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why it is offered. He refrains from hurting others. He wants Neville's name added to the scientific paper as co-author in order to save Neville's and Lunarite pride. When he first kisses Selene, he puts his hands behind his back; when he moves toward her at the end, he moves hesitantly.
The final strength of Part III, the solution to the scientific problem, justifies or almost justifies its weaknesses. The concept of the cosmeg-Universe seems so neatly implied by the para-Universe, as the opposite end of the nuclear force spectrum, that it falls naturally into place as the last piece of the puzzle. And its existence is reinforced by the cosmological explanation it implies for the explosion of this Universe's original cosmic egg.
The entire novel plays itself out on Asimov's traditional bare stage. Few surroundings were described; even the lunar environment was only referred to by the texture of its food, the lessened influence of gravity, and the presence of Earth in the lunar sky. Asimov fiction always had this characteristic, perhaps reinforced by his first book-editor's criticism of his attempts at colorful writing in the early drafts of his second novel, The Stars, Like Dust. More likely, writing went faster and more easily for Asimov with limited description, and Asimov always wrote swiftly. Moreover, ideas play themselves out most effectively and most clearly in isolation, and Asimov, in The Gods Themselves as the present example, was more concerned about the "idea" of lunar life than about its reality.
The important aspect of The Gods Themselves may be not so much what it is but what it represented. Though better written, better conceived, and even more greatly honored than earlier Asimov work, The Gods Themselves was not as important as half a dozen of those earlier books. The novel came at a time when science fiction was maturing into individual statements by individual authors; each new novel was considered mostly on its own merits rather than on its context and its contribution to that context. Each, therefore, might be individually superior but less important in terms of the genre of which it was a part. So it was with The Gods Themselves. It was important as a statement by Asimov that science still could be the distinguishing characteristic of science fiction, that the older traditions of science fiction (not always honored in their own time, even by Asimov) could be built upon rather than discarded, that science-important fiction could be recognized as contemporary. And, as a personal statement, the novel demonstrated that Asimov still could write serious science fiction.
The Gods Themselves came as a capstone for a career in which Asimov

 
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