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The End of Eternity

Isaac Asimov

4.24 · Rating details · 46,226 ratings · 2,408 reviews

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 ...more

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Paperback, 256 pages

Published March 29th 2011 by Orb Books (first published January 1st 1955)

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Apr 02, 2011 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, audiobook, 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 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. ...more

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Nov 22, 2014 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel, science-fiction, oldies-but-goodies

Final review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:

Re-reading a favorite book from your teenage years is always a risky endeavor. I’ve been dismayed by how often my youthful memories are tarnished by a re-read, and I end up wondering if my taste as a young adult was all in my mouth.

description

But I couldn’t resist trying The End of Eternity (1955) by Isaac Asimov again, partly because I remembered liking it so well as a teenager, but my memories of it were so extremely hazy (for the longest time, until a Goo ...more

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Dec 01, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 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 :)
...more

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May 29, 2018 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-shelf, sci-fi

I just had to do a little retro SF catch-up, grabbing those old classics by big-name SF authors that I haven't yet had the pleasure to read, and this one kept cropping up as one of the best of the best by Asimov.

You know, OTHER than Foundation and the Robot novels. Of which, a few are sub-par. We'll ignore all of these for now and focus on this standalone.

About time travel in a kettle, kinda like Wells' time machine, only let's make a society of men, only men, living outside of time a-la Time L I just had to do a little retro SF catch-up, grabbing those old classics by big-name SF authors that I haven't yet had the pleasure to read, and this one kept cropping up as one of the best of the best by Asimov.

You know, OTHER than Foundation and the Robot novels. Of which, a few are sub-par. We'll ignore all of these for now and focus on this standalone.

About time travel in a kettle, kinda like Wells' time machine, only let's make a society of men, only men, living outside of time a-la Time Lords and have our MC be a pre-Doctor kind of character who's ACTUALLY willing to fall in love with a girl and is willing to DESTROY this little bubble of Eternity for her sake.

You know, because a society of nothing but men will obviously think with nothing more than the spout of their kettles.

And don't get me started on this 50's assumption that only men can do the work, but because even Asimov recognized all that and turned her into a femme fatale and made the girls more badass than the boys. So we learn. LATER. :) So let's move on from there.

This is basically Doctor Who on steroids and less buddy-buddy unique eras and a hardcore dive into escaping a whole society of time travelers who meddle with the past to erase the really bad stuff, fixing whole timelines on massive scales over vast time periods... ALL FOR THE SAKE OF TIPPING HIS TEAKETTLE.

Oh, and he decides it's okay to destroy all the Time Lords. Ahem. Sorry. Eternals.

What could have been a relatively average and not bad at all novel right HERE is then given the full Asimov twist and he turns it into a full adventure with deeper and deeper intrigue, reversals, surprises, reveals, and mystery. Not bad, Asimov. And then he even goes for the short-story twist at the end and makes us re-evaluate EVERYTHING that has happened before in a new light.

NOT BAD AT ALL.

So if you can get over the naming conventions and the cardboard cutout characters and the whole psychosexual mess, I can ABSOLUTELY PROMISE YOU that there's a very fine and fun novel in here. :) Worthy of anything we've got today and somewhat more ambitious, even with the length, than most of the same.

I'm very glad to have read this. :) ...more

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Dec 05, 2020 Manuel Antão rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Feynman Diagram Backwards: "The End of Eternity" by Isaac Asimov

“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 makin ...more

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Nov 24, 2012 sologdin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: burns-like-cold-iron

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 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. ...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Ray rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, sci-fic, audio

In many ways, an absolute masterpiece of classic science fiction. Asimov's best stand-alone novel, which is kind of by default due to his other great work Foundation being a series and most of his other science fiction works to be short stories. (And yes, I know The End of Eternity in an indirect way does connect to Foundation.)

