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Page 142
Shifts between actors in the complex situation artificially conceal information from the reader that might naturally be revealed, from the Prolog almost to the end. This is particularly artificial when the view-point is Terens's and reveals some of his thoughts and memories but not all. Asimov's best novels the robot novels and The End of Eternity follow a single character throughout. The reader learns only what the character learns in search of a solution to a mystery. At this relatively early period in his experience as a writer of novels, Asimov may have felt uneasy about his ability to sustain a prolonged narrative while focusing on a single character. Shifting to other characters and other actions allowed him to put the novel together like a series of alternating stories.
The sequence of flashbacks required by the concern about events of the previous year seems both a weakness and a strength. The continual shifts in time create a certain amount of confusion and a grasping for tenses, but the relationship between past and present, once the rhythm has been established, creates effective juxtapositions that have relevance to the theme.
The characterizations are a strength of the novel. Unlike The Stars, Like Dust, the characters in The Currents of Space are less stereotyped and more lifelike, from the memory-damaged Rik and the loyal Valona to the angry Terens, the pragmatic Abel, and the powerful dwarf, Fife. They are better drawn, no doubt, because they are better motivated. In addition, Asimov's language is groping its way toward the economy of the robot novels. The social commentary on racial prejudice, developed through the counterpoint of the white-skinned cotton-pickers of Florina, makes the statements that slavery is economic, not racial, and that racial prejudice can be applied to any color of skin and be equally reprehensible and repugnant.
Most important, the subject of the novels, the coming destruction of a planet and ultimately the discovery of a process for identifying incipient novas, is momentous. Readers feel that the twists and turns of the plot are not simply manipulations. The suspense is not built artificially, in spite of the withholding of the psycho-prober's identity, but has a natural momentum. Events finally justify themselves. The novel also shows another stage in the development of the Galactic Empire, an empire which the Asimov reader has seen fall in The Foundation Trilogy.
Moreover, the novel unfolds as a mystery. It offers three important questions to be answered. At one point Lady Samia lists them:
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The three points were therefore these. (1) What was the danger that threatened Florina, or, rather, the entire Galaxy? (2) Who was the person

 
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