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
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