The time travel mechanics are mind-boggling in all the best ways. The concept of Eternity which manipulates time century by century, erasing entire realities by constantl ...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Nandakishore Varma rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, isaac-asimov

This is a unique one for Asimov, and not connected to his usual fictional universe. Ironically, this is his first book I tried to read, in Malayalam translation, no less! But either the translation was bad, or the story was untranslatable, or I was too young for it... I dropped it after a few pages. I am glad I did, because I could read the original afresh.

This story is about a group called Eternals who travel outside of linear time, stepping in when required within the time-stream to make thing ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 Rose rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel, science-fiction

Even though I tend to pick them apart, I love stories dealing with time-travel. Most end up creating what should be a paradox or forget little things that I tend to pick up on. Not this one. Asimov did a spectacular job. I thought I had him a couple of times but he covered everything.

Eternity, in this case, is something separate from our reality. The people who live there, the Eternals, have the ability to tweak our reality to produce different outcomes from those that occurred naturally. They s ...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Mark Harding rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Less than 200 pages. The same material nowadays would be expanded to at least 600 pages or probably a trilogy.

Well cool ideas:

* The time shafts are powered by our Sun going supernova in the distant future.
* Idealogical debate between Utilitarianism and ‘adventure’. (And fighting for frontiers) or ‘short term’ safety vs risk and long term growth.
* Everything that happens is intricately played out according to the central plot driver

I suppose because SF writers feel obliged to provide ‘characters ...more

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Nov 07, 2015 fromcouchtomoon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Asimov is doing a couple of things here that raise a dull story to interesting, but you won't be able to catch it until the final two chapters. Dare I say this is a feminist critique of society?... I mean, as critical as a '50s dude from sexist academia could deliver? And delivered in quite possibly the most offensive way possible, at least to modern sensibilities? It partly serves as a polemic against critics of the space program (I smell a colleague confrontation brewing, Asi), partly an effor ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 Nərmin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: sci-fi lovers!

Shelves: hard-science-fiction, parallel-universe-time-travel, classics, best-standalone

I loved this! It is very rare for e to like classic literature, and even though I love science fiction, classic sci-fi bores me with its dry writing style or dull characters. But this book! The cool ideas about time travel, science and society glued me to its pages! The writing style was okay and characters were tolerable. I really loved the ending as it resonates with my ideals (of free (selfish) choice and adventure& growth mindset over safe&boring life). Did I mention I loved the cool-crazy i ...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Amy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, 2012-books-read, time-travel

This is somehow my first Asimov book. At first, I was underwhelmed. However, as the book went forward, I found that there was much more depth to the writing than originally met the eye and that the shallow characters were shallow with a purpose.

Asimov sets up a group of scientist who are outside of time called the Eternals. While everyone on earth thinks that their main job is to facilitate commerce between various centuries, their true function is to manipulate history to make it play out more This is somehow my first Asimov book. At first, I was underwhelmed. However, as the book went forward, I found that there was much more depth to the writing than originally met the eye and that the shallow characters were shallow with a purpose.

Asimov sets up a group of scientist who are outside of time called the Eternals. While everyone on earth thinks that their main job is to facilitate commerce between various centuries, their true function is to manipulate history to make it play out more favorably. Thus, the Eternals have become gods without the people of the world knowing it. They've become puppeteers to a population that doesn't know to fight back, thus leaving the Eternals seemingly untouchable. It makes for an interesting polytheocracy where the people aren't even aware that their scientist have turned themselves into gods.

It seems that only the brightest, most analytical, most unquestioning, most inexperienced in life, and most naive need apply for the job of Eternal. Recruiters would need to find someone who lived their entire life with those qualities to hopefully ensure that they'd not eventually change into someone who would call for a revolution in Eternity because they could no longer agree with the level of control and puppetmastery that the Eternals wield. With such a combination of personality traits, Our Hero falls in love with the first scantily clad woman that throws herself his way. And, in so doing, he puts the very existence of Eternity in peril because he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep her. And upon this small rebellion, our story turns.

