Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Here is the spoiler free thread for The End of Eternity

I've started the book, I was surprised that I haven't read it before. It is short, so I guess I'll finish it in less than two days.

The initial setting is interesting, reminding me a tiny bit (for it is more different than similar) of Time Patrol series. As the 1955 book, it contains some glaring phases like (this isn't a plot-wise spoiler, just a glimpse into the story)
(view spoiler)[If there was a flaw in Eternity, it involved women.
...
The 482nd was not a comfortable Century for him. It was not like his own austere and conformist homewhen. It was an era without ethics or principles, as he was accustomed to think of such. It was hedonistic, materialistic, more than a little matriarchal. It was the only era (he checked this in the records in the most painstaking way) in which ectogenic birth flourished and, at its peak, 40 per cent of its women gave eventual birth by merely contributing a fertilized ovum to the ovaria. [...] If his disturbing presence could only be made disturbing enough at some key point, a different branch of possibility would become real, a branch in which millions of pleasure-seeking women would find themselves transformed into true, pure-hearted mothers. (hide spoiler)]

I was surprised I hadn't read it before, either. I probably started it and stopped when in was new.

Kateblue wrote: "I was surprised I hadn't read it before, either. I probably started it and stopped when in was new."

I like the book so far, but I have to inform you, there is a nonlinearity you hate. Not too much of it, but nevertheless

My previous comment on the 50s norms in the spoiler tags is a bit misleading, for it comes from an extremely biased narrator...

Oleksandr wrote: "I like the book so far, but I have to inform you, there is a nonlinearity you hate."

Actually, I did not mind the time jumps because we were just following one guy and Asimov did it well. I just minded that I really really disliked the main character. What a wuss!

Kateblue wrote: "I really really disliked the main character. What a wuss!"

I thought it was intentional, after all Asimov has a bunch of positive heroes, so it isn't that he is unable to write one, but that the eternity can be endangered by such a wuss

Yes, I'm sure it was intentional. Still. What a wuss!

About 1/3 of the way through this and getting some incel vibes from Asimov.

"trousers...hinted delicately at gluteal curves"

Quite an awkward way of describing a woman there.

Ian wrote: "About 1/3 of the way through this and getting some incel vibes from Asimov."

I guess in this book it is more the narrator than the author.