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The End of Eternity

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 11,645 ratings · 463 reviews

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a man whose job it is to range through past and present Centuries, monitoring and, where necessary, altering Time's myriad cause-and-effect relationships. But when Harlan meets and falls for a non-Eternal woman, he seeks to use the awesome powers and techniques of the Eternals to twist time for his own purposes, so that he and his love can surv...more

Mass Market Paperback, 192 pages

Published October 1971 by Fawcett Crest (first published 1955)

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Sep 07, 2010 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

If you haven't read Asimov's SF classic, it's one of those time-travel stories where you can change the past. The people with the time machines are a shadowy, infinitely powerful organisation called the Eternals. They flit around in time, changing things "for the good of humanity". Except that, as I'm sure you already guessed, it isn't quite clear after a while that humanity is benefiting from all this attention. The agents who are responsible for making the changes are called Technicians, and t...more If you haven't read Asimov's SF classic, it's one of those time-travel stories where you can change the past. The people with the time machines are a shadowy, infinitely powerful organisation called the Eternals. They flit around in time, changing things "for the good of humanity". Except that, as I'm sure you already guessed, it isn't quite clear after a while that humanity is benefiting from all this attention. The agents who are responsible for making the changes are called Technicians, and they pride themselves on always finding the very simplest way to effect the change. They don't start a war if it's enough just to assassinate one key person; they don't assassinate him if it's enough just to organise a traffic accident so that he misses a meeting; and they don't organise the traffic accident if it's enough just to put his address book in a different pocket, so that he makes the critical phone call twenty minutes too late. In a word, they're minimalists.

I was talking about this book the other day with an American friend who'd also read it. If the premise of the story really were true, we wondered what evidence you could find to suggest that Eternals had been at work. We couldn't help thinking that the 2000 Butterfly Ballot was suspicious. Not least the name - perhaps some Technician had been unable to resist the joke, and planted a larger clue than he really was supposed to?

__________________________________

After posting this review and that for The Naked Sun , I did some more googling on the background to Eternity. Among other things, I discovered that Asimov claimed he got the original idea when he saw an ad in an early 30s newspaper, showing a picture that looked rather like a mushroom cloud. Well, he thought to himself, no one in 1930 knew what a mushroom cloud looked like. Maybe it's a message from a stranded time-traveller? And, from that beginning, he constructed the rest of the novel.

I liked it, but I was dubious about the reliability of the method. Time travel probably won't be invented very soon - it sounds like extremely advanced technology. If you really did want to send a message into the distant future, you'd want something far more permanent and noticeable than an obscure ad. Something, in fact, that would have a decent chance of surviving for thousands of years, in unchanged form, and which would be as prominent as possible. The ideal thing would be an immortal work of art.

And then it struck me: in a different thread, we'd been talking about Shakespeare's mysterious Sonnet XVIII. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to your august consideration the hypothesis that this is a message from a time-traveller who crashed their machine in the early 17th century. To start off with, the poem explicitly says that its central purpose is to be remembered for ever. It's so beautiful, and every word is so perfectly chosen, that it has a decent chance of surviving unchanged for thousands of years - maybe, even until people get around to inventing time travel?

If you want to turn this into a short story, please credit me somewhere :)
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Apr 07, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, science-fiction, time-travel

I've always felt that Isaac Asimov writes brilliant science fiction with boring characters. I love a good time travel story, mostly to see what this author's take on the usual time travel paradoxes will be. Anyone who writes about agents changing history has to explain how they deal with things like the Grandfather Paradox, meeting earlier or later versions of yourself, and so on. There are a handful of well-known ways to deal with these issues (alternate timelines, a deterministic universe, spe...more I've always felt that Isaac Asimov writes brilliant science fiction with boring characters. I love a good time travel story, mostly to see what this author's take on the usual time travel paradoxes will be. Anyone who writes about agents changing history has to explain how they deal with things like the Grandfather Paradox, meeting earlier or later versions of yourself, and so on. There are a handful of well-known ways to deal with these issues (alternate timelines, a deterministic universe, special laws of temporal physics, etc.) and Asimov is rather inventive in using several of them at once.

Although The End of Eternity is brilliant in its construction of a civilization of time travelers and all the history and technology that goes into their society and the way they meddle with time, his protagonists are basically a bunch of whiny geeks who've never kissed a girl and act like highly-educated chimpanzees fighting for the highest branch in the treehouse. Asimov's vision of a civilization that spans millions of years and thousands of realities doesn't include a single one where women become scientists and engineers and might join the Eternals' boys' club. The entire plot hinges on not one but two high-ranking Eternals who decide they are willing to throw all of reality into danger for the chance to get laid. I know Asimov was a nerd and he wrote this in the 1950s, but he still could have done better. It's like the idea of women as anything but sex objects to be coveted or to seduce men off the path of Righteous Scientific Objectivity just never occurred to him. So naturally when a girl shows up (the only female character in the entire book), she must spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E, and in this case, the end of Eternity.

I enjoyed the story, but Asimov has never been my favorite among the Grand Old Masters of science fiction; there is something just a little too cold and calculating in all of his stories. For the ideas and the plot twists, this is a fun book with a great premise, but don't expect Asimov to wow you with his nuanced grasp of human relationships. His characters are wire dummies to hang a story on.(less)

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Nov 24, 2012 sologdin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: speculative

Nutshell: antisocial nerd, responsible for historical amendments to spacetime continuum, dicks it up for everyone in order to lose virginity.