An interesting mystery is that the Eternals are shielded from being able to visit the future beyond a certain point. Apparently, future humans don't want the daliance of the Eternals in their affairs. Asimov makes the point that species evolve to adapt to their environment. However, since humans are able to adapt their environments to suit them, he postulates that humans have and will continue to evolve at much slower rates than beings that are unable to modify their environments. So we guess that future humans aren't that much different genetically from present-day humans. One wonders. My next read is Hominids (a book I've been wanting for ages which I received as a birthday gift) which imagines a parallel universe where Neanderthals did not die out or intermix with homo sapiens and eventually became more technologically advanced than we have during the same time period. I have a strong intrigue concerning the what-ifs of our evolutionary might-have-beens or our evolutionary future. I think fiction like this appeals to me simply because I only have one life to live and will never see our evolutionary future thousands or millions of years from now beyond an author's imagination. I'd love to see a far distant future as imagined by Asimov.

I'll certainly read Asimov again. The content of the story was merely okay, but the questions that he created for me while I was reading have left me wanting more. ...more

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May 07, 2009 Anand Srinivas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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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Aug 10, 2008 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, signed-first-or-limited-edition, science-fiction, 1954-1969, on-deck-next, time-travel

4.0 to 4.5 Stars. Superb Asimov story and his best novel not set within the Foundation and Robot Universe.

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Jun 26, 2018 Dave rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-borrowed, science-fiction-classic, science-fiction-all, science-fiction-time-travel

Time Travel!

I am a huge fan of time travel, particularly when it's done well. And, should I expect anything less in the hands of Asimov? Long before we learned how to harness the pathways of time and to make the proper adjustments to each time reality, Asimov bequeathed to us this incredible novel that postulates a world where there me travel exists in a corridor known as Eternity and the Eternals, who live in this narrow corridor, travel tens of thousands of years in something like Wonka's gia ...more

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Nov 29, 2016 Bar Reads rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Officially my favourite book read in 2016!

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Aug 21, 2012 Lynley rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america, sci-fi

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 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.

(Completely unsurprising) Update:

"author Isaac Asimov's proclivity for groping women was so widely known that in 1961, the chair of Chicon III wrote a letter inviting him to give a lecture on "The Power of Posterior Pinching"

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/08/do... ...more

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Jun 16, 2016 Eric Allen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I recently watched a TV series called Steins;gate. It started out as a lighthearted comedy, where a self-proclaimed mad scientist creates a time machine that allows him to send text messages into the past, by making the plate in his microwave turn backwards. It was really funny and entertaining, and then it went really, really dark as all of the consequences to changes in the past that they made with the machine started hitting, and they spent the rest of the series trying to undo or otherwise f I recently watched a TV series called Steins;gate. It started out as a lighthearted comedy, where a self-proclaimed mad scientist creates a time machine that allows him to send text messages into the past, by making the plate in his microwave turn backwards. It was really funny and entertaining, and then it went really, really dark as all of the consequences to changes in the past that they made with the machine started hitting, and they spent the rest of the series trying to undo or otherwise fix all of the changes that they'd made.

Pretty much through the entire series I kept thinking of this book, because Steins;gate really seemed like a m0dernized version of the story. I remembered really enjoying this book when I was in high school, but that was twenty years ago, and early 70s sci-fi usually leaves much to be desired in this day and age. I think a lot of people will agree that this book was pretty influential in the sci-fi community at large over the years. You'll find nods to it in the Back to the Future movies, Timecop, Bill and Ted, and other such time travel movies. And Timelord society in the Tom Baker years of Doctor Who was largely based upon the Eternals in this book. But sometimes, when you go back to the source, it wasn't as good as you remember it being.

