The novel “The Gods Themselves” by Isaac Asimov was published for the first time in 1972, first serialized in the magazines “Galaxy Magazine” and “Worlds of If” and then as a book. It won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel of the year.

When radiochemist Frederick Hallam finds a container that is supposed to contain tungsten, he analyzes its contents and discovers that it’s plutonium-186, an isotope whose existence is theoretically impossible. The real great discovery is that the material came from a parallel universe with different physical laws. The decay of plutonium generates totally free energy and by exchanging it with tungsten it’s possible to supply energy to the whole world.

Peter Lamond is a young physicist who studies what was named Electronic Pump, which generates energy thanks to the exchange of materials between the two universes. The first studies indicated that the exchange alters the physical laws of the two universes, especially the strong nuclear force but this will not be a problem for a very long time. According to Lamond, the danger could be much closer but no one wants to believe in the need to give up the pump for fear that the Sun could explode.