Eternity is an interdimensional NGO, set up in the 27th century (32), initially to carry on intertemporal trade (43), which trade was promoted as its primary purpose. Its true primary task is to "prevent catastrophe from striking mankind" and "to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge" of its biotemporal management of human histo...more Nutshell: antisocial nerd, responsible for historical amendments to spacetime continuum, dicks it up for everyone in order to lose virginity.

Eternity is an interdimensional NGO, set up in the 27th century (32), initially to carry on intertemporal trade (43), which trade was promoted as its primary purpose. Its true primary task is to "prevent catastrophe from striking mankind" and "to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge" of its biotemporal management of human history (43-44).

We see that the main component of biotemporal management is actually wealth management for each century: "The Sociologists had an equation for the phenomenon" of uneven wealth distribution (45). Biotemporal managers allowed aristocracies to form, so long as they "did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges" (46). Analogues to marxism here to the extent that the managers viewed the aristocracy as a ruling entity, "a class, not as individuals" (38). Generally, the point is to protect the species from destroying itself in nuclear war, but there's talk in the NGO of abolishing space travel, which always turns out to be a disaster.

Some odd gender politics: no women in the NGO, for the bizarre reason that removing females from the spacetime continuum actually has a more deleterious effect than removing males (something to do with the birthrate). Plenty of commentary, express and implied, on freedom & determinism. Strikes me that determinism is the default position when the premise of the story is that changes initiated by the managers at one point alter later effects. That said, some characters believe in "temporal inertia" (169), and that effects from changes return to a hypothetical baseline after a nunber of centuries, rather than creating further diremptions.

Anyway, lotsa paradoxes, including the central paradox of the novel (or, rather, of the Setting, rather than the Story): how is it that changes to history do not effect the NGO when the NGO interacts with and draws from history?

Nifty link toward the end to the Robot/Empire/Foundation setting: safe to say that the denouement is the condition of possibility for that narrative.

Recommended for those who stumble upon temporal field theory without being aware of its mathematical justification, persons for whom human appetites carry a quivery repulsion, and readers who associate the mushroom cloud with the system by which private capital was invested in business.(less)

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Apr 10, 2013 Mukesh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone, Science fiction fans

Shelves: to-be-read-again, favourites

Wow! I am still reeling from the effect of finishing this one. This is just my second Asimov novel, which I picked purely because it was unconnected to any of his other series ( viz. the Foundation and the Robots ), and what a treat it turned out to be! Such an intriguing story full of every bit of concept and paradox possible within the purvey of time-travel and such delightful flights of speculations( which mind you are very logical ) into the human future! Truly Amazing!
Although I agree, to...more

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May 20, 2013 Helsic 伊明海 rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book.
I read it when I was 9 years old. At that time I didn't understand the whole complexity of this book of course because I was to young to understand many things. I read it second time around a couple of years ago and I enjoy it even more.

This book is magical, it takes you to an awesome and impossible future really beyond your own imagination. Have you ever imagine how the 1000 century could be? well, read this book to discovery it.

Andrey Harlan is the main character and he works for a...more

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Oct 26, 2008 Terence rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy

I don't know whether I began reading Asimov's nonfiction or fiction works first. I do know that I wrote a fan letter to him and actually got a reply back. Granted, it was a form-letter postcard but it was still pretty "cool" that I was "corresponding" with an actual author.

I was also very selective in what I read. I enjoyed the first three books of the Foundation but I never had any desire to read any of the Robot novels, and subsequent Foundation novels were disappointing (with the brilliant ex...more

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May 17, 2013 Mac rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The science in The End of Eternity is wonderful with plenty of stimulating ideas about time, time travel, and multiple realities, all described clearly through various twists and turns throughout the novel. Overall, these ideas are presented effectively within the narrative structure. In lesser hands, the science could easily be a confusing, uninstructive mess.

However, I do have a critique. Though I had a deep intellectual connection to the book, I had no emotional connection. At the core of all...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Mario Gámez rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Maestro indiscutible del género (¡por Cronos, ha sido él quien prácticamente revolucionó el género, es uno de los Tres Grandes!), con esta obra se posiciona como un Eterno, un ente que recorre los pasillos del tiempo haciendo modificaciones mínimas para alterar la realidad. Pero en este caso, siendo Eterno, su papel es más bien el de observar, analizar y profetizar.

En esta obra hay un trasfondo ético tremendo, sobre el antropocentrismo que rige nuestras vidas y nuestros múltiples e infinitos fu...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Zack rated it 2 of 5 stars

(severely minor spoiler alert)

simultaneously the reason people don't like science fiction AND the reason fans of science fiction don't understand why people don't like science fiction. dealing mainly with the consequences that arise when seemingly honorable people try to use time travel to positively affect the development of humans in the universe, this is a book of big ideas. fun ideas. classic sci-fi ideas that anyone should love to read a novel about. the trouble is that this novel doesn't o...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Garth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, damn-good-book

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Andrew Harlan becomes an Eternal at the age of fifteen. He progresses through the ranks with impressive speed from Cub to Observer to Specialist. His career is thrown into crisis, however, when he is assigned to the 482d century. This period of history is hedonistic, materialistic, and matriarchal, in direct contrast to his own native 95th century, which is ascetic and sexually repressed. Far from his familiar homewhen, he meets and falls in love with Noys Lambent. She not only brings into quest...more Andrew Harlan becomes an Eternal at the age of fifteen. He progresses through the ranks with impressive speed from Cub to Observer to Specialist. His career is thrown into crisis, however, when he is assigned to the 482d century. This period of history is hedonistic, materialistic, and matriarchal, in direct contrast to his own native 95th century, which is ascetic and sexually repressed. Far from his familiar homewhen, he meets and falls in love with Noys Lambent. She not only brings into question his own beliefs but also challenges the basic assumptions of all Eternity.

