The End of Eternity

I finally read a book that has been lying in my collection for months because of blasted school and my annoying penchant for laziness: Asimov’s “The End of Eternity”.

My God, the story’s payoff has completely overwhelmed me. It’s in the league of the alien story in “The Gods Themselves” and more. I love it as much as the brilliant quote in his “Robots and Empire” where he philosphises through the eyes of Elijah Baley about humankind as a complex tapestry.

“Eternity” begins as a science fiction story that appears to neatly tighten the loose ends of time-travel paradoxes that has often been questioned and criticised whenever the notion of time travel is discussed. But it evolves into something more: the consequences of controlling time and evolution to suit our ethical standards that are subjective to the era in which we are brought up in; the aesthetics and risk of seeking the unknown.

The book links also, very nicely with the Robots and Foundation stories. I would say it is sort of a prequel to the Robots series. However, this link is more a speculative one to the Robots and Foundation mythos than a direct connection.

I think sometimes that imagination is more important than ideas that have been set into stone by what has been expressed in words, pictures and sound. The feelings I get from this book’s conclusion is similiar to the feelings I felt from Olaf Stapledon’s “Last and First Men” (though I love this book to bits), without the burdens of length of prose and pseudo-future-history descriptions. Eternity’s conclusion is more abstract, like Clarke’s “The Fountains of Paradise”. It leaves you to speculate on what could be, with the mind’s ability to conjure imagery that shifts and changes in every moment.

Subjects: Books 書物

Mood: Raves and Rants

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, ethics, Foundation, god, Issac Asimov, Olaf Stapledon, robot, science fiction