Review by Marian Powell   —   December 14, 2000

By the second page, you realize that this is a very peculiar universe indeed, one where man has learned to control the very flow of time. Andrew Harlan is a time traveler, or, to be precise, a Time Technician. He is equivalent to a mechanic, except that what he repairs are man's mistakes. He prevents wars and disasters by changing the very fabric of reality itself.

It's a concept staggering in its scope as Andrew and the other Technicians casually travel thousands of years in a matter of minutes. They themselves live in Eternity, a place that exists outside of time. Here they have their libraries and their computers. Here they plot and analyze how to make changes with the minimum amount of disruption to the civilization they are changing.

All this sounds ideal, a dream come true. Mankind is safe at last, protected from his collective stupidity and cruelty. Mankind has a guardian angel in the Eternals. Asimov thoughtfully examines the details of how the Eternals would work. This is, in itself, fascinating. The problem with stories about time travel is the paradox problem. The ultimate statement of that is the old joking question of what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather? Do you cease to exist? If you do, then you never went back in time, never killed your grandfather, therefore he exists, and you exist so you can go back in time to kill him and cease to exist, etc. You can make yourself crazy with this!

Asimov has thought of all possible paradoxes and how they could be avoided. One example. Time Travel is not invented until the 25th Century. Therefore, the Eternals do not ever touch the time period (including our own!) before then so as not to risk making a change that would prevent the invention of time travel. It's a great pleasure to read an author who anticipates every possible question the reader could have!

A question the reader is certain to ask is what kind of man would be a Time Technician? One thinks at first of Indiana Jones or James Bond running through time chasing bad guys and having adventures. However, the whole method of changing reality is to make tiny changes. An example given is how a world war was prevented by a Technician going back in time ten years before the war and damaging a car so it won't start. Because it fails to start, its owner misses an important meeting. Because he misses the meeting, his career goes down a different path. Because his career goes down a different path there is no war. This requires days, weeks, sometimes months of mathematical equations and computer simulations to work out. Indiana Jones and James Bond would go mad with boredom!

So the ideal Time Technician is truly a technician. He is a detail man, a man who is happy to spend his life with mathematical equations. He has the temperament of a bookkeeper, someone who used to be called a bean counter. As Harlan, the new Time Technician, meets the older ones, he realizes this and is dismayed. He begins to see his heroes as petty little men wrapped up in themselves. He had begun his training in love with the ideal of being an Eternal and changing history. He wants to devote his life to the service of mankind. Then doubt begins to creep in. Man is safe from war and his collective stupidity for all eternity, but is that the best thing for the human race? Isn't the human race being kept a dependent child and denied spiritual growth and mature achievement?

Without once mentioning the word God or religion, Asimov manages to raise the fundamental issues of evil and the Silence of God. The oldest religious argument in the world is the question of why God doesn't intervene to prevent evil. The religious answer is that man has been given free will. If God intervenes now and then, man will no longer have free will. Or, to put it another way, at what point should God intervene in human history? There's an saying that the answer to the question: Where was God during the Holocaust? is, Where was Man?

This is the issue that Andrew Harlan very slowly and reluctantly begins to face. Things begin to happen around him that raise doubts. Meanwhile, he does something he knows he must not do. He falls wildly, madly, in love. This is forbidden. A Time Technician may not marry or have a family. Harlan is so madly in love he determines to find a way around the rules and then to question the rules and the whole issue of whether the Eternals are really good for the human race. He goes back and forth on the issue as the plot gets more and more convoluted. Things are happening around him that don't make sense. His supervisor is jealous and suspicious of his romance with the beautiful woman that his supervisor had once been in love with. Or is something else going on? Who can he trust? If there is a conspiracy, what is the point?

I can't say more without giving away the plot. Besides, there are so many twists and turns that to explain the plot would take almost as many pages as the book itself! The book is Asimov at his best. It's only flaw is that it begins slowly. It give too much information, too many explanations are necessary at first. However, it soon picks up speed as the reader joins with the hero in struggling to figure out what is going on and what he should do as his understanding of the situation keeps changing.

This is a fun book to read and after you enjoy the fun, you are left with fundamental questions about free will and the future of the human race.