Childhood's End

Rating:
Summary: great science fiction
Review: I was strictly a dabbler in science fiction, until this book grabbed me and pulled me in. To this day, it ranks as my favourite in the genre.
The Overlords appear one day over every city on Earth, and with little resistance, mankind submits to the technologically superior race. After all, their demands are entirely benevolent; they seem to want no more than to end war, poverty, and the other evils that have always plagued the Earth. But why? Through three generations, a few people endeavour to find out.
What they finally learn is something they never imagined: mankind's terrible and wonderful final destiny, and the part the mysterious Overlords are fated to play in achieving it.
Many of Clarke's novels are somewhat lacking in character development, and though Childhood's End is not an extreme example of this tendency, some fairly important characters are only half-formed. In some books, this is a flaw, but when Clarke is truly in his element, the vagueness of the characters seems to work in the story's favour. Here, particularly, I found myself getting quite attached to characters it seemed I barely knew (including some of the enigmatic aliens).
One feature I particularly liked in this book was the glimpse of the Overlords' home world, a tour of wonders that Clarke knows better than to try and explain in terms of known science, at least not with any detail. If anything, the mystery of it all makes the story-- and the Overlords-- seem more real.
The ending, though inspiring from a certain angle, can be a downer in terms of the characters you come to know and like, no matter where your sympthies end up lying. Mine, in the end, fall with Karellen, the Overlord supervisor, who, like the other Overlord characters, manages to be thoroughly believable despite the fact that his background and motivations remain more or less a mystery.
Science fiction is often infused with philosophy; this book pulls off the mixture better than any other I've read.

Rating:
Summary: Childhood's End: Happy Ending vs. Ironic Tragedy?
Review: I read Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" during a course in science fiction literature I took during my senior year at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy this novel, which reads so briskly that I finished it in three nights, but it is the most powerful and influental book I have read in my career as a student. Clarke uses the genre of science fiction and the backdrop of an alien invasion of planet earth to illustrate larger themes about how small the human species is, how inferior we our to both ourselves and the cosmos, and how infinite the Universe really is beyond the friendly confines of our home planet. Although numerous lenghty critiques have been written on this work by Clarke, the issue that really interests me is the true meaning of the books' title, and whether the ending can be read as a "happy" ending or a tragic one. On the one hand, I believe it is tragic, for obvious reasons, which I will not list as to spoil for those readers who have yet to read the book. However, I believe it is a happy ending because it symbolizes the unification of an already diverse and divided species, one that is more likely to destroy itself by its own means than to be destroyed by an alien civilization. I believe this is the central theme of Clarke's vision of the fate of the human species. Clarke made the Overlords want to have the children, and not the adults, because children are innocent, and therefore, naive. Children have yet to concern themselves with the materialistic desires, racial bigotry, and conflict that plagues modern society. Clarke illustrates that, while many have lost hope in the adults who are in charge of the globe - politicians, military leaders, and the media - there is still hope in the future of children, which Clarke restricts to those under the age of 12. Through a tragic ending we arrive at an optimistic message, that if humankind invests in its youth, we can save our species and, with the guidance of those who are older, wiser, and who think beyond religious, cultural, and even planetary restrictions, the species Homo sapiens can continue to progress in an evolutionarily successful manner. It is through the end of childhood that children gain the intellect and experience necessary to lead our species into the scary but nonetheless challenging adult world.

Rating:
Summary: Weird and somewhat pointless science fiction epic
Review: So aliens come to Earth and impose peace and order, along with restrictions. Why are they here? Are they trying to help us? Is is good to be ruled by a foreign species? These questions are posed and then answered in the strangest and most implausible manner. Basicaly, the aliens are here because of Ms Cleo!

So, what is this novel? At first I thought it was a libertarian fantasy about the dangers of authoritarianism. But it isn't that at all. Is it about man's future in space, as it sort of seems to be? Not, really...the book says that man's future is not in the stars.

All in all, I can see why Clarke wants to distance himself from the views presented in this book...so why did he write it at all?

Rating:
Summary: Overrated work of the master
Review: Arthur C. Clarke has always been a well loved author, by this reviewer, as well as by many others. His stories have always been believable, interesting, and enthralling reads, never talking down to the reader and yet never bogging down in needless scientific formula's. The balance between presenting a simply yet well crafted story and glimpses into our scientific future has always been one that Mr. Clarke has had pefectly honed. This is why Childhoods End was a disappointment.

