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giant_crab 's review for:
The End of Eternity
by Isaac Asimov
Despite being a huge Asimov fan, I wasn’t entirely sure about this book for the first third. The main character is kind of a huge jerk and while I love time-travel as a trope, it can often get a bit unstuck if you examine it too much, what with causality and so on. On top of this, it has to be said and said loud: this is a science fiction written by a bloke in the 1950s, and therefore the characterisation of the one female character is... non-existent. When she is finally given a voice, it is simply Asimov’s voice. She is not so much a female character as she is leverage for the story who eventually acts as a sort of tannoy system into the novel from Asimov. So, while that’s disappointing, it’s hardly surprising given the context of writing. Blish, Asimov, Clarke... they were all fairly crap at female characters.
The other thing I’d say is that this is Asimov all over in that it’s a story told in info-dumps. So if that’s not your thing, well... Asimov isn’t your thing and you’ve probably walked away already.
SO, caveats out of the way, this book gets so awesome, literally awesome in the second half. It’s a fascinating concept, well explored with a mixture of lucidity and mystique along with Asimov’s unassailable (and right now, refreshing) endless optimism for the future of the species. The concept of the particular form of time travel and its consequences are explored to their conclusion, and the amount packed into this short novel is dizzying and inspiring.
Asimov’s effectively an essayist who uses characters to demonstrate and simulate his ideas, and knowing and appreciating this from experience, I ended up loving this book, particularly the final quarter which felt like a philosophical rollercoaster ride.
The other thing I’d say is that this is Asimov all over in that it’s a story told in info-dumps. So if that’s not your thing, well... Asimov isn’t your thing and you’ve probably walked away already.
SO, caveats out of the way, this book gets so awesome, literally awesome in the second half. It’s a fascinating concept, well explored with a mixture of lucidity and mystique along with Asimov’s unassailable (and right now, refreshing) endless optimism for the future of the species. The concept of the particular form of time travel and its consequences are explored to their conclusion, and the amount packed into this short novel is dizzying and inspiring.
Asimov’s effectively an essayist who uses characters to demonstrate and simulate his ideas, and knowing and appreciating this from experience, I ended up loving this book, particularly the final quarter which felt like a philosophical rollercoaster ride.