In my opinion, this is Asimov's best book. It's slightly better than Foundation, and definitely better than Robots. It hasn't really aged very well, however. It's still a pretty thought-provoking story, but Asimov is pretty dismissive of women, using them as stage props rather than characters, and his characters usually make beige walls look interesting by comparison. It is very much a product of the time in which it was written. Asimov grew up in a world where women were seen as inferior to men, and you can see this attitude in pretty much all of his books. I'm not making excuses for him, just giving explanation as I see it. And I am not, by any means, saying that there's perfect equality between the sexes even now, but we're a far cry closer than we were fifty years ago when this book was written. If this book were to be submitted to a publisher in this day and age, it would likely be tossed out with all the other rubbish submissions they receive. It's still a solid three star book, that I bumped up to four for nostalgia value. If you would like a pretty cool time travel story with a lot of interesting ideas, and don't care that it, in no way comes close to passing the Bechdel Test, you may enjoy this book. If you're looking for a time travel story with actual characters in it, skip The End of Eternity, and go watch Steins;gate instead. Because, seriously, that show was great. ...more

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Aug 20, 2017 Kevin Kuhn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel

Lately, I’ve been a bit nostalgic for classic sci-fi and I’ve been reading some Heinlein and Asimov. I somehow missed this book when I tore through all the Asimov novels way back in my youth. I enjoyed this book, but it does have a significant flaw. The basic premise is mankind’s establishment of Eternity in the 27th century that allowed trade of goods from one century to another. However, those that controlled Eternity also controlled human history.

I loved the big concepts in this novel. The Lately, I’ve been a bit nostalgic for classic sci-fi and I’ve been reading some Heinlein and Asimov. I somehow missed this book when I tore through all the Asimov novels way back in my youth. I enjoyed this book, but it does have a significant flaw. The basic premise is mankind’s establishment of Eternity in the 27th century that allowed trade of goods from one century to another. However, those that controlled Eternity also controlled human history.

I loved the big concepts in this novel. The idea of constructing a structure outside of time, that allows people (Eternals) to monitor and manage mankind is a fun thought experiment. The storyline is good as well, the main character does what no Eternal is supposed to do, fall in love. There is some mystery as well, with some hidden centuries and uncertainty about how eternity was established. I loved the ending, which had a major twist that surprised me. It also got me thinking which, for me, is the sign of a great ending. So, big picture, great novel, with one flaw.
The flaw is the same one I’m seeing in a great number of classic sci fi. Of course, this is well known, I’m just being reminded of it. In this novel, largely only men control and work in eternity. Women occasionally are allowed to cook, clean and do other menial tasks. No kidding, this is the plot. The main character falls in love with a women, mainly because she’s beautiful and he’s had little exposure to women. Their relationship develops because she’s sexy and he’s unable to help himself. There is no real development of their relationship other than physical attraction. For me, it makes the relationship flat and lessens the novel. If you don’t think we have made at least some progress in equality of the sexes, just go back and read some 1950’s science fiction.

Ultimately, I was able to set this aside and chalk it up to prevalent 1950’s thinking. I still enjoyed the broader story, the big concepts, and the excellent ending. I’m still an Asimov and Heinlein fan, it’s just a good reminder that they weren’t perfect. I think character development and development of believable relationships has improved in modern science fiction, but it doesn’t stop me from appreciating all that the classic sci-fi masters created.
...more

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Oct 04, 2015 Maria rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, favorites

This book is amazing. I would say that Asimov is amazing too, but since I’ve only read The End of Eternity, and given the great amount of books that he wrote, that wouldn’t be fair. But nevertheless, the Asimov I saw there is amazing and that’s enough.

Short books are a dangerous thing. They seem the perfect choice if one wants to read but has little time, but may become an endless torment (like Crash) or a time-consuming obsession (like The End of Eternity). In both cases you need to end the bo This book is amazing. I would say that Asimov is amazing too, but since I’ve only read The End of Eternity, and given the great amount of books that he wrote, that wouldn’t be fair. But nevertheless, the Asimov I saw there is amazing and that’s enough.

Short books are a dangerous thing. They seem the perfect choice if one wants to read but has little time, but may become an endless torment (like Crash) or a time-consuming obsession (like The End of Eternity). In both cases you need to end the book as soon as posible (for different reasons), but you also don’t want to do so (again, for different reasons). With The End of Eternity, I felt like I had to finish the book or otherwise I could not do anything else properly, but I could not imagine myself committing such a crime because it was such a great story and there were so many things I didn’t know and only twenty pages to have them explained.

