I’ve read a lot of Isaac Asimov, mainly when I was a teen and college student. I had never cracked his short novel The End of Eternity until last week.
If you are familiar with time travel and the various philosophies and paradoxes involved, this book serves up just about every one. And in a mostly entertaining way.
The author has a way with women. First impression, the woman of this novel (and there is only one female character) seems a cringe-worthy product of a scientist’s fantasy. But like many of Asimov’s most memorable women-characters, there’s something more than meets the eye.
There are lots of cigarettes and a good quantity of sexism in this 1955 novel, but the plot structure and multiple twists give the reader a great ride. Recommended as a stand-alone novel independent of most of Asimov’s other series.
I remember this book as being simultaneously entertaining, and one that I wanted to hurl with great force against the nearest wall. What I didn’t like was the protagonists’ constant jacking with the timeline, I put myself in the place of the ones whose lives were being interfered with. But of course they didn’t know they were being interfered with.