Books like The Ugly Little Boy

I love it when a book sneaks up on you and holds you in it's grasp as thoroughly as this one did with me. A simple pairing of stories, really, made fascinating by the 40,000 year time span and the numerous endings that could have been.I loved Asimov's robot short stories and novels for the moral and ethical dilemmas the author tackles. This novel was similar, in that the scienctific underpinnings are secondary to the unforseen consequences of their implementation.It was refreshing to see, too, that the authors didn't bind themselves by Ray Bradbury's "butterfly effect" of time travel, in which minor changes to the past can have enormous consequences in the present.The fact that "The Ugly Little Boy" is under-hyped, possibly under-read and certainly overshadowed by Asimov's and Silverberg's more renowned accomplishments very likely makes it all that more enjoyable. It's the literary equivalent of your favorite used book store that everyone else bypasses on their way to Border's or Barne's and Noble.