As a Technician, Harlan has the responsibility for making certain changes for the sake of the general good of history. Even though the nature of these changes is determined collectively by all the Eternals, the others blame Technicians for the negative side effects that accompany them. Harlan is able to withstand this prejudice fairly well because he is good at his specialty.

Harlan is the personal Technician assigned to Senior Computer Laban Twissell of the Allwhen Council. Unfortunately, Twissell himself is not popular with everyone, everywhen. Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge is Harlans direct supervisor in the 482d century, and Finge holds a grudge against Twissell for not promoting him quickly enough in the Eternal hierarchy. Harlan mistakes Finges animosity on account of his connection with Twissell for jealousy over Noys. For safety, he spirits his lover away to the far future, stashing her in the year 111,394.

Meanwhile, Harlan becomes more absorbed in his hobby, studying the history of the primitive period before Eternity was developed in the 27th century. For some reason, he is encouraged by Twissell in this direction and even assigned to teach a young Cub everything he knows about the subject. Finally, Twissell reveals that the Cub is none other than Vikkor Mallansohn, the inventor of the Temporal Field.

Mallansohn is being encouraged to learn about primitive history because he must be returned to the distant past to reenact his discovery. If this historical circle is not closed, Eternity will never be constructed in the first place. History would run wild without the benefit of the changes in reality continually being made by the Eternals. Their main fear is that atomic weapons will be allowed to come into existence too early and that humanity will destroy itself.

Noys Lambent has a different point of view. Her homewhen is a far, far future period that has independently developed its own form of time travel. She and her era want to terminate Eternity because it has frustrated all attempts to explore space. The adventurous spirit that might have destroyed Earth in a nuclear holocaust also would have made it possible to develop faster-than-light space travel. This lack of spirit means that humanity has not been able to take its place among the stars with other intelligent species.

Noys returns with Harlan to the primitive era ostensibly to help Mallansohn close the circle and preserve Eternity. By this time, Harlan has discovered her true origins and motives. With his blaster trained on Noys, Harlan is faced with a stark choice. On one side is the status quo, with the Eternal’s “perfecting”, through reality changes, an Earth that continues to shrink in spirit and creativity. On the other hand is his passion for Noys. On her side are the potential for both nuclear annihilation and unlimited exploration into the expanding universe. Harlan chooses love and renders changing history impossible. He takes the rest of humanity with him as he leaps onto the terrifying path of irrevocable action. Eternity ends, but infinity begins.(less)

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Nov 02, 2012 Esk rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Ами ако... ?
Това е въпросът, в който често ни съветват да не задълбаваме прекалено, когато си мислим или обсъждаме исторически събития и грешки, сторени през отдавна отминали епохи. Миналото няма как да се промени, от него можем само да се поучим и да продължим напред. И да се надяваме, че ще помним достатъчно дълго грешките си, за да не ги повторим.

Ами ако все пак е възможно да променяме миналото?
Представете си свят, в който човечеството е открило пътуването във времето. Открито е темпоралното...more Ами ако... ?
Това е въпросът, в който често ни съветват да не задълбаваме прекалено, когато си мислим или обсъждаме исторически събития и грешки, сторени през отдавна отминали епохи. Миналото няма как да се промени, от него можем само да се поучим и да продължим напред. И да се надяваме, че ще помним достатъчно дълго грешките си, за да не ги повторим.

Ами ако все пак е възможно да променяме миналото?
Представете си свят, в който човечеството е открило пътуването във времето. Открито е темпоралното поле, а в него е създадена Вечността - през нея се осъществява пътуване във Времето от един Век в друг.
Хората от повечето Векове знаят за съществуването на Вечността - тя е свръзката между тях и представлява търговска структура за междувремеви стокообмен.
Това, разбира се, е истина. Но не цялата истина.
Обитателите на Вечността се подбират от Времето - за да вземат един Временен (както те наричат живеещите във Вековете) и да го обучат за Вечен, той трябва да има много качества и търговският нюх не е сред най-значителните. Защото истинската работа на Вечните е не търговията, а Промените на Реалността. Вечните правят постоянни изменения в ключови точки от човешката история, за да избегне човечеството големите грешки и да му бъдат спестени един куп бедствия и страдания.
Вечните вярват в правотата си и в ползата от това, което правят.
Но дали то наистина е добро за човечеството или е най-голямата грешка в историята?(less)

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Sep 22, 2012 Zeo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: directly-political-commentary, being-the-other, only-angry-people-change-the-world, spec-fic, time-travel

I checked out this book because it was the only Asimov available through Library2Go. This immediate-gratification approach has gotten me into trouble before, and I was immediately wary by the short description of the plot being about what happens when a time-traveler falls in love (not necessarily a problem, but sci fi of the time tended to be, well, it puts Philip K Dick's female stereotypes into perspective, or at least puts them at home). And for a fair portion of this book, I was pretty sure...more I checked out this book because it was the only Asimov available through Library2Go. This immediate-gratification approach has gotten me into trouble before, and I was immediately wary by the short description of the plot being about what happens when a time-traveler falls in love (not necessarily a problem, but sci fi of the time tended to be, well, it puts Philip K Dick's female stereotypes into perspective, or at least puts them at home). And for a fair portion of this book, I was pretty sure I should have listened to that wariness and avoided the book.

