Asimov's Relationship To The Story
In a February 12, 1982 letter Asimov identified this as his favorite SF novel ("Yours, Isaac Asimov" page 225). Asimov's short story "Gold", one of the last he wrote in his life, describes the efforts of fictional computer animators to create a "compu-drama" from the novel's second section.
Asimov took the names of the immature aliens — Odeen, Dua, and Tritt — from the words One, Two, and Three in the language of his native Russia.
Asimov's inspiration for the title of the book, and its three sections, was a quotation by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805): "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens." ("Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.")
Asimov describes a conversation in January 1971 when Robert Silverberg had to refer to an isotope — just an arbitrary one — as an example. Silverberg said plutonium-186. "There is no such isotope", said Asimov, "and such a one can't exist either." "So, what?", said Silverberg. Later Asimov figured out under what conditions plutonium-186 could exist, and what complications and consequences it might imply. Asimov reasoned that it must belong to another universe with other physical laws; specifically, different nuclear forces would be necessary to allow a Pu-186 nucleus to hold itself together. He wrote down these ideas, which gradually grew into the novel.
In his autobiography, Asimov stated that the novel, especially the second section, was his "biggest and most effective over-my-head writing ever produced."
Read more about this topic: The Gods Themselves
Famous quotes containing the words asimov, relationship and/or story:
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
“Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn’t brotherly—who lived mostly under his parents’ roof ... who advocated one day’s work and six days “off” as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown ... is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.”
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“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, “I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.” I mean people are going to say, “You’re crazy.” Plus they’re going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that’s a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)