Feb 19, 2008 06:37 PM
1768 Views
The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov
Asimov takes the limits of science fiction and throws them out the window. Welcome to 575th century in a place called eternity, a place where time has no real existence, time travel is more casual than brushing your teeth, and reality has no meaning and can be changed at will, making history obsolete. Asimov does a galactic job of putting together a world farther from our wildest dreams and giving it perfect shape. Explaining the storyline would be futile, and I don’t want to ruin the fun. It mainly involves Andrew Harlan, a technician in eternity, whose job is to make changes in reality, changes which work for the common good. For that he travels to the necessary century and makes a small change which will ultimately have a massive change in reality. He is supposed to have no emotions, but it changes when he meets Noys, and falls in love with her. Problem is, love isn’t a nice thing to fall into for a technician, for then love has to be reviewed and consented by a team and it must be for a specified time, after which the relationship must end. Harlan wants none of this, and thus he takes decisions which could endanger his life and Noys. But, the question is, is he acting of his free will, or was it all calculated and planned for, a series of actions falling perfectly in an equation set into motion a long time ago. Then again, what is time? The novel is mainly a love conquers all kind of story, only this time the love can mean the end or survival of mankind.
My view: The story is excellent, Asimov writes amazingly well, and his setup of Eternity in unbelievable. You’ll raise your eyebrows every few lines and scratch you head at every new fact revealed. The story is well paced and intensely gripping. There are no loose ends, no excess characters and unexplained events. You’ll marvel at the mathematical precision of the story, the exactness with which everything falls into place. The main joy lies in exploring the world of eternity, and wondering if that world is possibly in our future. Throw away your physics book and go for a ride with Asimov.
Recommended to the highest degree possible.