And then, about halfway through at a point where I had decided that I could take or leave the book, there is a moment where Asimov identifies the question of contained socially normative and expected physical modifications when transplanting a modified person to another time or place, and I was so struck by his finger on that question, his description of a particular character in that situation struggling to find a way to relate to the politics of this book's time travel circumstances and humanity, that I skipped a breath. I started paying more attention after that. Was this commentary on circumcision (something Asimov may have had his mind on, as a Jewish man with at least some interests in assimilation), or, as a friend suggested, a reference to contemporary Beat themes of alienation and otherness? Both are interesting possibilities. I've been needling at this question for years, as a transgender person navigating the implications in different social spaces of my own body.

So here's the deal. Asimov's ultimate argument of the book, in fact, is that (view spoiler). Same friend asked: do I agree? And all I could come up with was, in a bureaucracy, usually, and in a more anarchistic circumstance, probably much less so. But the strength of the book, which that argument rests on, is in exploring some of the ways being separated from a given time changes our experience of society, of people; and further, what it might be like as one of a select group of people with the ability to make changes in time. An important point that I felt Asimov identified but didn't explore as well as I might have liked was the way in which the Technicians, the group who can make changes in time, were scorned and mistrusted. Perhaps another Jewish theme, perhaps another Beat theme? Either way, Asimov asks a number of startling questions and makes some solid attempts to answer them, often with some playful experiments with paradoxes.

But, ugh, the whole love story was pretty terrible. Man loves the woman because she listens to him and he has discovered that he has a sex drive, woman loves the man because women are soft and fall in love with things like awkward, angsty, standoffish men with pent-up unused sexualities. Right? What?(less)

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Aug 21, 2012 Lynley rated it 3 of 5 stars

5 stars for the start, 2 stars for the middle, 5 stars for the ending.

This book has among the best beginnings I've ever read. I must have picked this book up about 10 years ago but it wasn't my book so I only read the first chapter or so. That first chapter stayed in my mind long after I'd forgotten the title, but in a commitment to find out what happened next, I finally sniffed out this Isaac Asimov book and read the rest.

Naturally, an impression such as that was never going to live up to my ex...more 5 stars for the start, 2 stars for the middle, 5 stars for the ending.

This book has among the best beginnings I've ever read. I must have picked this book up about 10 years ago but it wasn't my book so I only read the first chapter or so. That first chapter stayed in my mind long after I'd forgotten the title, but in a commitment to find out what happened next, I finally sniffed out this Isaac Asimov book and read the rest.

Naturally, an impression such as that was never going to live up to my expectations. From what I've read about Isaac Asimov the author, he was fairly forward looking for his time, and not just in scientific thinking. One of his non-fiction books is called 'The Intelligent Man's Guide To Science', which today seems hopelessly sexist, but apparently Asimov himself didn't want such a sexist title. Unfortunately, the publisher had the final say, because that's just how things were in those days.

In this story, a small part of me is sad that Asimov couldn't imagine a workforce which included women as equals. I know, it seems churlish to even bring this point up, because the whole point of the book is that humankind failed to evolve. But even today there is a subculture of men who still react as Andrew Harlan did to an attractive woman in the workforce, blaming her for attracting him because of the fashion of the day. This was a necessary part of the plot, but it conjured up unpleasant political feelings that I'd been hoping to avoid in a work of science fiction. Even a mind such as Asimov's failed to predict how much feminism would advance in the few short years immediately following his death. That's not the only thing he failed to predict and it seems pointless criticising him for any of it, in a way.

The plot got a bit complex halfway through and I'd stopped focusing on the nit-picky details after a while, because this is a story after all. According to actual science, time travel to the past isn't even theoretically possible, so I went all out and suspended disbelief of everything. (I'm sure SF fans are well-used to doing this, but I still have my training wheels.) This skipping over the details meant that I lost the plot a bit. My main problem, though, was with the concept of human evolution. I suspect humans are devolving physically while evolving culturally. That is entirely possible. Those two different types of evolution weren't separated, instead lumped into one.

The ending was superb. I was really wondering how Asimov might tie things up in a satisfactory way, and he did it. A few years ago I read The Never-Ending Days Of Being Dead by Marcus Chown, which blew my mind. Had I not already read that, and been introduced to the idea of infinite realities, this book may have blown my mind too.

