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Page 89
understanding and their tools against the vast unknown. The ultimate success of the crew, in those stories, would be a kind of ironic comment about the workings of fate. In Asimov's story the ending becomes a victory for the human species, a triumph of the human spirit over the stubborn but not unmovable resistance of the outer world, a joyous celebration of the humanization of one more corner of a universe that was not created for humanity but might, if humans are intelligent enough or brave enough, be understood and made sweet.
The 1965 publication date of "Founding Father" also was significant for the future of Asimov's science-fiction writing. New Worlds, a British publication, had failed the year before. Michael Moorcock had been named editor of the new New Worlds the same year and had begun its conversion into the flagship of revolution in science-fiction writing that would soon be called "the New Wave." New Wave writers opposed much of what had gone before, both in letter and in spirit, particularly the letter and spirit of Campbellian science fiction. The spirit of the New Wave was iconoclastic, nihilistic, and pessimistic: no victories for the human spirit, no celebration of the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the alien universe, no triumphs over incredible difficulties. The works were impressionistic, experimental, subjective renderings of individuals trapped in incomprehensible worlds, against which struggle and even attempts to understand were useless and man's best choice was simply to accept his fate. The view of humanity's role in the universe that Campbell espoused and Asimov found congenial, replicated as it was in his own rise in the world, continued to be expressed by others in a variety of stories published throughout the 1960s and 1970s. But the dominant impression, perhaps because it came with revolutionary fervor, was that the New Wave had captured the mood of the times, if not the magazines. Stories and novels that Asimov must not have liked and must have felt were not part of the science fiction he had helped to shape were winning acclaim and awards. He also must have felt that science fiction no longer needed him. His science-fiction writing, now only a change of pace from his profitable and satisfying non-fiction production that accounted for the majority of his more than 200 books by then, became even more desultory and casual.
Asimov's return to serious writing in 1971 with The Gods Themselves (when much of the debate about the New Wave had quieted) was an act of courage, perhaps even bravado. After being out of the mainstream of science fiction for more than a dozen years, Asimov might well have wondered if this new novel would be greeted with scorn or laughter. The fact that the book won both Nebula and Hugo awards was confirmation

 
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