The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
The triumph of this novel is the masterful middle section, the part for which the book is named, and it is the best thing Asimov ever wrote, I will plant my flag there. Told in three parts (each reading like a self-contained novella), the first, about a bickering pair of scientists on Earth discovering that an energy source traded with a parallel universe means the process is going to destroy the sun, is fine, competent Asimov, the bickering and intrigues within a university department, careerism and self-interest and hubris. Hallam, the man who starts it all, is a radiochemist of average intellect who has succeeded mainly due to his stubbornness and willingness to appropriate other scientists' ideas, which is the sharpest thing in that section, the way the book stays firmly realistic about the intersection of science and self interest. But then part two drops you into the para universe itself, among the aliens, and I never expected Asimov to write about alien cultures, so this was an amazing discovery, he creates an alien world so fascinating, I couldn't help but be amazed at the strangeness of it, I don't know why he didn't write more about aliens. These beings come in threes, a Rational, an Emotional, a Parental, the Triad family formation of the para-Universe, and once you see it you cannot unsee it: it seems like a hat-tip to the freudian structure of the psyche, ego and id and superego walking around, and yet they melt into and through each other, the meltings of the soft ones, in a way that is sexual and familial and dissolving all at once. Dua, the Emotional, is genuinely moving, a rebellious being, one of the deviants who break from the norm, and doomed, and the final revelation of the nature of melting was riveting and sneaks up on you, it's been a long time since I felt a little hole in my heart when I finished a book, like I lost a good friend, but I felt it at the end of the second part of this book. Some readers bounce hard off this section, for them the storyline started getting draggy and slightly dull, they found themselves quickly skimming through the remainder of the book, one would have just barely skimmed the sections on the soft ones, one confessed I fell asleep many times trying to get through the reading, really boring stuff, but they are wrong. Part three, on the Moon, is a touch of a letdown after the truly astounding second section, back to human scientists and a smug problem solving mood, very formulaic and uninspired, and the intuitionist business, where she studied physics, but is ACTUALLY only good at it because she is an "intuitionist", a trait dictated entirely by genetics, made me roll my eyes a little?? "Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." is the Schiller quote that was the basis for this book, and the book is really about that, about how truth loses to convenience because no one is willing to hear the truth of the disaster hidden behind the invention, nobody wants to hear the sun is dying on their watch. Read it for part two. Everything else is setting for that jewel.