait of what life might be like on the Moon, with close attention to some of the effects it would have on the human body. And while some may scoff at the book’s ending, Asimov shows courage by maintaining optimism in the face of seemingly endless stupidity. Notice the question mark he appends to this section’s title.

Although at first it seems Hallam alone embodies the stupidity against which we must contend, several forms of idiocy emerge throughout the novel. For instance, there is mankind’s unquestioning acceptance of Hallam’s quick-fix solution to its energy problems, and there are the scientists who allow Hallam’s celebrity to blind them to his vanity and incompetence. But the most frequent kind of stupidity shown in the novel is self-centeredness, stupid because it prevents mankind from achieving its full potential. Even the Hard Ones, the gods of intellect themselves, are guilty of it. It is the reason a novel populated mainly by excellent thinkers — Lamont, Bronowski, Odeen, and Denison among them — can also be a novel about stupidity. Only Denison, humbled, resigned to a fameless existence, desirous now only of working for the advancement of humanity, is of any help to us.

While The Gods Themselves has a few flaws — too many adverbs affixed to the dialogue tags, a so-so love story — its many merits make them seem negligible, and it emerges as an ambitious, hopeful portrait of human folly that deserves attention not only from science fiction readers but from all readers. Due to the impending energy crisis we face today, the book, though over thirty years old, even feels topical.

It seems unlikely, however, that it will ever receive the acclaim it deserves. Literary critics have always disliked Asimov’s straightforward, unadorned prose because it does not require them, the experts, to decipher it. And, while it’s OK for a novelist to wander into science fiction in order to expand the absurdity of his absurdist vision beyond the confines of contemporary reality, it remains, to many aesthetes, distasteful to show an actual interest in anything as practical as science. But Asimov was as much a scientist as an artist. He was interested in everything; as a result, his books display a prodigious intellect at work, one which dwarfs that of the highbrow who concerns himself only with the fine-tuning of his emotional sensibility and the advancement of his literary style into more and more distant realms of obscurity. But while Asimov posthumously continues to stand as large as anyone within the science fiction community, the literati will probably never give him his proper respect. You remember what Schiller said.