Asimov Book Review - End of Eternity

by Lacey Kat
(Copyright by Author - All Rights Reserved)


On November 17, 1953, Isaac Asimov was on the faculty of Boston University.  He had just finished his first mystery story, “The Singing Bell,” which Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine had rejected, and his 9,000-word “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” which would soon be rejected by Fantasy and Science Fiction.  He wanted to write another novel, but, at the moment, had no ideas.

Being a collegiate library, Boston University naturally had a collection of bound periodicals.  Isaac enjoyed checking out the editions of Time magazine and reliving the history.  The librarians took to calling him the “time” professor.  In one of the early editions of this newsweekly, he noticed a small drawing out of the corner of his eye.  It looked, at first glance, to be a mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb.  The cloud produced by a bomb that would not be produced for at least a half of a generation after this magazine was published.

It turned out, upon closer examination, to be a picture of the “Old Faithful” geyser in Yellowstone National Park.  However, that started the good doctor to thinking.  What if it was a drawing of a nuclear bomb published so many years before 1945?  How would it get there and what might it mean?  The answer could be time travel, and with that, Asimov started working on his novelette “The End of Eternity.”

The idea in the story is that sometime in the 27th-century man has developed the “Temporal Field.”  An area outside of time, but that can be connected to any point in time the operator wants.  Eventual man uses the power of the far distant sun, going nova, to power “Eternity.”  Eternity is a state of being outside of normal time.  A Temporal Field that extends from the 27th Century for over a hundred and fifty thousand centuries into the future when the sun has gone nova and all life is extinguished.  Eternity can also be seen as a sort of temporal skyscraper with each floor representing a different century.  Movement from floor to floor (century to century) is by way of “kettles.”  These kettles move along shafts and allow the operator to choose the exact time he wishes to stop.  The only exceptions are the years before the 27th Century, which for a sort of foundation to Eternity, and the “hidden centuries” which are, for some unknown reason, blocked to exploration by the “Eternals.”

The “Eternals” are those who inhabit Eternity, and whose job it is to ensure humankind has the safest, most benevolent, life possible.  To do this they move through time making the Minimum Necessary Change - M.N.C. to events that will have the Maximum Desired Response – M.D.R.  For example, by moving a canister on a shelf, space travel is not attained in the 2456th Century.  Space travel, the Eternals have observed, is self-limiting and a waste of energy and resources.  The problem is that the time stream is self-correcting and after a few centuries, things are as they would have been (no paradoxes here).  Therefore, the Eternals must study the centuries and constantly find the M.N.C. that will provide the greatest benefit as they see fit.

The Eternals, recruited from the best and brightest of the centuries that Eternity covers go through three stages in their development; that of Cub, Observer, and Specialist.  The specialists are divided into different casts, the Computer, the Technician, the Sociologists, the Life-Plotters, and the Observers.  The utilize whatever technology they need from the centuries they deal with, even if they deem that technology dangerous to humankind and eliminate it in the time stream.  For example, each level of Eternity is manufactured using a matter-copying device.  This device was deemed too dangerous for Man so the Eternals made the M.N.C. to ensure it would never be invented.  However, it is useful to the Eternals so they kept it in their world of the temporal field.

The story follows the exploits of Technician Andrew Harlan who breaks the code of the Eternals and falls in love with one of the subjects of his recent observations.  He moves her from a point it time where she was about to be eliminated from the time stream and hides her uptime in a century not used by Eternity.  He then goes back to the working levels of Eternity to see what he can do to be sure he can stay with his new lady love.  He is willing to do anything even if it means destroying Eternity itself.

That is the basic plot of the novel.  There is more involved of course, a few mysteries to be reviled, the reason there is no humanity after a certain century, who really invented the temporal field, who is this Noys of the 482nd Century, etc.  However, these are for the person who decides to read the story.  Personally, I would advise against it.