One thing that makes this book so great is, apart from the story itself, the ending. With a slightly different ending, The End of Eternity would have been an incredible piece of shit. Because the characters are good, and the story is very interesting and original, but it’s the end what makes it so beautifully right. It’s that sort of story that makes you feel terribly sad and happy at the same time, and a bit annoyed because the writer has played with you and with the characters and he doesn’t seem to care at all.

I’m amazed at how Asimov could achieve so much with only 189 pages. I’ve read books four times this length with less than a quarter of its inventive and of the characters’ development. Definitely I will read more by Asimov, but I’m afraid to what I’ll find since I loved The End of Eternity so much…

To summarise (and I won’t talk about the story because it’s too short to say something that is not an important spoiler), I would recommend it for many reasons and to many people, but I will leave it on just one question that has been on my mind since I began the book, and that now has an special meaning:

What if we once had Eternity?

...more

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Apr 04, 2015 Jason rated it it was amazing

In a way, it's unfortunate that so much of Asimov's fiction falls into his massive future history of Foundations and robots and galactic empires. And then, in the 80's, Asimov littered his canon with so many subpar prequels and refits and bridges that the few singletons he had were even further buried beneath the onslaught. And that's too bad, because The End of Eternity is the best novel Asimov ever wrote.

It has all the hallmarks of his best work, the supremely cool high concept, the strict lo ...more

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Dec 06, 2012 James Renner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I love going back to the classics. It’s fun to see what inspired modern-day novelists and screenwriters when they were kids. The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov, surely inspired cool stories like The Adjustment Bureau, Fringe, 12 Monkeys, Looper, and Primer.

Check it out: the story is told from the perspective of an “Observer” whose job it is to tweak history so that the aggregate majority of humans live in the highest achievable state of happiness. Just outside of Time is this place called Eter ...more

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May 30, 2016 Ari rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

i've always liked time travel stories and was looking forward for this one coming from DA master. and although i liked the story well enough i think that it becomes convoluted toward the end when it deals with the scientific aspect of his logic in the tale and, hence, looses momentum. in spite of that, the overall premise is really interesting and it deals more with destiny/free will than time travel which is a nice mix always. it amazes me still how many different stories can be created around ...more

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Jan 31, 2019 Leslie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, sci-fi-fantasy

Andrew Harlan bothered me with the way he jumped to conclusions and then proceeded to interpret everything based upon those unjustified conclusions. However, I loved the premise and Asimov gives the reader some unexpected twists in the final quarter of the book.

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Nov 25, 2017 Goran rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites-2017, science-fiction

This book made me think about time travel and space exploration like no other book has done before.

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Jul 25, 2013 Ric rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Re-read of an SF Classic.

There are numerous time travel stories in the literature, including Timescape by Gregory Benford and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch with their multiplying timelines, but this early entry by the master Isaac Asimov, is one of the leading examples of the immutable timeline. In The End of Eternity, mankind has discovered the secret of time travel, and in the process further determined that there is only one reality or timeline, which can be changed to a large or small degree Re-read of an SF Classic.

There are numerous time travel stories in the literature, including Timescape by Gregory Benford and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch with their multiplying timelines, but this early entry by the master Isaac Asimov, is one of the leading examples of the immutable timeline. In The End of Eternity, mankind has discovered the secret of time travel, and in the process further determined that there is only one reality or timeline, which can be changed to a large or small degree by time travelers fiddling with historical events. So is born the controlling organization known as Eternity, formed to ensure that mankind's future is secured by eliminating all events that could lead to his extinction. But is Eternity truly serving mankind with its charter, or by acting as ultimate arbiter of history, in fact, is behaving like a dictatorial overlord of the race?

