Manny's Reviews > Eternity
Eternity (The Way, #2)
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I saw positive references to Eon, the first book in the series, in Brian Aldiss's Trillion Year Spree, and I bought it before a long flight. I think I had read most of it, or even all of it, before I arrived in California. It was pretty dull, but somehow I bought the second one too, and it was even duller. Chris was saying the other day that Bear reminded him of Asimov. I don't disagree, though I think I'm even more reminded of A.E. van Vogt, whom Damon Knight memorably described as "a pygmy writer working on a giant typewriter". All these zillions of years and squillions of parsecs, and it's about as inspiring as the back of a cereal packet.
But if I've given the impression that these books are useless, I'd like to correct that. Nothing could be further from the truth. I got back from my trip, and discovered that two castors had somehow come off the living room couch. We put Eon and Eternity underneath it, and they were exactly the right size to keep it level - they stayed there for several years, until we got around to buying a new couch, and we never had a minute of trouble with them. It's often like that. You just have to interpret the book in the right way, and not expect the impossible.
But if I've given the impression that these books are useless, I'd like to correct that. Nothing could be further from the truth. I got back from my trip, and discovered that two castors had somehow come off the living room couch. We put Eon and Eternity underneath it, and they were exactly the right size to keep it level - they stayed there for several years, until we got around to buying a new couch, and we never had a minute of trouble with them. It's often like that. You just have to interpret the book in the right way, and not expect the impossible.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 1, 1994
–
Finished Reading
May 1, 2009
– Shelved
May 1, 2009
– Shelved as:
science-fiction
Comments Showing 1-22 of 22 (22 new)
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I was introduced to SF by reading his novels. His characters are all pasteboard (except possibly R. Daneel Olivaw), but his ideas are fantastic.


No. To tell the truth, I am not a great fan of his mysteries, from the viewpoint of the whodunit lover.

Agreed! I didn't like the movie at all. Didn't watch it fully.

The big question (and I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to know) is what you did with the books after you got the new couch?


Agreed! I didn't like the movie at all. Didn't watch it fully."
I wondered afterwards if it wasn't a rather unsubtle attack on Microsoft. You have this monolithic organization which controls all the world's robots and continually uploads new instructions to them through the central computer. It's very easy for it to turn them all into killing machines when it develops a fault in its programming.


I can't remember which editions I had, but they were of almost equal thickness and the couch was not lopsided at all. I think one could easily turn this story into a children's book. Sort of The Brave Little Paperback.

For some reason, this sprang to mind: The Little Engine That Could
And "plucky". That's a good word, imo.


Does anyone with artistic skills want to come in as illustrator and collaborate on creating this masterpiece? They could be very basic cartoon-style pictures.

A cartoon version of this?

Thanks, indeed! Who's Damon Knight? What a hilarious turn of phrase!