The End of Eternity

Read: The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov

Read because it was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1956, and I’ve been trying a few of the old Hugo nominees. It’s also one of the few Asimov novels I managed to miss readings back in my very early teens. Normally, of course, I avoid his books like the plague - I think he was a terrible writer, who managed a couple of ideas per book but everything else was just 1950s USA with a thin wash of paint. He’s the exemplar of Men in Fucking Hats sf. Asimov was 35 when The End of Eternity of publishing, but much of it reads like it was written by a much younger man - even though he didn’t even start it until 1953. The invention of time travel has led to the creation of Eternity, a series of show more stations outside of time, with access to every year from their creation to the distant future, which are staffed by an all-male (for reasons that probably were unexceptional in the 1950s) corps who make carefully calculated changes to history in order to prevent future rough patches. One such staff member, a Technician, Andrew Harlan, born in the 95th Century, despite the resolutely 20th Century US name, falls in love with a young woman from the 575th Century, and jeopardises his career, and Eternity, in order to have a relationship with her. This also includes jeopardising the plan in which he is unwittingly instrumental - sending a technician back to the 24th Century to invent time travel. No time travel, no Eternity, no Andrew Harlan, no nookie. Everything goes entirely as expected, even the plot twists. The prose is anodyne and the level of invention low - one mission involves sabotaging a clutch on a vehicle in the 223rd century because of course they would still have cars with gearboxes 20,000 years from now; although I was… bemused by “her long legs shimmered in faintly luminescent foamite”, which is a really tone-deaf neologism and likely doesn’t evoke the image Asimov intended. The End of Eternity lost the Hugo to Heinlein’s Double Star, although Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow would have been a better winner. show less

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. show more 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.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

This is one of my favorite novels by Isaac Asimov, and I think underrated among his works, perhaps because it's a one-off, not something that ties into his Foundation or Robot series. I remember the outline of the story even decades after my first read, which is a sign of its ability to have an impact. What particularly stands out is the world-building. This is as intriguing, imaginative and well-thought out a world than any you can find in Asimov. Eternity is an organization that holds itself out of time. The "Eternals" are from almost all the centuries of man's post-industrial existence--and control and continually tweak that existence, altering reality without the knowledge or consent of those in "Time."

Andrew Harlan is a technician show more in Eternity, helping to make those changes and quite self-satisfied in his role--until Lambent Noys throws a wrench into the gears of his mind and heart. Noys, even if she fits a fairly traditional role in the book, is still one of Asimov's stronger and most memorable female characters. She's more than she seems and in the end Asimov delivers through her quite the critique of patriarchy and paternalism, particularly through the growth of Harlan, one of his most misogynistic characters. I found myself amused by this passage with its reversal of the usual assumptions of women's impact upon history:

Women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.

And there's something about the themes and conclusion of this one I find very satisfying. Like all of Asimov's writing, it's great at making you think--but this also had heart. show less

“Any system like Eternity which allows men to choose their own future will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach.”



In “The End of Eternity” by Isaac Asimov



I took the opportunity of re-reading this novel on account of the re-issue of “The End of Eternity” in 2020. I think the effects of “The Foundation” on Apple TV are making themselves felt in the SF publishing world…

Run a Feynman diagram backwards and matter becomes antimatter (of course, I think it's more that you can't tell the difference between a charged particle in an electromagnetic field moving forwards in time and its antimatter equivalent moving backwards in time.). Secondly travelling backwards in spacetime show more while the planet moves at c.300 000 km/s mean you will experience a near instantaneous acceleration of several tons. Splat. You will need a bucket and mop for what is left of our erstwhile time traveller. In short Newton and Einstein have some interesting but very short experiences in store for time travellers…

Feynman also proved that our current physical theories could not distinguish between an electron moving forward in time and an electron moving backward in time (the positron) except by a difference in charge. The real “Now” is moving forward. Except for thermodynamics (with the second law) our best physical theories cannot distinguish between forward time and backward time (of course, even the second law doesn't really differentiate between time directions. Well, not without introducing the observation that we're not already in the highest possible entropy state, and therefore it is overwhelmingly likely to increase). Something is obviously wrong.

I remember Hawking saying something against the possibility of time travel, pointing out that we haven’t been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future yet.

In the novel “The End of Eternity” which I read for the first time in a Portuguese-Brazilian translation 40 years ago, Isaac Asimov posited a time travel mechanism that didn't allow for travel to the past before the machine was invented. The machine opened a corridor which allowed for travel in either direction but only from the point at which it was turned on. Which gets round that objection. In this truly compelling work, Asimov touched on any theme in the SF field, creating one that still holds its place to this day, and I even risk not being able to compete with it in many themes to date. After years of being fed up with the impossibilities and paradoxes of time travel, one runs into such a book and rightly wonders why they cannot write stories of this magnitude and complexity today. A compelling read for anyone who has ever been a little preoccupied with the idea of ​​time travel! It's still a good book.

NB: What matters is that once you get to 80+ waking up every morning feels like an act of time travel. Unfortunately the joys of advanced technology are accompanied by infirmity and the approach of a life-changing event that no time machine can avert. show less

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov was a reread from my teenage years when the author was a favourite of mine.

I've always found the subject of time travel compelling and here, Asimov creates a lot of tension in this sparse 1955 novel that has become a classic of its genre.

