1972
Awards: Nebula, Hugo, Locus
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –
One evening, second-rate physicist Frederick
Hallam accidentally leaves a vial of Tungsten-186 out on his desk. The next
morning, to his and his colleagues’ amazement, they find that the tungsten has
been transformed into plutonium.
Plutonium-186 is a theoretically impossible isotope;
any created in our universe would be so unstable it would fall apart almost
instantly. But Hallam’s sample starts out completely stable, and then begins
emitting energy in the form of protons at a steadily increasing rate until it
turns completely back into tungsten. And the process is repeatable; when they
leave more tungsten out at night, it is also turned into plutonium-186 by the
next morning.
Hallam is a poor physicist, but a consummate
opportunist. And he is just smart enough to be able to take credit for, and
advantage of, his brighter but less commercially-minded colleagues’ insights
about his tungsten-plutonium. Within a matter of months, he has used their
ideas to parlay his little accident into an enormous, government-funded
Electron Pump, providing free, unlimited energy to the world’s population, and
earning him accolades and prestige beyond measure.
Of course, most everyone in the world is so
glad to have free, unlimited energy that no one really wants to investigate to
see if there are any down sides to the Pump. Least of all Hallam himself.
The first thing that Hallam discourages is
discussion about how it works. It is not Hallam but one of his co-workers who comes
up with the correct answer: the tungsten is being replaced by the inhabitants
of a parallel universe in which the laws of physics are different than ours.
These “para-men” have somehow been able to open portals into our universe large
enough to do the replacement. And they are doing it for themselves, not for us;
as our plutonium-186 decays, it pumps electrons into the parallel universe which
they can use as energy. The protons
we get from them in return are just a fortunate byproduct.
The threatening thing about this to Hallam is
that it means that he didn’t actually invent
the Electron Pump. The (smarter) parallel-universe people did.
And it takes a disgruntled colleague with a
major vendetta against Hallam to discover the other, more serious down side to
the Pump. While we use it, he learns, our universe steadily acquires
more and more of a positive charge. It makes fusion reactions easier and more
likely, speeding up the nuclear reactions in our sun. And eventually, perhaps
within a matter of years, it will cause our sun to explode and destroy our solar system, if not our whole arm of the galaxy.
The scientist who figures this out, though, is
unable to convince anyone to stop the Pump. Hallam, threatened by any criticism
of the “invention” on which he has staked his entire reputation, pushes any
nay-sayers to the fringes of the scientific community, discredits their work,
and uses his influence to prevent them from getting anything published. And
international governments won’t listen to anything that might endanger their
supply of free energy. Our desire for immediate comfort trumps our long-term
logic, even if there is strong evidence that there will be catastrophic consequences down
the road. (This book was written in 1972, before global warming was thought of
as much of a problem, but you can draw your own parallels.)
This book is, in many ways, Asimov at his best.
First of all, the premise itself is just terrific. And, while the science behind the Electron
Pump is complicated, the clarity of his writing makes it understandable and
seemingly plausible. And, as is typical for Asimov, the plot trucks along engagingly even though the story
just consists mostly of conversations between the characters and very little
actual action.
Asimov creates three very different communities for this book and he makes them all feel tangible and believable. The first is the physics lab that is the setting for the beginning of the book, along with all its realistic internal politics. The second is the parallel universe, which is
populated by alien beings who live in partner triads and who eat their sun’s
radiation as food, but who also have a compelling human interest story we can
relate to. And the third is a rebellious, freedom-loving, technologically curious society on the moon (perhaps a nod to Heinlein), where one scientist goes in
a last-ditch effort to stop the Pump.
This book is also, in some ways, unfortunately, Asimov at his worst. Inevitably, he resorts to his usual annoying love pairing between an aging, gruff-but-lovable, highly-educated but convention-flouting male scientist and a young, sassy, beautiful, convention-flouting, tiresome young woman who has never been formally scientifically educated but is nevertheless
smart as a whip and has enough curiosity and natural intuitive ability to
follow and contribute, muse-like, to the man’s scientific pursuits. She also tends to go around barely clothed most of the time.
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