A novel along the lines of Anderson's Time Patrol. What happens when an Eternal, outside of the stream of time and in charge of keeping the future going smoothly, gets caught up in his own personal interests? A bit of a departure from Asimov's usual. ( )

Asimov is most famous for writing his Robot books and the Foundation series, but I think his stand alone novels are among his best works. This is one of his best - a time travel story that avoids creating a situation in which time paradoxes weigh the story down while pointing out some of the troubles time travel might cause, even if applied for apparently benevolent purposes.

Asimov liked time travel stories. His catalogue of short stories is full of them, but this appears to be his only time travel novel. The central character works for an organization that controls time travel technology, and as a result, controls history. The organization is run for generally benevolent purposes, and seeks to protect humanity from danger. Unfortunately, as the plot develops, it turns out that this benevolence comes at a cost, and protecting humanity from danger also means protecting it from opportunity, leading to stagnation and death.

Though Asimov's characters are generally seen as somewhat one-dimensional, the character of the protagonist in this novel makes sense (even if he is a bit wooden). What truly drives this book is its examination of the implications of time travel, even if it were to be used wisely (and not, for example, to go back and create a time paradox by killing your own grandfather before he sired your father). This is one of Asimov's best works, and one of the reasons he is considered to be one of the "Big Three" of the genre. ( )

Eternity runs through all time. The people behind it, the Eternals, have the mission of developing the best outcome for all humanity. They do this by making subtle tweaks in each century and sitting back and watching the changes happen. They keep themselves separated from the fabric of reality, as they don't want to be biased with the actions they take.

A newcomer with a penchant for 20th century pop culture enters the worlds of the Eternals, but there are special plans for him. He is to travel back in time (before the founding of Eternity) and train the inventor of Eternity to invent it. Unfortunately, things don't go so well for him, as a disgruntled Eternal fiddles with the dials on the time machine before they send the man back. The Eternals must now scramble to figure out his temporal location, or else it spells the end of Eternity.

This is a good book for fans of Asimov as well as time travel enthusiasts. ( )

Elmyra's review of this book resonates very strongly with me. I enjoyed most of Asimov's classics in my teens, however I have only read this one recently (20 years later). Asimov usually manages some sort of plot contrivance to keep women out of his stories in all but the most cardboard of roles. This one is no exception. Apparently it causes too much historical disruption to remove a woman from history, so the society of Eternity is exclusively male. The eternals control all access to time, and act to keep all aspects of human society "stable". Stability involves deletion of large portions of history occasionally, so that the overriding "master stability plan" is not disrupted. Fine if you don't live there.

As a society, Eternity is superbly dysfunctional. The protagonist, Andrew Harlan, is possibly the best fleshed-out study of a character with profound theory of mind deficits in the whole of the sci fi genre.

I'll be reading this one again....unless I am wiped out by a Reality Change anytime soon.

Absolute genius. Asimov takes you along one path with hints towards a greater truth and ties it all together in a way that makes you think. A pleasure to read (multiple times). ( )