The End of Eternity

For the video game known in Japan as The End of Eternity, see Resonance of Fate.

The End of Eternity

Cover of the first edition
Author	Isaac Asimov
Cover artist	Mel Hunter
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Published	1955 (Doubleday)
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback))
Pages	191

The End of Eternity is a 1955 science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, with mystery and thriller elements on the subjects of time travel and social engineering.

The themes are very different from most of his robot and space opera stories and involve time paradoxes.

Origins

In December 1953, Asimov was thumbing through a copy of the March 28, 1932 issue of Time and noticed what looked, at first glance, like a drawing of the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. A closer look showed him that the drawing was actually a geyser, the Old Faithful. However, he began pondering the question of what the implications would be if there had been a drawing of a mushroom cloud in a magazine from 1932, and he eventually came up with the plot of a time travel story. He began the story, "The End of Eternity," on December 7, 1953, and he finished it on February 6, 1954, when it was 25,000 words long. Asimov submitted the story to Galaxy Science Fiction, and within days, he received a call from Galaxy editor Horace L. Gold that rejected the story. Asimov decided to turn the story into a novel, and on March 17, he left it with Walter I. Bradbury, the science fiction editor at Doubleday, to get his opinion. Bradbury was receptive, and by April 7, Asimov was informed that a contract for the novel was in the works. Asimov began expanding the story, eventually delivering the novel version to Bradbury on December 13. Doubleday accepted the novel, which was published in August 1955.

The novel reflects the state of scientific knowledge of its time, some of which has been superseded. For instance, the power source for the time travelers is referred to as "Nova Sol," and a link to the far future being taps the energy of the exploding Sun. Scientists now know that the Sun is far too small to explode.

As may be seen below, the novel may also be counted as the prequel to the Empire series of novels, which form part of the Foundation Series. Asimov had already included a kind of time travel in his 1950 novel Pebble in the Sky, but it was a one-way trip.

The original End of Eternity appeared in 1986 in a collection called The Alternate Asimovs.

Characters

• Andrew Harlan: Twissell's personal Technician
• Kantor Voy: Sociologist
• Laban Twissell: Senior Computer of the Allwhen Council
• Hobbe Finge: Assistant Computer
• Noÿs Lambent: a human from the Hidden Centuries, who pretends to be a human from the time Harlan visits; her mission unknown to him is to destroy Eternity by preventing it from being founded
• Vikkor Mallansohn: Temporal Field inventor
• Brinsley Sheridan Cooper: Cub mentored by Harlan
• August Sennor: Subcommittee member of the Allwhen Council

Plot

In the future, humanity has developed a means to travel in time, and used it to construct Eternity, an organization "outside time" that works to improve human happiness by observing human history and, after careful analysis, directly making small actions that cause "reality changes." Its members, known as "Eternals" and by the roles they hold, prioritize the reduction of human suffering and oversee trade between the various centuries to help those in most need, at the cost of a loss to technology, art and other endeavors which are prevented from existing when judged to have a detrimental effect. Those enlisted travel "upwhen" and "downwhen" and re-enter time in devices called "kettles". Their rules prevent them from earlier travel to the Primitive times before the 27th century, when the temporal field was established, to prevent accidental damage to pre-temporal history, and also leaves humanity's fate unknown - the earth is empty by the 125,000th century, but this is preceded by a period called the Hidden Centuries from the 70,000th to 125,000th centuries where for unknown reasons they cannot access the world outside Eternity to learn more.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal and an outstanding Technician - a specialist at implementing reality changes - who is fascinated by the Primitive times. Senior Computer Laban Twissell, the Dean of the Allwhen Council, enrolls him as his personal Technician in order to teach a newcomer, Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, about the Primitive. Later, on assignment to Computer Hobbe Finge he stays with non-Eternal Noÿs Lambent for a week to understand the effect of a recent reality change. Against Eternal laws, he falls in love with her, and is distraught to discover that in the new reality planned for that time, she does not exist. Again breaking their laws, he takes her out of time and far "upwhen", hiding her in the empty sections of Eternity that exist in the Hidden Centuries.

