Feminine focus Book

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.



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 Google search saved me, I couldn't even remember the title of the book, it was just "that really cool Asimov time-traveling book" in my head). So I bought a used copy, got a few chuckles out of the 1970s sci-fi cover and how short novels used to be (192 pages here), and settled down to read.

Andrew Harlan is one of the so-called Eternals, men (almost invariably men) who have been pulled into kind of a bubble called "Eternity" that exists outside of normal time. Eternity, and a time-traveling machine called the "Kettle" that acts as a type of elevator through the years of the Earth's existence, give them the ability to easily travel backwards and forwards in time. Eternals can change the past, present and future, which they frequently do when they think that society is taking a turn that leads to an undesirable outcome. Strangely, however, the Kettle is inexplicably blocked from stopping anywhere during the 70,000th to the 150,000th centuries, and afterwards lies only emptiness: Earth and its inhabitants are gone.

Love and marriage aren't permitted for Eternals, other than brief sexual liaisons that are required to go through authorized channels. But Andrew, despite his best efforts to avoid it, manages to fall into a relationship, and then love, with a woman, Nöyes Lambert, who has been temporarily brought into Eternity. Soon he finds himself in the middle of not only his own small personal rebellion, but also a series of events that may affect Eternity and change the entire history of the Earth.

I'm vastly relieved to report that The End of Eternity has held up quite well over the decades. It's certainly dated, and for a while I thought I was going to have some fairly serious issues with the secondary role of women in this novel, but that all actually resolved itself quite well in the end (though to explain why would spoil the tale).

The End of Eternity has the retro charm of 1950s science fiction, but with more depth than most sci-fi novels from that age. It has its weaknesses: Asimov's scientific theory and technology for time travel are a little wild and woolly, female characters are non-existent other than Nöyes, and all of the characters except (to some extent) Andrew and Nöyes are strictly one-dimensional. If you can roll with it, however, it's a fun and interesting ride, with a few twists and turns that definitely make the story memorable.

Initial review: I've been asking myself for ages, what was that time travel story of Isaac Asimov's that I loved when I was a teenager? and the question suddenly became more urgent after an interesting discussion I was having with some GR friends about time travel novels we've liked (see the thread to Joe Valdez's review of The Time Traveler's Wife). And it occurred to me to Google "Isaac Asimov time travel," duh, and there it was.

So the four stars here are based purely on my love for this book ages ago, and unfortunately I've found that my teenage taste in books is not always a reliable indicator of literary quality, so don't blame me if you read this and think it's a dud. I'd like to read it again, but I just checked and my local library doesn't have it on their shelves (maybe ILL? Will have to see sometime) so it'll probably be a while before I re-read this. But Uncle Isaac was a big reason for my teenage love for science fiction, which has lasted for my entire life. Just for that, he gets as many stars as I care to dish out. No apologies.