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Aug 12, 2012 Javier Atapuerca rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Aunque pueda ser una sorpresa para muchos, éste fue el primer libro de Isaac Asimovque me leí. Estaba en la Universidad, y estaba cansado de que todo el mundo me dijera que era lectura obligada. Así que cuando llegué un día al Colegio Mayor, y vi que uno de mis compañeros tenía este libro, se lo pedí inmediatamente, sin encomendarme ni a Dios ni al Diablo. Desde entonces he leído bastante más del viejo profesor, pero le tengo especial cariño a este libro. Para empezar, trata de viajes temporales...more

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May 20, 2012 Senthil Kumaran rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book can take you through a roller coaster ride. The alternate planes of existence, time-travel in both directions and hierarchical society of a far future (500 th centuries and beyond). The existence of eternals in a band called Eternity and politics of that society is excellently portrayed. The highest in order of eternals is a computer which oversees things ans assign's the job to technicians. The "allwhen council" is body of experts who are considered to be at the top of eternity. The s...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, science-fiction-time-travel

I recently realized that I had never read this book, and set out to rectify the omission. While dated in odd ways [the incredibly powerful computers print out results on a form of punch tape], the basic premise of the book holds up well.
One of the problems with most time travel books is that they have to weasel around the "Niven paradox," which suggests that if time travel is possible, and if you can influence your past, then eventually someone from your future will influence you, and perhaps ev...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Horse N. rated it 5 of 5 stars

I do not hold Asimov in the same regard as most sci-fi readers do. But this book shows his genius. I've stated in other reviews that I'm a sucker for a good time travel story. This is probably the best I've read so far.

There is a "space" outside of the normal time continuum. There's an organization, simply called Eternity, that works in that space and oversees all of time (well, most of time). The organization runs very much like a military operation, without obvious weapons. Ah, but they techn...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Jessica Strider rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pros: clever plotting, hard SF/

Cons: protagonist is not particularly likable and is surprisingly naive and narcissistic/

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, those who live outside time, Observe and create Reality Changes which positively affect the greatest number of people throughout history. Only two periods are unaffected by them - the prehistoric age, before time travel was invented, and the far FAR flung future. /

Harlan's skill as an Observer in the 482nd attracts the attention of Computer Twissell...more Pros: clever plotting, hard SF/

Cons: protagonist is not particularly likable and is surprisingly naive and narcissistic/

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, those who live outside time, Observe and create Reality Changes which positively affect the greatest number of people throughout history. Only two periods are unaffected by them - the prehistoric age, before time travel was invented, and the far FAR flung future. /

Harlan's skill as an Observer in the 482nd attracts the attention of Computer Twissell, who arranges for him to become a Technician (someone who actually performs the change) and teach his hobby of primitive history to a student./

On an assignment back to the 482nd, he meets the beautiful, non-Eternal, Noys Lambent, who changes his life. He breaks numerous laws to rescue her from the proposed change to her era and makes plans to request her removal from time so they can stay together. /

Naturally, things don't go as smoothly as he hoped they would./

For some reason I always think of Asimov as a writer who's concerned more with science and plot than character. While the science is sound (even to mentioning how time travel can work with the movement of the Earth around the sun), and the plot is clever, character development isn't neglected. /

Harlan begins the book as a self-absorbed resident. He works hard and resents how the others who work towards the changes they all make in history shun him as one of those who actually performs the changes. Meeting Noys changes him. He initially becomes more narcissistic and paranoid, then slowly learns to smile and enjoy his time with her./

The question of why she's interested in him is satisfactorily answered by the end of the book when the plot within a plot is revealed. And by this time, as a reader, I'd warmed to him./

While I am happy to see this title brought back into print, I was annoyed to find that the publisher's cover copy was misleading in terms of the book's plot. Asimov told a fantastic story, just not quite the one the publisher lead me to expect./

If you're not a hard SF fan, don't despair. He includes enough science to understand the plot but doesn't bog down the story with pages of explanation.(less)

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Aug 04, 2011 Jake Hawken rated it 4 of 5 stars

While I'm not entirely convinced that the concepts the drive the book make any sense, Asimov managed to make it a compelling read nonetheless. And not just a compelling story, but a compelling scifi story, which is strange considering the fact that the coherency of the concept is in question. I guess the way that works is that even though the foundational concepts are dubious, he raises questions right along with you and eventually makes it so the problems you had with the story at the beginning...more While I'm not entirely convinced that the concepts the drive the book make any sense, Asimov managed to make it a compelling read nonetheless. And not just a compelling story, but a compelling scifi story, which is strange considering the fact that the coherency of the concept is in question. I guess the way that works is that even though the foundational concepts are dubious, he raises questions right along with you and eventually makes it so the problems you had with the story at the beginning become less important as the story progressed.

My big problem: Ok, I just have to get this out there. The whole story is based on the concept that an organization built a sort of space station which exists OUTSIDE OF SPACE AND TIME, and makes changes to the course of human history to ensure the maximum amount of happiness and minimum amount of suffering. But then he brings in these whackjob concepts like inter-century import/export. Is that as dumb as it sounds to me? Because that sounds pretty dumb to me. Also, in this extratemporal station, called Eternity, you ride what is basically an elevator from one century to the next. So, it's like a skyscraper where each floor is a different century, and on each floor, there are people assigned to analyze and monitor the the goings on of that century. BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO EXISTING OUTSIDE OF TIME, ASIMOV? If this place exists outside of time, then why is do you move through time within it? And yes, they have their own, separate time that they refer to as "physiotime", but that's not what they different levels of Eternity are devoted to. They're devoted to different centuries in the real world. I challenge anyone to make sense of this. If you're outside of time, you don't have to travel THROUGH time to get to a point IN time. Am I taking crazy pills?

