adamfortuna
Written on Aug 30, 2016
The best time-travel story since H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, by the Grand Master of science fiction, the story of Andrew Harlan, Technician and Eternal.
Andrew Harlan's job is to range through past and present centuries monitoring and even altering Time's myriad cause-and-effect relationships.
As a Technician with the Allwhen Council, he initiates Reality Changes that may affect the lives of as many as fifty billion people - and a million or more of them may be so drastically affected as to be considered new individulas. Above all, therefore, a Technician must be dispassionate. An emotional make-up is a distinct handicap. Then Harlan meets Noys and falls victim to a phenomenon older than Time itself - love.
Years of self-discipline are cast aside as Harlan uses the awesome techniques of the Eternals to twist Time so that he and Noys might survive... together.
- ISBN10 1429970944
- ISBN13 9781429970945
- Publish Date 5 January 2010 (first published July 1975)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Tor Books
- Format eBook
- Language English
Reviews
Mercy
Written on Jun 26, 2016
empressbrooke
Written on Mar 23, 2012
"In ironing out the disasters of Reality, Eternity rules out the triumphs as well...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?"
Metaphorosis Reviews
Written on Jan 1, 1980
Summary
Andrew Harlan is an Eternal - one of the technicians who keep humanity's progress on the right track across the millenia, but who must live separate from the rest of humanity. Only, Harlan has fallen in love with a non-Eternal woman, and now he's prepared to break all of Eternity's rules.
Review
I’m very familiar with Isaac Asimov’s work. I’ve read all or most of his fiction at least once. Yet when my spouse asked me about this book, I didn’t recall it at all, except a vague memory of a book with Eternity in the title that I didn’t care for at all. I’m still not sure this was it, though looking back at some older covers, I think it may have been.
The End of Eternity gets off to a pretty rocky start, for an Asimov book. The context isn’t entirely clear, and it’s relatively hard to engage with the protagonist. It’s also a book written in 1955, and women get pretty short shrift, though there’s some handwaving to explain it.
It takes the book at least a quarter of its short length to settle in and get going. Even then, the protagonist’s motivation is explained in dribs and drabs. When it is, there’s a fair amount of ‘having’ a woman involved (1950s, again). I admit that I’m not a fan of time travel stories, but Asimov’s version does enough to paper over the inevitable cracks.
It’s only really in the book’s last 20 pages or so that it really takes off. That portion, at least, is Asimov-worthy and interesting. About 65% of the rest, though, is only average, and the beginning 25% isn’t great. A fairly easy read with a good ending, but not Asimov’s best.