SFF

I’ve known since all the way back in school that I’d love to read science fiction (SF), although back then I didn’t read much fiction at all, let alone SF. There were one or two SF paperbacks I found at the school library and there were it.

Still, if anybody were to ask me then what my favourite book was, my answer would be Juara Yang Tewas by Aripin Said. I read it sometime in primary school and it really captured my imagination. I still consider it one of my favourite books. Juara Yang Tewas, which tells of the legend of the dragons of Lake Chini, is fantasy rather than SF. So was Her Majesty’s Wizard by Christopher Stasheff, which I received as a present from the school in 1994. In that year’s speech day, the school decided to give a book each to everyone who scored straight As for PMR, and mine was Her Majesty’s Wizard. I remember feeling very disappointed at it and wanted to throw the book away because I was expecting a more ‘serious’ book. However, I read the book anyway and actually grew to like it.

Then, in second year at UIA I had Abang Aziz as a roommate. He had a bunch of old SF paperbacks on his shelf he let me borrow. That was how I came to read The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov.

The End of Eternity is perhaps Asimov’s best novel. It is a novel about time travel. Some centuries after the discovery of time travel, an organization called Eternity was established to smoothen out human development by maintaining a stable society. So they use time travel to go back in time eliminating disruptive social trends, preventing wars, and suppressing the development of dangerous and risky technologies like atomic energy and space travel. What they cannot explain, however, is finding Earth far out in the future a barren planet. Time travel in the end turns out not such a good idea after all.

What I really like best about Asimov is that he didn’t use big words and complex, long sentences to deliver his ideas. The time travel device, for example, is simply called the ‘kettle’. The End of Eternity led me to the Foundation series, which was totally another level of awesomeness.

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LINKS:
Time Control: Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity
The SF Site Featured Review: The End of Eternity