OK, but like I said, the quality of the story overshadows these horrible concepts, so let's move on.

True to form, Asimov keeps his cards close to his vest and blasts you with a Full House at the end that you didn't ever think possible. While not unique to this particular book, Asimov's ability to have a main character who is withholding knowledge not only from the other characters but from the reader, and the fact that when the main character reveals his knowledge that the reader doesn't feel cheated, are both amazing things. He's a consummate scifi writer, no matter how silly he was to think that in the distant future everything would be on microfiche and perforated foil. (But can we blame him? This book came out in 1955.)

If you like scifi, and if you like to think, and definitely if you like Isaac Asimov, I think this is definitely one to check out.(less)

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Jul 28, 2011 Christian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asimov, ciencia-ficcion

"El Fin De La Eternidad" es una obra atípica de Isaac Asimov, como una especie de isla abandonada en la inmensidad de los mundos a los que me tiene acostumbrado Asimov. Nada de viajes interespaciales ni ciudades con avances científicos o tecnológicos inimaginables. Ni siquiera robots o androides. Se puede decir sin dudar que hablamos de una obra atemporal, haciendo un juego de palabras con la historia que nos cuenta.
Andrew Harlan forma parte de los llamados Eternos, y es lo que denominan un "Eje...more "El Fin De La Eternidad" es una obra atípica de Isaac Asimov, como una especie de isla abandonada en la inmensidad de los mundos a los que me tiene acostumbrado Asimov. Nada de viajes interespaciales ni ciudades con avances científicos o tecnológicos inimaginables. Ni siquiera robots o androides. Se puede decir sin dudar que hablamos de una obra atemporal, haciendo un juego de palabras con la historia que nos cuenta.
Andrew Harlan forma parte de los llamados Eternos, y es lo que denominan un "Ejecutor", uno de los encargados de llevar a cabo los cambios necesarios en una época determinada de la historia de la humanidad, esto es, viajando en el tiempo, para obtener unos resultados deseados en un futuro a años o siglos desde ese momento. Un Ejecutor debe seguir unas normas muy estrictas y claras, no debe mostrar emociones o sentimientos hacia las personas o a la sociedad con la que trabaja, ya que afectaría a las decisiones que tome, las cuales siempre terminan haciendo que esas personas cambien o que ciertos aspectos de ese tiempo en concreto dejen de existir tras realizar un cambio. Todo empieza a complicarse y a dar razón a la existencia del libro cuando Harlan se enamora de una chica de la clase alta del siglo 482º, un siglo donde tiene que producirse un cambio, y es cuando él decide saltarse las normas acarreando con las consecuencias del proyecto de la Eternidad para los futuros siglos.
Aquí empieza a verse el intrincado laberinto temporal en el que nos sumerge Asimov, llegando a los lejanos "Siglos Ocultos" más allá del 70000º, donde por motivos desconocidos (sólo al principio, claro), no se sabe nada de la Humanidad, ni si ha dejado de existir o si ha migrado hacia otras galaxias,... todo esto se resume en una novela que puede llegar a confundir al principio por los términos inventados por Asimov para describir la función de los Eternos en la Tierra, pero que no se hace para nada demasiado larga, y sabe cómo llevar la trama y cerrarla de muy buena manera.

Cronológiamente hablando en los mundos creados por Asimov, este libro se podría situar como una precuela a la saga de la Fundación, donde nos sitúa en un prólogo a los inicios de la expansión de la humanidad en el hiperespacio y a los inicios del Imperio Galáctico.(less)

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Jul 12, 2011 J. Luis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Antes de dar mi opinión sobre el libro quiero avisar de que la ciencia ficción no es uno de mis géneros preferidos, pero eso no significa que no disfrute con ella. Aún tengo reciente el I Concurso de Ciencia Ficción de Zonaebook, y supongo que la lectura de los ciento y pico relatos que se presentaron me hace verla desde entonces con ojos diferentes.
La historia de El fin de la Eternidad me ha parecido entretenida, con dos temas bien diferenciados, la historia de amor entre el protagonista y una...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Anne Toronto1 rated it 2 of 5 stars

** "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov builds a place where Technicians make Changes in time to ensure a safe secure better future, but certain high centuries are inaccessible, beyond which man does not exist. Eternal Andrew, tempted by beauty, falls in love, and takes Timer Noys out illegally. Mistakes and machinations entangle them unknowing in superiors' plots to drastically delete one future direction. The primitive 20th centuries expert must decide the winners, travel in time or space. Th...more

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Apr 24, 2011 i_hate_books rated it 1 of 5 stars

BOOK PUT DOWN STATUS:
20 pages in.

Good ol' Isaac Asimov. I thought I'd give him a go, having never read any of his work before. The big one, apparently, is the "Foundation" series. After reading the blurb on the back of that book, I decided to save myself a put-down and not start. Stories about trying to build a utopian world aren't for me. It had ended my interest in Orsen's otherwise excellent "Alvin Maker" series when the goal of building the crystal city was introduced.

But time travel... m...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

I expected more, but Azimov wrote this around 1950.

