Nemesis: good ideas in an average Asimov

Once you've read a lot of Asimov, each of his books tends to surprise you a little less. That's normal; it happens with many authors. And Nemesis is a clear example. A novel I liked -quite a lot, in fact- but that never delivers that surprise “click” of the author's best works..

And that's not a bad thing, because we're talking about one of the greatest science-fiction authors in history and his baseline is already very high, but that's exactly the overall feeling the book left me with.

Of course, it has many of the things I like about the author: brilliant scientific ideas, intelligent characters reasoning through the consequences of those ideas, and cosmic-scale problems examined from both technical and human perspectives.

The problem is that this time the ideas and characters aren't as brilliant as in his best novels. And when that happens, you can see the writer's seams a little more clearly.

Even so, context matters: for me, an average Asimov is still better than 90% of the science fiction out there.

And Nemesis is a good Asimov, in normal form, but not at his inspired best. That said, I thought the way this novel connects with his vast space universe was brilliant, even if it's only a tiny part of the plot. I'll go into that in detail later.

Plot of Nemesis

Originally published in 1989, Nemesis takes us to a future in which humanity has begun living in space settlements around Earth.

One of them is Rotor.

The astronomer Eugenia Insigna -what a curious name- discovers a star relatively close to the Solar System, which is named Nemesis. And Janus Pitt, Rotor's top authority, sees in that discovery the chance to make one of his radical ideas real: leave Earth and create a completely independent society far away from the rest of humanity..

I won't tell you much more because a large part of the appeal lies precisely in watching the consequences of that ambition unfold.

Meanwhile, Earth begins facing a much more serious problem than Rotor's desertion: Nemesis could become a deadly threat to our planet.

With those two interesting premises, Asimov develops his novel.

The ideas are the best thing about Nemesis

The part of the book I like most is mainly at the beginning.

Janus Pitt and the reasons he gives for wanting independence from humanity are fascinating to me. We're not talking about exploring another star or another galaxy, but about disappearing and building a new society with no past.

A radical idea that makes Pitt a “relative villain”: his methods and obsession are questionable, but the roots of his reasoning are understandable. In fact, I think Asimov could have pushed him a little further. An even more stubborn Pitt would have given the novel more force.

The idea and explanation of the threat posed by Nemesis and the consequences it could have for Earth are also well handled..

This is the classic Asimov I enjoy: he thinks up an enormous scientific problem, develops it and analyzes its implications.

Fantastic if you enjoy that kind of science fiction as much as I do.

Then there's Eugenia Insigna, another of the main characters. In general she isn't especially memorable, but there is one thing about her that is: her scientific ambition which she puts above every other consideration, including her family.

It's unusual for a “positive” character to display this kind of socially frowned-upon personality. Even more so for a female character.

And with all that in mind, the opening raises several very interesting questions:

• Would it be a good thing to break away from all of humanity and start from scratch?
• How would society react to a threat that could destroy Earth, but thousands of years from now? Would it act on it now? Wouldn't it? We're seeing something similar with climate change.
• Should disruptive technologies capable of completely changing our civilization be shared worldwide? Here I thought about AI and all its potential.

Big questions with present-day relevance, formulated decades ago. Pure Asimov..

Asimov's usual pace

Like all of his novels, Nemesis is not an action novel.

There is a great deal of conversation, scientific exposition and characters reasoning for pages about one problem, only to spend the next chapter talking about the next one.

I like that.

And because I like it, the novel hooked me, and I don't remember any major ups and downs while reading it. But I also admit I'm far from objective here because I enjoy this style.

That's why I completely understand someone picking up this novel and wondering when something is finally going to happen.

The curious thing is that this feeling doesn't arise in his best books, because when Asimov puts an extraordinary idea on the table, he can have two people talking for twenty pages and the reader is still delighted.

In his great works, such ideas are abundant. In Nemesis you can see the machinery a little more because not every idea reaches that level..

That's why I don't think the problem is the pace -the pace is the same as always- but rather that this time the material surrounding it doesn't reach the heights of other occasions.

