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Title: what masterpiece?
Review: This seems like awfully shoddy science fiction to me. The old complaint about thin characterization isn't even the worst of it, nor are the crazy anachronisms [rampant cigar smoking, newspapers and casual misogyny]. But so much of this plot develops in the form of uninteresting local political maneuvers between slightly AynRandized heroes and buffooning villians, with no sense of place or grandeur whatsoever.The timeline of the novel is suddenly too breif after introducing the vast concept of a 40,000 year swing through history, and neither the future society Asimov has envisioned nor the apparant brilliance of the plan at the heart of this series are ever portrayed convincingly. Whatever powerful effect this book may have had in its day, it is bereft of it now.
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