This is not one of Asimov’s better novels.  Having not yet published a novel myself, I do not stand as an expert on the constructing of such work.  However, that said, I have read enough of Isaac’s work, through all periods of his life, to know what is and is not a good Asimov novel, and, in my lonely opinion, this is not one.


In the first place, the characters are not memorable.  Even Andrew Harlan, the story’s main character, is uninteresting.  Exactly why he does what he does is less than clear, and why he falls for Noys, a driving force in the story, is ignored by the author.  The key questions are finally answered in the last two or three pages of the novel, and then there is no time to digest the information, so you just do not care.  Time, forgive me, goes on and you are left wondering why you plowed through this story rather than taking up needlework or finishing a jigsaw puzzle.  Either of which would have been more productive than navigating to the “End of Eternity.”

When Asimov finished the original story, in February of 1954, he sent it off to Horace Gold of “Galaxy Science Fiction” magazine.  Galaxy was a good magazine, the rival of Astounding Science Fiction, and Horace Gold was eager to buy what Asimov had to sell.  However, he was a cantankerous man, in Asimov’s opinion, and demanded extensive rewrites of Isaac’s work as well as changed the storyline and titles when they were published.  This did not endear Horace to Asimov, but he paid well and that is what any author likes.

Horace did not like the original 25,000-word novelette entitled “End of Eternity,” and wanted a complete revision.  He wanted, as Asimov put it, "to jack up the title and run a new story under it."  Asimov refused.  Doubleday liked the story and asked Asimov to flesh it out into a full novel.  Asimov did not like the way Horace handled himself and this may have tainted his view of the story and its value.  Doubleday, having let Asimov slip through their fingers in the early years of hardback science fiction, was now eager to atone for their mistakes, and this may have colored their view of the story and its value as well.  In either case, I believe Horace Gold had a more accurate opinion this time and that should have been the end of “Eternity.”

Now, let me reiterate here, that Asimov himself thought this was his greatest work and many critics and fans agree.  My opinion, which I feel I can support, is the minority one and you are free to disagree with me when you have finished the book.  I welcome any honest discussion on how I might be in error.

If you wish to read the novel, it is readily available from Orion Publishing Group; (July 1, 2000) with the ISBN: 0575071184.  Amazon.com has the book, both new and used, and it can be yours within the week.  Along with standing alone, the text can also be found in the collections “The Far Ends of Time and Earth,” which is also easy to find, and “Other Worlds of Isaac Asimov,” which is not.

Asimov Book Review - The Alternate Asimovs

by Lacey Kat
(Copyright by Author - All Rights Reserved)


On my bookshelf is a collection of small books on a variety of esoteric subjects.  I am often kidded on this and asked why I keep these obscure micro-tombs, all of which I have read, within eyeshot of my computer.  The answer is simple.  It helps to relieve the dreaded “writer’s block.”

I’ll give you an example.

One book is entitled “Now all we need is a Title,” and subtitled, “Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way.”  In it, you learn that Peter Benchley was thinking about calling his great shark epic, “What’s That Noshin’ on My Laig,” before settling on the less wordy title of “Jaws.” On the other hand, Margaret Mitchell was going to call her classic novel of the American Civil War, “Pansy,” before deciding that the romantic imagery of “Gone with the Wind ” was more suitable.

The point of this drift is that classics rarely start off that way, and the first few drafts, even of a title, often present an insight into the mind and development of the author.

Which brings us to “The Alternate Asimovs”

In this volume, Asimov presents three of his stories as they were originally written and presented to publishers, but not in the final form that we are familiar with.  Two of these short stories were fleshed out into full novels, while the third story received a significantly different ending.   Not all of these changes made the author happy, and fortunately for us, Asimov provides substantial comments and history.

This book was not originally Asimov’s idea.  Despite his well-recognized ego, the good Doctor never saw the value of his unpublished work.  Whenever his personal papers accumulated to an uncomfortable level he took them into his backyard and burned them in his barbecue pit.  Story ideas, first drafts, personal letters, and unsold narratives were reduced to smoke and ash.

