The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

"The Gods Themselves" by Isaac Asimov won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973 ( I read this as part of my project to read all of the Hugo Award winners). This was one I had not read before, and likely would not have picked up but for it having won the Hugo.

I honestly have no idea where this stands in terms of notability - it's not part of the Robot or Foundation universes,and I was not aware of it absent seeing it on the list of Hugo winners. In the prologue, Asimov states that this story arose out of a scientific gaffe made by Robert Silverburg at a convention, and in light of that, the scientific gaffe the book makes seems even more egregious.

The short synopsis - humanity's energy problems are solved by the invention/discovery of the Electron Pump, a device connecting our universe with a parallel universe with different physical laws that leverages the difference in the laws to produce energy on both sides of the pump.  The story, told in three parts, visits the earth in the early days of the Pump, the parallel universe, and the Moon some number of years later and revolves around a few individual's objections to the Pump.  The story itself holds together pretty well until near the end of the third part.

Here is where I start to rant, so if you want to avoid rants, you might scroll down to the end of the post.  Also *****SPOILERS AHEAD**** so if you want to avoid a major spoiler, you might just go ahead and read the book first, then come back and finish reading this blog post.

*****SPOILERS START NOW*****

On the moon, there is a faction of moon born humans that want to be rid of earth control.  One effect of an experiment related to the Pump is essentially free propulsion. The moon faction discovers this and decides that they want to use this propulsion to turn the moon into a giant spacecraft and leave the earth's orbit.  Ultimately, the plan gets voted down by the Lunites, but only for reasons of sentiment.  Not one single character, the majority of whom are scientists, ever brings up or mentions the fact that for the earth, the moon pulling away would have some serious adverse consequences for life on earth.  I REPEAT, NOT A SINGLE SCIENTIST POINTS OUT THAT MOVING THE MOON WOULD HAVE CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES FOR LIFE ON EARTH.  In a novel so grounded in science, this is a major point of failure.

*******SPOILERS AND RANT OVER******

Final Rating: 4/10

The final score would have been in the 6 or 7 range, but the subject of the above spoilers/rant bring it down.  I'd certainly put it in my bottom 5 of Hugo Award winners for books up to that date.

More soon - keep on reading.