To my mind, Asimov embodied the essential nature of SF, which is the optimistic belief that man will solve all his problems and challenges with science, and, in this way, control his destiny. Elements of this can be found in the psychohistory of his Foundation books by which man is able to predict his future century by mathematically modelling the historical and present human society and extrapolating forward. Asimov also pioneered the idea that with the same evolutionary path, the emergent species would be humanoid, not that much different from humans of Earth, even without any interchange of data or seed. Hence, we are not out-liers but are the normative life form of this universe. A truly positive viewpoint, polar opposite to the dystopia that has recently prevailed in contemporary SF.

This was a fun re-read, bringing back many memories of my youth, and positive ones certainly. This reminded me of why I read SF, and why it has played a major role in my outlook and world view. Maybe science cannot solve everything, and I know by experience it cannot, but it can set the platform for working things out and focusing on the issues.

...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Tej rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel

This is vintage Asimov, a novel exuding brilliance in imagination and intelligent philosophising of possible future realities. How better to muse about what different realities we can face about the future from near to far to...eternity, without the plot device of time travelling. Asimov puts this plot device to great use by exploring the various destinies that human motives can achieve or fall victim of. The story ingeniously threads these philosophical questions and tells a story about eternit This is vintage Asimov, a novel exuding brilliance in imagination and intelligent philosophising of possible future realities. How better to muse about what different realities we can face about the future from near to far to...eternity, without the plot device of time travelling. Asimov puts this plot device to great use by exploring the various destinies that human motives can achieve or fall victim of. The story ingeniously threads these philosophical questions and tells a story about eternity through another more common and oldest of plot devices, a love story.

The only problem with the story is that the main protagonist, Harlan, is an unlikeable, pitiful and naive character. But there is reward to bare up with him as these attributes are essential to serving the story. We follow his journey as he is recruited through the ranks as an Eternal, a technician serving to make changes in time for reasons I leave for you to discover in the novel.

He is dedicated to his work until he meets a non Eternal woman and falls in love with her. One could interpret as love, lust or even be victim to a love enchantment by the woman, regardless, the effect his feelings for her have on him changes his perspective of his surrounding to that of dangerous paranoia or apparent clarity. And its from here that the author toys with our own perspectives on where this story is going, swinging the pendulum left to right until I became dazed with all the sharp corner turns.

Bizarrely, given the scope of the premise, the narrative is quite claustrophobic but this gives the story a tighter hold. The Journey entails several enjoyable moments of time travel concepts, such as the effects of meeting one's younger self and other time travel cause and effect events. Its highly entertaining.

This is actually quite a short read, perhaps mercifully so as I am not sure I could handle more techno-babble on the Eternals structure and I think I would throw up if the car turned one more sharp corner. So the length is just right, just took a little patience to bare up with the slow and overly technical exposition and Harlan's naivety before the novel grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and whisked me through a twisty philosophical ride in Eternity.

4.5 stars. ...more

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May 18, 2018 Manuel Alfonseca rated it liked it · review of another edition

ENGLISH: This book is quite similar to "Guardians of time" by Poul Anderson, but in a certain sense it is also its opposite. In both cases, time travel is supposed to be possible and the present can be changed by manipulating the past. But in Anderson's series of stories, our far descendants stage the time guardians to prevent those changes in the past that would affect their own existence. What happens in Asimov's novel is quite the opposite. This is understandable, for the end of the novel mak ...more

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Sep 27, 2013 WarpDrive rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Asimov. A great genius - full stop. And this book is one of his masterpieces.
Great plot, original and mind-bending ideas, this masterpiece is still modern today (this book was written in 1955: unbelievable!), and it is one of the best time-travelling books I have ever read. Magical.
Five-plus stars richly deserved.

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About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

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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 one of the most prolific writers 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 o 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 one of the most prolific writers 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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Isaac Asimov. (2007, November 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:50, November 29, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As... ...more

Books by Isaac Asimov

The Foundation Trilogy (Foundation, #1-3)

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“The final end of Eternity, and the beginning of Infinity” — 51 likes

“It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests. Can you understand that? Can you understand that in averting the pitfalls and miseries that beset man, Eternity prevents men from finding their own bitter and better solutions, the real solutions that come from conquering difficulty, not avoiding it?” — 22 likes

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