Fortunately, there are some people who see the value in collections.  For this story, that savior came in the form of Dr. Howard Gotlieb of the Boston University Library.  He convinced Isaac that there was a literary and historic importance to these papers.  That there were a vast number of people, some in the need of lives, who would gain incalculable knowledge and literary prestige by pouring over these doodles, notes, and first drafts.  How could Asimov refuse such an obligation to history?

Which brings us to the subject of this review.

The first short story in the book is entitled, “Grow Old Along with Me,” and was originally written for “Startling Stories,” on September 22, 1947.  Three weeks later it was promptly rejected.  It was rejected again by “Astounding” and then rejected again by a small publishing house that specialized in science fiction novels.  Asimov was crushed by this literary fiasco and would have burned the manuscript right then except he had just moved into a new house and it did not have a barbecue pit.  Fortunately, two years later, Walter I. Bradbury liked the story and asked it to be fleshed out to some 70,000 words for publication at Doubleday.  They requested a new title and Asimov, still stinging from the earlier rejections, was more than happy to comply.  He changed the name to “Pebble in the Sky,” and it became his first published novel.

What is interesting about this shorter version is that Asimov breaks what Television calls the “fourth wall.”  He talks to the reader in a prologue, two intermissions, and an epilogue to explain where the story is going and why.  This familiar tone was not original even back then, as Ellery Queen would often stop the story to inform the reader that they now had all they needed to solve the mystery (I never could and found this part annoying), but Asimov had a comfortable style and, for him, it worked.   He would later eliminate these familiars for a more direct style and expand the role of Joseph Schwartz to a more principle character.  However, as a short story, this was not at all bad.  It still had the foundation Asimov would use in his later work and also could stand alone as an entertaining read.  I have to agree that “Pebble in the Sky” was an improvement, but only because it filled in more of the details that were only briefly mentioned in the original.

The second selection in “Alternate” is the novelette version of  “The End of Eternity.”  I must admit that I was anxious to read this version as have never been a big fan of the full novel (see review this section).  I was hoping that an abbreviated version would be less confusing and to the point.  Asimov has always loved this story and has felt that history will rank it among his best work.  A great many fans have agreed with him, but I have never been one of them.  I will admit that the full novel is a significant improvement over this early version.  Asimov filled in a great many details in both the technical, as well as social, aspects of the story.  In fact, the full novel makes this substantial work look like a treatment one would give a publisher to request a contract for a completed work.  It is interesting to see what Asimov thought was important when asked to expand the work for book publication, and what he decided to omit from the original ideas.  It shows his thinking process and that is the basic value of this book.

The final selection is the short story “Belief.”  In 1952 John Campbell asked Asimov to write a tale about a man who found he could levitate.  Campbell at this time was drifting toward the fringe areas of science and wanted Astounding to contain more stories dealing with these aspects.  Asimov wrote a story leaning more toward science than fringe and gave it an uncharacteristic downbeat ending.  Campbell liked the story but requested a more upbeat finish.  While Asimov changed the final third of the story, he was never quite satisfied with it.  For the first time, he presents the original story as written, and the final finish that Campbell requested, and we have come to know and love.  Asimov never liked the upbeat ending, but I felt that it showed his ability to develop a cleaver solution to his hero’s problem.

Unlike the other two novels, this story is presented in its entirety so that the reader can compare the visions of both the writer and publisher.  It also has extensive preface and end notes which Asimov uses to build his case for the original story.  Again, an education worth the price of the book.

The printed versions of these three stories are, for the most part, superior to the first drafts presented in this book.  However, the stories and commentary given here are what makes it valuable for anyone wanting to be a writer, for they show how to effectively change your work for the better.

Copyright 1986 by Doubleday & Company, this book can be found for a fair price on Amazon.com