When other scientists try to publicize this fact, Hallam uses his political power to ruin their careers. One such scientist, Peter Lamont, comes to realize that the Electron Pump will turn the sun into a supernova, destroying mankind. He secretly works to communicate this understanding to the aliens. Other scientists refuse to support this contention, in fear of Hallam and their careers.

"Part Two: ...The Gods Themselves...," is the story of three young aliens in the alternate universe that has created the Electron Pump to provide energy to both worlds. Odeen, a "Rational," Dua, an "Emotional," and Tritt, a "Parental," are Soft Ones, brought together to live as a Triad by the Hard Ones. The three sexes of Soft Ones mate by merging their amorphous, ethereal bodies, during which time they can remember only pleasure, to create children. They eat by absorbing energy directly from sunlight, but their sun is getting weaker, and soon will not provide enough energy for successful feeding or mating.

Odeen, Dua and Tritt know little about themselves, but learn that the Hard Ones consider them exceptional. Odeen is closest to the Hard Ones, who teach him science. He learns from his teacher that a great scientific leader named Estwald has created a new energy course, the Positronic Pump, that will save the Soft Ones and Hard Ones alike. Dua learns of this and discovers that the Hard Ones' plan is to destroy the humans' sun to provide greater energy for themselves. She seeks to communicate this to the humans, starving herself to avoid creating a third child, since she knows that soon after the third child, Triads are required to "pass on." In a startling conclusion, the three aliens learn their true nature, as well as the identity of Estwald.

"Part Three: ...Contend in Vain?" is set on Earth's moon, which has been colonized and whose society has diverged and progressed significantly compared to Earth's. The moon is now at the cutting edge of science, after decades of complacency and bureaucracy on Earth. Ben Dennison, one of the scientists ruined by Hallam, emigrates to the moon to resurrect his career and seek a solution to the Electron Pump's destabilization of the sun. Ben meets a tour guide named Selene, who helps him adjust to the liberal sexual mores of the moon society and becomes his scientific assistant. But Selene is actually serving as an agent for her sexual partner and a clandestine group who want to encourage Ben's research for other reasons. When Ben's scientific work makes a breakthrough, both Earth and moon authorities seek to use it for their own disparate purposes.

A Grand Master's most ambitious novel

The Gods Themselves is in many ways Isaac Asimov's most ambitious science fiction novel, and arguably the best. The novel has a strong thematic base—echoed in the quote from Friedrich Schiller that provides its title—in its ruminations on the relationship among science, scientists and humanity. This novel showed Asimov's disillusionment with scientists and politics, but not with science itself. The concept that societies stagnate if there are no challenges or frontiers is conveyed throughout the book, even in the aliens section, where "competitor" can be seen as the missing archetype among the alien genders. The book also represents Asimov's most ambitious attempt at societal extrapolation. And it creates one of the most imaginative and memorable alien species in all of 20th-century science fiction. The revelatory denouement of Part Two, in particular, where the three aliens merge for the last time, is one of the great touchstone moments of science fiction.

The unique aspects of this novel in the Asimov canon were clearly purposeful—Asimov deliberately sought to expand his range into areas he had not addressed before, and in some cases would never address again. The innovative and effective three-part structure reflects perhaps the only influence that SF's New Wave experimentalism had on Asimov's fiction. In Part One, Asimov portrays for the first time the conflict between true science and human nature, with science being stifled by politics and society, in a story that seems prescient of later events such as the oil crisis and global climate change. In Part Two, Asimov tackles aliens and sex, both for the first time, with spectacularly memorable success. "...The Gods Themselves..." is itself one of the best SF novellas of all time. In Part Three, Asimov tackles human sexuality for the first time, and makes his boldest attempt to extrapolate a liberal and progressive future society, creating two of his most interesting characters in Ben and Selene.

The Gods Themselves is not without its flaws, however, some quite annoying. In Part One, Asimov's world of 2070 is almost identical to our 1950s, and his failure to include any women scientists or politicians is a notable failure of extrapolative vision. Stylistically, the ploy of beginning with chapter "6" simply confuses the reader and makes one suspect that Asimov felt readers might be too stupid to grasp his relatively simple use of nonsequential narrative. In Part Two, Asimov misses his chance to create an alien ecology to go with his fascinating alien race. Another flaw in this section may be inherent in our language itself, which forced Asimov to assign male pronouns to the Rationals and Parentals and female pronouns to the Emotionals, despite human gender designations being irrelevant and misleading. In Part Three, Ben's difficulty to adapt to the sexually progressive moon culture is a bit embarrassing, because one suspects that the character's 1950s emotional sensibilities were based on Asimov himself. Also somewhat embarrassing are Selene's special powers of intuition, which appears to be outdated chauvinism. In addition, the clandestine scheme of Selene's partner ends up being one of the dumbest ideas an otherwise good hard science-fiction novel.

But none of these sorts of peccadilloes need detract from current science-fiction readers enjoying this classic novel by one of the greatest minds of the past century. When first published, The Gods Themselves won virtually every major science-fiction award—including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Ditmar—and deserves its place among the pinnacles of modern science fiction.