I won't retell the story here, but rather share my opinion that the mechanics of time travel are well thought out, as are the social constructs. Our "hero" is rather vapid throughout and I enjoyed the nicely conceived twist that puts the whole plot in place.

The characters are rather one dimensional and definitely take second place to the thought provoking description of the future society and its role in controlling human destiny.

Not your average time travel novel. show more Recommended. show less

Asimov might be my favorite author. Very few books give me such a thrill when it comes to any kind of fiction. His trademarks are here - romance, a fast plot, small cast of characters, huge scope, big feel, twists turns and a conclusion that ended up giving me goosebumps.

As is the case with most time travel stories, there's a ton of paradoxes but Asimov manages to guide most of the way without losing me. There's certainly some antiquated language but the book was written 65 years ago and it's so incredible to see such contemporary themes present, such as class, nuclear power, war, history, psychology, regret...all the good stuff that I loved so much about the Robots/Foundation is present here. Short and sweet.

I’m just going to say it: aside from a few select novels and stories, Asimov annoys the hell out of me and is, I think, one of science fiction’s most overrated authors ever. There! Start stoning me now. I’m prepared. I know I have blasphemed. I have read a hell of a lot of Asimov, including all of the Foundation novels and all of the Robot novels, including the extra Robot-inspired books, as well as other books, and I’m always astonished – and always mentioning in my reviews – at what a below average writer I think Asimov was, particularly as a young writer. He barely knew grammatical rules, such as how to use transitions. He knew practically nothing about character development, little about plot development, and wrote the show more absolute worst dialogue of any type of literature of any author I have ever read anywhere, and I have read tens of thousands of books over the course of my life! The WORST dialogue ever! I’m not joking. The most wooden, stilted, unconvincing, academic, formal, boring, inauthentic excuse for dialogue I’ve ever seen in any novel form anywhere. I have three college degrees and have 13 years of university study. I’ve published 15 books of my own. My own poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in magazines, newspapers, zines, peer reviewed journals, online magazines and journals, and elsewhere in hundreds and hundreds of sources in dozens of countries in numerous languages and one of my books was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. I have taught literature and writing at three universities and colleges. I feel like I have some credentials. I feel confident when I say that I feel that there are literally dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of science fiction writers who are better writers and perhaps even scientifically superior to Asimov. His legacy is vastly inflated. But that’s my opinion, and as has been pointed out regularly in my negative reviews of his books, my opinion is worth shit regarding his books.

All that said, I’m going to skip the main synopsis of this book, other than to say it’s about time travel and is fairly innovative, especially for such an early time travel book, having been published in 1955. Pretty original, and I appreciated that. What I want to point out instead is something that I’ve pointed out for some previous books and something that several other reviewers have pointed out for this book, although to my total shock, not very many people at all. Asimov, the total misogynistic pig, is in top form in creating one female character in this book whose primary purpose is to be the sexual crush and ultimate seducer (because, after all, she IS a female, and that’s what they do to good men, right?) of our brave and good protagonist, Andrew Harlan, the Eternal. The beautiful, non-Eternal, Noys Lambent, a secretary or assistant of some sort, because after all, that’s what women do, aside from the scientist in I, Robot, creates a conflict with Andrew because women aren’t supposed to be part of the good old boy’s club in Eternity, his world, meaning he’s never gotten laid, I guess, so when she makes herself available on her world to him, he goes for it, initially feeling a little guilty, then goes for it with gusto and is drawn into her sinful female web, allowing Eternity to possibly be destroyed. Nice. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Asimov write entire novels with either no female characters or just one or two minor background characters who comb their hair in their bedrooms (Foundation, anyone?). Sometimes there’s a more major female character, but they’re either helpless and dependent on a strong male lead (robot novels) or are seductresses (robot novels). To Asimov, women are evil and/or dangerous. Yet somehow he was married. Was he merely a product of his times, was he secretly gay, or was he a stereotypical engineering/science nerd who was an academic social misfit, scared to death of females, yet strangely married to one? Or none of the above? Why did he hate women so much? Yet why in his later books, like the Prelude to Foundation books, did he write in strong female characters? Did he actually grow with the times? Did his attitudes actually change? Maybe they did. Maybe there was hope. Maybe he was a 1940s/50s-era misogynistic product of his time who didn’t know any better than the Nuclear Era Virgin/Whore Syndrome and who wrote that into his novels. If so, fairly pathetic and that goes to show what a weak writer he truly was, backing up my original claim. But then, he wouldn’t have been the only one, so fair’s fair, I suppose.

In any event, I’m one of the very few to level this accusation against him regarding this or any book. The critics seem evenly split between genders, while the five star fans also seem evenly split between genders. In other words, just as many women love this book as men and apparently most women have no problems with him writing his only female character into the book as a stereotypical seductress whore intent upon making a male protagonist trip up and destroy Eternity. Apparently, women readers have no problems with this. While I find that astonishing, again, I am in the vast minority. I want to give this book a low rating, but at the same time, it was highly original, so that deserves a higher rating, so in fairness, I’m going to compromise and give it three stars. I think that’s a fair rating, given my criticisms versus its originality. Recommended for early sci fi time travel originality. Not recommended for fine quality literature. show less