Fiction Reviews
The End of Eternity
(1955/2025) Isaac Asimov, Harper Voyager, £9.99, pbk, 242pp, ISBN 978-0-008-73900-3
Isaac Asimov was one of the mid-twentieth century 'giants' of western SF (along with Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein) and this classic Asimov, The End of Eternity, came I out in the middle of one of his most prolific periods of SF novel writing (he wrote much else including collaborations and a large amount of popular science). It was during the 1950s that he wrote his 'Robot', 'Galactic Empire' and the original 'Foundation' trilogy. This is not a trivial point, and I'll return to it later.
Though The End of Eternity came out in the US in 1955, it did not appear in the British Isles until 1959 (Panther Books) and was promptly reprinted in Britain most years through to the early 1970s. Harper Voyager first published it in 2000 and this is their 2025 reprint. In short, this book has had a steady publishing life over the past 70 years and over thirty years since the author's passing.
Indeed, as we shall see, though this novel deals with a core SF trope, 'time travel', it was only one of two principal occasions that Asimov used time travel as the basis of one of his principal SF novels.
The story concerns one Andrew Harlan who is an Eternal, a member of what is effectively the time police force: 'Eternity'. He is a specialist who monitors potential changes in the time line and sees what effects they will have, and sometimes even initiates such alterations. Eternity's purpose is to ensure that humanity survives and flourishes. Members of Eternity travel up and down the timeline in 'kettles': it is a bit like a lift travelling up and down a shaft. However, there are some centuries – the 'Hidden Centuries' – that are cut-off from the Eternals: the 70,000th to the 150,000th centuries. Also, Eternals are unable to routinely travel to times before the 27th century (or 'downwhen terminus), when the temporal field establishing Eternity was created.
At the far end of Eternity – deep into the future – there is the Sun's supernova and part of this event's tremendous energy is what powers the whole Eternity operation.
Andrew Harlan has a particular, personal fascination the Primitive times before the downwhen terminus. This comes to the attention of Senior Computer Laban Twissell, the Dean of the Allwhen Council, who instructs Harlan to teach a newcomer, Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, about the Primitive.
Harlan is is also given a mission by Assistant Computer Finge in the 482nd century. There, he stays with Noÿs Lambent, a non-Eternal member of the 482th's period's aristocracy for research.
Alas Harlan becomes infatuated with Noÿs. At this point it should be noted that some centuries are aware of Eternity's existence, who recognise it as a necessary, beneficial force; there is even trade between some centuries. Hence Noÿs officially interacting with Eternals.
Anyway, the bottom line is that Harlan and Noÿs begin an elicit affair.
Alas, not long after their tryst begins, Harlan learns that a reality change, that Eternity is about to inflict, will cause Noÿs to vanish from the time-line. He has to act to keep Noÿs alive and so takes her into Eternity to hide her within Eternity's vacant, and isolated from the outside Earth, operations in the hidden centuries…
The plus points for The End of Eternity are that is jam-packed with ideas and sense-of-wonder (sensawunda), not least the nature of time and what tinkering in time might do. Indeed, early on we learn that the meddling the Eternals conduct restricts an aspect of humanity's development.
The negative points are that Asimov simply cannot portray female characters; it is a blindspot that is a decided handicap when it comes to portraying a romance, that Asimov handles in a most inept way: ham-fistedly and without conviction. This is a great shame for a novel that is meant to have a loving relationship about which its plot turns.
Fortunately, there are two aspects to this novel that elevate it. First, is the aforementioned sensawunda that arises out of the many concepts introduced and explored. The second is this work's conceptual place in Asimov's ouvre.
As mentioned, Asimov's SF includes a number of novel series including: 'Robot', 'Galactic Empire' and the original 'Foundation' trilogy. Here, I have never been comfortable with such classification as it suggests that these are works portraying different universes. However, this is not so. The – central to the galactic Empire – world of Trantor is referred to in more than one of these series and inferred in others. All well and good, but the outcome of The End of Eternity is one that enables the Galactic Empire in other of his novels to exist. Indeed, it is possible that the 27th century, first practical time-travel technology had its roots in earlier research that might be that referred to in Asimov's Pebble in the Sky. As such The End of Eternity is pivotal: this is a book that aficionados of 'classic' SF of the last century really should seek out and it is certainly one that anyone exploring Asimov's key SF novels should get.
One final comment, and this is an example of a recurring publishing problem with novels subject to continual reprinting when the reprints are undertaken out of routine rather than love of the work itself: typographical mistakes, if not corrected, will be perpetuated time and time again down the decades. And so we have on Chapter two's second page the sudden ending of a paragraph and the start of a new one: neither should have happened!
Now, despite this being a welcome new, re-typesetting of this work – rather than a copy of earlier typesetting which inevitably leads to blurring of the typeface – it was an opportunity to correct such errors. Yet, typos and errors, such as this incorrect paragraph break, persist. For completeness', sake I checked this Harper Voyager edition against a copy I already had in my collection (a 1973 Granada edition) and found the same mistake. Clearly, this error has been reproduced over and over across the years. Given now that everything is digital, I do hope the editors at Harper Voyager correct the appropriate typeset file. (Don't delay, do it straightaway!)
This fault aside, which I sincerely wish they would correct, Harper Voyager have done modern (and younger) SF readers a service in reprinting The End of Eternity which they are currently doing with a number of key other of Asimov's SF novels of the 1950s and '60s. These new editions are in a slightly larger format than that of mass market paperbacks and, as said, re-typeset. Presumably, Voyager did not expect huge sales as the covers to these reprints are of basic design and do not sport the colourful and fantastical illustrations with which I am familiar of 1970's and '80s editions. But, hey, you can't have everything. If you are a reader who is only beginning to delve into SF's, last century backlist, then these series of Asimov reprints will be a boon.
Jonathan Cowie
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