The End of Eternity

Mass Market Paperback, 192 pages

English language

Published Jan. 24, 1955 by Fawcett Crest.

OCLC Number:
6400436

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(2 reviews)

Humanity has found the ultimate way to fix its own mistakes, make them never happen. In this book, a group of men that lives outside of time, the "Eternals", modify time. Harlan Andrews, a low ranking technician, is loyal to the idea that unites all Eternals: it is better to change time to help the many, even if it means hurting the few. That is, until he learns that the woman he has fallen in love with, Noys, will be eliminated in a soon to occur time change. So, violating the principals he had always held to as an Eternal, Harlan saves his lover. But soon, he finds that he is part of a much larger conspiracy.

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I, Robot is a fun set of thought experiments about the Laws of Robotics, and I read it most recently for nostalgia. The characters are a bit flat, but the book is short so I don't mind. Asimov writes off Communism and Capitalism by acting like Machine Learning will make those contradictions irrelevant, despite seeming to understand that automation is a workers' rights issue, and that bothers me. Maybe it's just his characters talking and he expects the reader to read between the lines.

Ultimately, Asimov seems to be stuck in the idealist trap of believing that AI is unbiased and, with the proper constraints, better than humans at even ethical problems. That is an annoying ideology that runs rampant despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. (Telling your AI not to hallucinate is silly and ineffective, but is just the kind of thing that would end up in one …

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