Harlan later finds that the kettles will not travel to the time he hid Noÿs, and confronts Finge with a weapon, accusing him of sabotaging matters out of jealousy. Finge states he has reported Harlan's conduct, and did not place the block. Harlan is summoned to the Council but nothing happens; he deduces that because his transgressions were ignored, he must be there to serve a larger purpose. Harlan confronts Twissell and explains that he has been teaching himself temporal mathematics and believes that its 23rd century inventor, Vikkor Mallansohn, must have been helped in his discovery by someone from his future; he concludes that his current role is training Cooper to do this. Twissell confirms this, adding that unknown to Cooper, Mallansohn's secret memoirs show that Cooper will take over Mallansohn's role and in effect, become Mallansohn. This must be kept from Cooper, so that Eternity will be founded as it historically was. Harlen blackmails Twissell by threatening to destroy Cooper's ignorance unless Noÿs is returned, but is outwitted; Twissell locks him in the control room with all controls deactivated other than the lever to send Cooper back - matching the memoir's statement that this was his role. Harlen, enraged, breaks open the controls and changes the power output, causing Cooper to be sent back to an unknown point estimated to be in the early 20th century.

Twissell is aghast, but as Eternity still exists, he theorizes he can undo Harlen's damage, and send Cooper back correctly for his mission. They think Cooper might try to communicate using an advertisement in one of Harlan's Primitive magazines that would only stand out to an Eternal. Harlen finds a magazine from 1932 has changed, and now shows an advert in the form of a mushroom cloud, something no human could have known of before 1945. Twissell tells him that nobody in Eternity would be able to create a barrier as he describes. Together, they travel far upwhen to discover what has happened. Harlan speculates that the Hidden Centuries might represent a time when humans evolved and changed into something else. They pass the 100,000th century unhindered and find Noÿs. Harlan agrees with Twissell that he will travel downwhen and bring back Cooper, so he can be sent to the correct time for his mission - but only if Noÿs comes with him.

On arrival in 1932, Harlen holds Noÿs at gunpoint, revealing that he suspects her of being from the Hidden Centuries, and that he has brought her so that she could not harm Eternity. Noÿs acknowledges she is from that time, and explains that her people had also developed time travel but their method shows many possible futures rather than just one future as seen by Eternity. They learned that humans would have been the first species to spread into the universe, but in each future where Eternity existed, safety was given a priority and by the time humans reached the stars, other species predominated and prevented this. In each future humanity died out afterwards, in a species-wide depression. Noÿs' mission was to make the minimum change to history to remedy this - which was to prevent Eternity from ever being founded. She chose an approach in which she and Harlen were together. Noÿs gives Harlen the choice of killing her and preserving Eternity, or letting her live and allowing a different future to arise. Harlan, remembering the losses in other centuries, and the sociological damage he has seen done to people whose original "homewhen" had ceased to exist, begins to agree with her, and a reality change occurs; the kettle disappears, indicating that Eternity now never happened. The book ends by stating that this was "the end of Eternity - and the beginning of Infinity".

Reception

New York Times reviewer Villiers Gerson praised the novel, saying it "has suspense on every page" and "exhibits in every chapter the plot twists for which the author is famous." In a 1972 review, Lester del Rey declared that no one "has wrung so much out of . . . or has developed all the possibilities of paradox."

As noted by critic Susan Young, John Crowley's award-winning 1989 novella "Great Work of Time" has the same basic outline as "The End of Eternity" - i.e. a secret society of well-meaning time travelers bent on remodeling history, and a young man recruited into the society in order to make a specific change that would bring this society itself into being. The details of what the time travelers do and where in time they operate are much different from those in Asimov's book. However, in both books, the society's operations come to a halt through the influence of people from the future, because the society's actions endanger the existence of that future. Young also notes a similarity with Poul Anderson's "The Corridors of Time" which also depicts a complex society of time travelers, who find sections of the future inaccessible - and also in Anderson's book, the intervention of the people of that further future plays a pivotal and cataclysmic role in the plot.

Charles Stross has stated that his 2009 novella Palimpsest is effectively a rewrite of The End of Eternity.

