Isaac Asimov: The End of Eternity

The End of Eternity is a Science Fiction classic that focuses in Time Travel and tries to answer the question of "What would happen if we could go back in time and prevent all wars?"
Andrew Harlan is an agent of Eternity an organization that exists outside time and that operates to prevent mankind from suffering. Eternity and its members, the Eternals, are all powerful since they can enter the timestream st any point, though they have two limitations: there is a section of the future which they cannot access and they cannot travel to a time before the existence of Eternity.  This point is extremely important for the Eternals since they have discovered that their existence is actually the result of a paradox: they must send someone into the past, some guy called Cooper before Eternity to begin the experiments that eventually will lead into the creation of Eternity.  There is an unexpected element, a woman, who Harlan is in love with. This woman, Noys Lambent, is not from normal time but fro the future time that the Eternity cannot access. these future people have discovered that the intervention of a Eternity has actuallyworked against the correct development of human civilization. Wars and other conflicts might be sad occurrences but they are necessary to boost science for it is in moments of great crisis when science responds reaching innovations. Eternity in preventing that has also stranded the development of interstellar travel so mankind has taken a long time to reach the stars while other civilizations have already done so. Mankind is then destined to languish and disappear after millions of years always confined in Earth. Noys´s mission is to stop Eternity to come into existence but she will not do anything against Harlan who is supposed to help Cooper. After hearing to Noys and thinking of what Eternity has been doing Harlan decides to help Noys and in doing so all of Eternity vanishes forever. 
A great sci-fi novel that is perhaps the opening for Asimov's famous Robots series and also the Foundation series, but can stand alone on its own.

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