Amazon Review:

One of Isaac Asimov’s SF masterpieces, this stand-alone novel is a monument of the flowering of SF in the 20th century. It is widely regarded as Asimov’s single best SF novel and one every SF fan should read.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a member of the elite of the future. One of the few who live in Eternity, a location outside of place and time, Harlan’s job is to create carefully controlled and enacted Reality Changes. These Chan...more

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Jul 02, 2010 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I can remember reading this decades ago and thinking it was the least satisfying of the Asimov novels I'd encountered so far. (This was a long while before he re-entry into the field with the gasbaggy recursions.) For about the first half of this new reading I was thinking much the same -- in part because it took me a while to adjust to Asimov's flat, deliberately unflowery (I'm tempted to say deflowered!) style. The characters seemed to be comic-book stereotypes, with unsubtle, adolescent react...more I can remember reading this decades ago and thinking it was the least satisfying of the Asimov novels I'd encountered so far. (This was a long while before he re-entry into the field with the gasbaggy recursions.) For about the first half of this new reading I was thinking much the same -- in part because it took me a while to adjust to Asimov's flat, deliberately unflowery (I'm tempted to say deflowered!) style. The characters seemed to be comic-book stereotypes, with unsubtle, adolescent reactions and motivations. I was concerned, too, that there seemed to have been almost zero physical or even cultural evolution over periods of millions of years.

But, now that I've finished the book, I realize that a lot of this was deliberate on Asimov's part: he was trying to present a society in which people had become that way because of (a) their constant exercise, however benign the intent, of the power of life and death over billions and (b) a long, self-imposed cultural isolation from others not of their kind -- even including, because this society is almost exclusively male, an isolation from women. This isolation despite the fact that the society's denizens are viewing and on occasion interacting with all human cultures over a period of no fewer than 70,000 centuries.

I'm kind of getting ahead of myself.

Eternity is a sort of timeless but dimensional structure created to exist alongside Time (the capital T is deliberate). It's possible to travel "upward" and "downward" in Eternity, as if by elevator, from the time of its creation in the 27th century to the very far future, stopping off along the way to view or enter Time. The people who live within Eternity have as their task the regulation of trade between different periods and the monitoring of Time to ensure that, always, all will work out for the best for humanity in the best of all possible worlds. They do this by giving Time's reality occasional -- or not so occasional -- tweaks, these manipulations bringing into being new and supposedly preferable realities, whose substitution for the status quo ante will do good in the relatively short term and won't in the longer term adversely affect the triumphant story of humankind.

As a Technician, one of the castes in the rigidly stratified society of Eternity, Andrew Harlan is one of those whose task it is to effect such Minimum Necessary Changes (MNCs) -- and he's an expert at it. One day he's virtually thrown by his superiors at Noys, a beautiful aristocrat from the 482nd century, when fashions in female clothing were conveniently scanty. Soon, despite Andrew's determined Man-of-Steel persona, they become lovers -- in case it's an obsessive love, one that barely flickers when it's broken to him that there's a superstition rife in Noys' time that women can become immortal through boffing Eternity employees. (Now, I wonder who could have started that rumour?) The liaison is in a legal grey area; but when Andrew discovers the next MNC in the 482nd century will eliminate Noys's existence entirely, he starts breaking every law in Eternity's books.

Adventures ensue.

In the final stages of the book we find that Andrew has been thoroughly manipulated -- not simply, as he himself elicits, by those in the Eternity hierarchy who're using him to help set up the closed time loop that is necessary if the creation of Eternity is to have been effected in the past, but more complexly by the inhabitants of the very, very far future, who have realized the existence of Eternity will eventually doom our species and have sent back Noys to engineer, through manipulation of numerous others as well as Andrew, a situation where Eternity has never been invented:

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. (p180)

This is a point subtly different from, and very much more interesting than, the usual free-will speculations and philosophizing I'd been expecting -- although there are some of these as well. In this light, we have to recast our ideas of what all of the earlier text was actually about -- as indicated above, suddenly so many things that had seemed like defects or clumsinesses are instead revealed as yet another piece of manipulation, this time of the reader by the author! It's a wonderful piece of volte-facery.(less)

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Mar 27, 2010 Steven Peterson rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of Asimov's best science fiction novels. . . . As with his best works, there are rand themes at play. Here, the control of history to "benefit" humanity. . . . His characters are, as in many of his works little more than vehicles for moving the story forward. Still, the characters are a step beyond those of the original Foundation series, for instance.

People are recruited from different points in history to serve as “Eternals,” who can travel forward and backward in time and, hopefully, use...more

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Feb 07, 2010 Tomhl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was written the year I was born, about 54 years ago. The concept is that time travel was discovered in the 24th century, and that in the 27th a continuum known as "Eternity" was established. Eternity is a habitation outside of "Time", where agents study and make changes to reality after careful mathematical study of "minimum necessary change" versus "maximum desired effect" to improve the lives of the most number of humans. For example, they have repeatedly made revisions of history su...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

While reading The End of Eternity I was thinking of a discussion with my friend Nate about the politics of Asimov's Foundation. He wrote that the Foundation series, especially the first book, was a critique of conservatism because each crisis in the book was resolved by the Foundation abandoning solutions that had worked in the past in favor of something new. I agreed, but thought that the entire series, especially the role of the Second Foundation, could be read as a critique of a certain type...more While reading The End of Eternity I was thinking of a discussion with my friend Nate about the politics of Asimov's Foundation. He wrote that the Foundation series, especially the first book, was a critique of conservatism because each crisis in the book was resolved by the Foundation abandoning solutions that had worked in the past in favor of something new. I agreed, but thought that the entire series, especially the role of the Second Foundation, could be read as a critique of a certain type of liberalism (really social democracy) in which an unaccountable elite manipulates society.