Role in Foundation series

As written, The End of Eternity suggests that the new reality is the one that leads onto the Galactic Empire and Foundation but does not confirm it. The mechanism of time travel is most likely not the one stumbled across in Pebble in the Sky because of Harlan's words about the energy requirement for the Temporal Field. The "neuronic whip" from The Currents of Space and other stories in the "Empire" future is also found in The End of Eternity, again as something that had to be removed from reality. It is predicted that the Earth will end up mostly radioactive, as per The Stars, Like Dust and Pebble in the Sky. There are also no aliens who could compete with humans: in "Blind Alley", the aliens' predicament is rather like what will overtake humanity if Eternity is not prevented.

The original, unpublished End of Eternity is clearly a different future from that of the Foundation, but Asimov says in his story-postscript that he had some idea of a bridge in the published version.

Asimov placed a hint in Foundation's Edge, many years later, that the Eternals might have been responsible for the all-human galaxy and the development of humanity on Earth of the Foundation Series, but that interpretation is disputed. Asimov himself mentions the disparity. The human-like robots may have been intended to play a part. It is one of the loose ends that he may have planned to clean up but died before he could do so.

Translations

• Italian: "La fine dell'Eternità", 1956
• German: "Das Ende der Ewigkeit", 1958
• Russian: "Конец вечности", first edition 1966 (a Soviet translation, heavily censored due to both sexual references and sociological discussions unacceptable to Soviet ideology). The translation was adapted into a movie in 1987. Another translation came out in 2003.
• Polish: "Koniec wieczności", 1969
• Hungarian: "A halhatatlanság halála", 1969 (The death of immortality)
• Dutch: "Het einde van Eeuwigheid", 1972
• Estonian: "Igaviku lõpp", 1973
• Swedish: "Tidens död", 1973 (The Death of Time)
• Danish: "Evigheden er forbi", 1974 (The Eternity has Ended)
• Spanish: "El fin de la Eternidad", 1977
• Slovak: "Koniec večnosti" 1977
• Japanese: "永遠の終り", 1977
• Hebrew: קץ כלזמן 1979, סוף הנצח 2010
• Greek: "Το τέλος της αιωνιότητας", 1979
• Bulgarian: "Краят на вечността", 1981
• Finnish: "Ikuisuuden loppu", 1987
• Georgian: "მარადისობის აღსასრული", 1988
• Serbian: "Kraj Večnosti", 1990
• Ukrainian: "Кінець вічності", 1990
• Czech: "Konec věčnosti", 1993
• Romanian: "Sfârşitul eternităţii", 1994
• Lithuanian: "Amžinybės pabaiga", 1996
• Turkish: "Sonsuzluğun Sonu", 1997
• French: "La Fin de l'éternité"
• Portuguese: "O fim da eternidade"
• Montenegrin: "Kraj vječnosti"
• Korean: "영원의 끝", 2012
• Chinese: "永恒的终结", 2014

Movie adaptations

The book was made into a movie entitled Konets Vechnosti (Russian: Конец вечности, USSR, 1987). It broadly follows the novel except for the ending. The novel ends with Noÿs and Harlan both deciding that the suppression of spaceflight by Eternity is not in the interest of humankind, and the two live "happily ever after."

In the Soviet film the ending takes place in the mid-1980s Germany rather than 1932 Los Angeles. Noÿs never fully describes why she wants Eternity destroyed, but in the middle of the movie, before her true identity is revealed, she gives some idea.

Harlan yells at her that he is but a pawn in things and storms off, and there is a strong implication that he and Noÿs have no further contact. Then, a scene shows Harlan observing both Twissell and Finge in 1980s clothing getting out of a Rolls Royce and walking together. The implication is that Twissel and Finge use Harlan as a pawn to further their own materialistic gains.

While out of step with the rest of the film as well as the novel, the ending follows the Soviet concept that the "everyman" (Harlan) is frequently manipulated by the bourgeoisie, as a pawn to its own ends. The movie ends with a long shot of Harlan walking away from the camera, alone, down a highway.

A television film based on the book, entitled A halhatatlanság halála (literally The Death of Immortality) was made in Hungary in 1976. The screenwriter and the director was András Rajnai, and the main character was played by Jácint Juhász.

The 2011 movie The Adjustment Bureau uses some of the ideas of The End of the Eternity.

In 2008, New Regency acquired the rights to the novel for a possible film adaptation.

Sources

• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 21. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.