Marlene doesn't quite carry the book

This is the novel's main problem.

Marlene is, in practice, the protagonist, but she isn't one of the reasons to read Nemesis. . Not even close.

She has the occasional interesting scene when she demonstrates her extraordinary ability to read other people, but her power -and really the whole character- feels rather contrived to me.

Asimov needs Marlene to be exceptional in order to tell the story he wants, and the explanation ends up feeling a little too forced.

But even setting that aside, the character doesn't excite me either.

There's nothing wrong with her; she simply lacks the magnetism needed to carry so much of the story's weight..

And she isn't the only one. Something similar happens with Crile Fisher.

He performs his function within the plot perfectly, connecting different parts of the story, but I see him more as an ad hoc narrative vehicle than as a character with real substance of his own.

Clearly, the characters have never been the main reason to read Asimov, but his best novels do contain some very good ones. And when they don't, the ideas are so exceptional that it simply doesn't matter.

As I said before, here it shows a little more.

How Nemesis connects to the Robot and Foundation series

Now we come to perhaps the most interesting part of the book.

WARNING: this section contains major spoilers for Nemesis and some references to the universe of Foundation. If you haven't finished the book, you can skip straight to the next section.

This is one of the parts I enjoyed most after finishing the novel. And yet Nemesis was conceived as a standalone work. 

Asimov himself stated that it did not belong to the Foundation or Empire series, although he left open the possibility of connecting it one day. And he eventually did so in a fairly subtle way.

In Forward the Foundation, Hari Seldon mentions an old story about a young woman able to communicate with an entire planet orbiting a star called Nemesis..

It's obvious whom he meant.

The reference therefore turns the events of Nemesis into a legend that took place thousands of years before Seldon's era. It also presents Marlene as a precursor, with mental powers reminiscent of the Second Foundation.

But there's more.

We have the planet Erythro.

The revelation that its microorganisms form a collective intelligence bears an obvious resemblance to Gaia, the world of collective consciousness that appears later in the Foundation novels.

If you already know Gaia, as I did, the idea of Erythro loses some of its power to surprise.

It is never explicitly established anywhere that Erythro is the origin of Gaia, but the conceptual kinship is there and becomes especially interesting when analyzing Nemesis alongside the rest of his work.

The historical moment also fits very well: we're seeing humanity begin its expansion beyond the Solar System, developing technologies that will make interstellar travel possible and gradually separating from Earth.

It's very easy to interpret this as the prehistory of the universe that will eventually lead, thousands of years later, to Robots, the Galactic Empire and Foundation.

For me, these small threads enrich Asimov's universe, while also turning the novel into a more than decent prologue to everything that is going to happen. That's where I find the book's real value.

A decent ending, but not a surprising one

Without going into details, because we're back in the spoiler-free zone here, the ending didn't disappoint me, but I found it very predictable.

If you've read more Asimov, it's very easy to anticipate how he is going to wrap up each darker plot thread. And you won't be wrong about any of them.

Everything wraps up reasonably, without surprises and without spoiling anything that came before, but certainly the ending isn't what you'll remember most about this book.. 

I don't think that was Asimov's intention either.

Conclusions and verdict: is Nemesis worth reading?

Yes.

It isn't among Asimov's best novels, and it also wouldn't be the book I'd recommend to someone who has never read him and wants to enter his world.

He has more ambitious works, with more powerful ideas and that very Asimov-like ability to make you feel he has just shown you something you'd never considered before.

Nemesis doesn't go that far, but it remains an intelligent, entertaining novel with a reasonable dose of good science-fiction ideas.

And the problem with comparing Asimov against himself is that it's rather unfair.

An average Asimov is better than 90% of the science fiction out there.

Nemesis isn't a masterpiece, but it doesn't need to be. The author has other, more ambitious novels for that.

Nemesis fact sheet

Data	Information
Title	Nemesis
Author	Isaac Asimov
Original year	1989
Genre	Science fiction
Length	464 pages in the 2005 Spanish Debolsillo edition
Rating	3,5/5