This book returns (it was published in 1955, a few years after the last of the "classic" Foundation series) to similar questions and resolves them in what seems to be a more straightforward way. It concerns an organization called "Eternity," which exists outside time and manipulates human history to minimize suffering, apparently on the basis of some kind of utilitarian calculation. The Eternals are human, but they use their ability to enter and leave the timestream to prevent wars, famines, widespread poverty, etc. One of the big questions of the book is whether this is a good idea and Asimov gives a pretty clear answer that isn't strictly leftist or rightist.

SPOILERS in the next few paragraphs.

At the end of the book, we learn that Eternity has caused the extinction of the human race by robbing us of our spirit of innovation and adventure (basically). Their emphasis on comfort and security make humanity stagnant and risk-averse such that when we encounter alien races in the far future who are ahead of us, we lose the will to live. Obviously, this could be read as (and possibly is) a critique of the welfare state. There are some implicit Social Darwinist elements about racial competition and striving that are positively fascist.

But I don't think that's really what the book is saying. Much like Heinlein's supposedly libertarian The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, this is a book about the frontier. One of the weakest parts of the ending is the claim that humanity has an innate drive to explore space. Because this was quashed by Eternity as too risky and too expensive, humanity lost it's spark. This claim is, to put it mildly, highly dubious when applied to humanity as a whole. But in the context of American history and the myth of frontier, it makes a lot more sense that Asimov would write that in the 1950s.

Shifting to another topic, I think the philosophical ramifications of this big question are dampened by the way Asimov portrays Eternity. One character calls the psychopaths at the end, and this is meant to ring true. The idea is that because they have been separated from their families and times, denied the ability to form their own family or any meaningful connection to other people, and forced into an impersonal bureaucracy, the Eternals are hopelessly damaged. Obviously one can imagine that holding a position like that, in which you're responsible for literally changing history, would produce psychological stresses that might well be too much for any human to handle. But I think Asimov goes too far in making their rules inhuman. Obviously, by the nature of existing outside time, they're going to be isolated from their pre-Eternal past. But it's not clear to me why they couldn't form relationships among themselves, why they're practically forced to be celebate, or why they all have to be men (within the logic of the story: I understand that given Asimov's 1955 outlook, they were all going to be men). It's impossible to defend Eternity at the end of this book, in contrast to the way that similar questions about the Second Foundation are much more open-ended.

END SPOILERS

I also feel obligated to mention that the theory of history in this book is almost exactly the opposite of that in Foundation and makes much less sense. With psychohistory, the idea is that history is shaped by social and economic forces beyond the control of any one individual. Predictions are made by ignoring individual behavior and studying society in the aggregate.

In The End of Eternity, Asimov keeps the emphasis on social history but changes the conception of causation. The Eternals are concerned with stopping wars, sure, but they spend more time talking about removing undesireable social traits, such as inequality. But the manipulations they make are always aimed at individuals. For example, the first "Change" that the main character, Andrew Harlan, makes is to move an item from one shelf to another. This prevents an individual from being able to find it when he's in a white-hot rage, which allows him to calm down and produces world changing consequences.

I can certainly imagine many instances where a small change of this kind would produce profound changes at the level of events (to borrow Braudel's terminology). Princip's pistol jams, Franz Ferdinand lives, and WWI doesn't begin in 1914, for example. But at the level of social structures, I don't see such accidents being as effective in producing change. In the story, there's some handwaving about gigantic computers that calculate these minute changes to have maximum effect (although it's also something that's within the intuitive capacity of individuals, but that's another story). And, obviously, for this story to work you have to be able to make those kinds of changes. But I personally found it a little disappointing.(less)

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Oct 19, 2011 Sainte rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Isaac Asimov is a genius who writes the most interesting, complex yet easy to read & understand stories, novels & series of novels. His books stay with you long after reading - in that really good way - like the ghost of a best friend, or a beautiful melody haunting your memory for weeks after you've heard it or this season's final episode of Breaking Bad. You wish you could watch it again, not knowing the outcome, just like the first time you watched it, so the tension would stay the sa...more

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May 09, 2009 Anand Srinivas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: asimov

I'm a SF buff, a big Asimov fan, and I'd rate this book among his very best. Having read through most of Asimov's Robot and Foundation series, what drew me to read The End of Eternity was the often mentioned fact that this book describes why Asimov's fictional universe panned out the way it did. And I wasn't disappointed. What a story!

One of the things I like most about Asimov's SF is how small and insignificant it makes you feel when it speaks about millions of inhabited planets spread across t...more

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About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born, American author, a professor of biochemistry, and a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

Professor Asimov is generally considered the most prolific writer of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He has works published in nine of the te...more Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born, American author, a professor of biochemistry, and a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

Professor Asimov is generally considered the most prolific writer of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He has works published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (lacking only an entry in the 100s category of Philosophy).

Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, a title many still honor. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of nonfiction. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.

Most of Asimov's popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include his Guide to Science, the three volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery.

Asimov was a long-time member and Vice President of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs" He took more joy in being president of the American Humanist Association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, a Brooklyn, NY elementary school, and two different Isaac Asimov Awards are named in his honor.

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