The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

*sigh* Some books should remain fond memories.

I'm dropping a star on the re-read. Enjoying the insistence of intuitionalism doesn't make up for the abysmally uninteresting aliens or the 1970's culturally-locked ideas surrounding smart human women and smart alien women. It was actually pretty groan-worthy.

As for the actual story idea, I enjoyed the extrapolation of a modified natural law and the SF conversation Asimov was having with Silverberg, but it turns out that a tiny handful of ideas isn't enough to carry the novel. I'm a firm believer in truly excellent characters and story. As this novel is, it's more of a thinly-veiled science instructional tidied up with a few SF tropes and a single good Science Idea mixed with a single good cultural/mental/personal Idea.

I like intuition. I love it, even. Asimov does, too. Bravo. Moving on.

Destruction of two universes feeding off each other. Sound cool? It is. But even Lensman did it better than this. :)

Alas, this is NOT Asimov's best work. Foundation is much better and I had a grand lot of fun with the Robot books. This one is Far down that list, and I'm sad. I can't believe this made a Hugo. 1972 must have been a very lean year.

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