For all of the accolades this book has gotten by Clarke fans - many considering it his best - I found it to be largely unfufilling, due in large part to it's rather empty ending. Unlike the grand happenings that finish off 2001 or the sense of mystery that permeates the end of the Rama book, Childhoods End tails off with an uninteresting series of events that ruins the story that preceded it, rather than tying up the story.

This is not to say that it was not a nice read - Clarke's worst is often better than other sci-fi authors best - but the wonder of so many of his other novels is simply not here. By all means recomended to big Clarke fans, but casual readers looking to see what the big Arthur C Clarke fuss is about should be pointed elsewhere.

(Side Note: the short story on which this book is based can be found in 'The Sentinel'...it is far and away better than the full length novel, and it *highly* recomended)

Rating:
Summary: Clarke's finest?
Review: I am stunned by people moaning that this masterpiece is 'depressing', as if a book can only be of great quality if it's a happy-smiley love and cuddles affair. OK, that's a bit harsh but it's how I feel sometimes.

There's so much imagination here. I'm astonished that Clarke is regarded as a conventional, hard sf writer; there's so much more to his best works. Yes, in some of his more pedestrian novels (Earthlight, Ghost From the Grand Banks, Hammer of God) Clarke struggles to arouse any sense of wonder or make the reader really THINK, but when at his best few in sf can match him. Childhood's End is (next to 2001) perhaps the finest example of his ability to provoke thought and speculation. It's not a typical Clarke story; many reviewers have picked up on the crucial line "the stars are not meant for man". The philosophical and mystical aspects of the book make a refreshing change from his usual pessimism about such matters (though I have to say I share his scornful appraisal of astrology etc).

The novel starts well, but the point where the book becomes a true classic is with the visions experienced by the young child at the centre of much of the second half of the story (I'm writing this from memory - I can't remember his name! John? Jack?). The visions are breathtaking and totally gripping.

The conclusion is shocking and left me sitting still for around 5 minutes trying to get my head round it.

I would say that only Iain Banks' The Bridge and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy can match this novel

Rating:
Summary: SUBLIME
Review: It will now be hard to film Childhood's End because the opening, with the great ships suspended over the cities of the earth, was cribbed, intentionally or by coincidence, for Independence Day. That's a pity because it would make a tremendous film being a shattering and most skilfully written story. Here the visitors have not come to despoil our planet, indeed so well put together is the plot that we may well forget to ask ourselves why they have bothered to come along and preside over a golden age of universal peace, prosperity and others of Clarke's (and my) liberal preoccupations such as no cruelty to animals. The book is not 200 pages long but it combines Clarke's special narrative gifts as a short-story writer with a vision of the whole nature and purpose of the universe that I find staggering and intolerably poignant to this day, 30 years after I first read it.

Brian Aldiss has perceptively said that if Stapledon has a successor it is Clarke, and Clarke himself has told us how deeply Stapledon has influenced him. However this book resembles Stapledon in nothing except the scale of the concept. Childhood's End is written by a recognisable human being with power over our emotions -- power indeed! When the overlord first shows himself, I wondered whether the story could ever recover from such a dramatic coup so early on. I need not have worried. The story has not even begun: the truth, when we finally get it not far from the end, wrenches my innards to this day, and between times the crux of the narrative (the seance) is as brilliant a false clue as was ever laid by Agatha Christie. Those of us who have been cursed or maybe blessed with a compulsion to worry about our world and our fate, and who cannot find any clue to it in bibles and such like, are bound to react emotionally to an effort like this. It is not 'tragic' in Aristotle's sense, but for a 'purging of pity and terror' I'm not sure I know anything like it.

Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: This is an absolutly wonderful book dealing with the asscention of the human race into "the ultimate being" their most perfect existance. It covers politcal and emotional subjects that some people may not agree with but I believe the point of this book is not to fall in love with the charecters but to reflect on your own actions. It is an eye opening book and vey well written in classic sci-fi form.

Rating:
Summary: interesting book
Review: "Childhood's End" is one of the best novels of the 20th century. Arthur C. Clarke is one of the best writers of the period.

Many scenes from this book have been cribbed into the public consensuses over the years via Hollywood movies, some good and some bad. The most specific image copied from it is that of the giant space ship hovering over cities... done so whacked out well in the movie "Independence Day". Of course, there the aliens were evil invaders rather than the benevolent Overlords. Other ideas that morphed from this novel into Hollywood flicks were in the films 2001 and 2010. Of course, Clarke was directly involved with both of those, so they were much more faithful to the source materials. And naturally, Clarke's influences are seen in Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5 and other Hollywood SF series over the years.

The major question dealt with here is "where are we going?" as a species. The weirdness is that many people don't like the answer Clarke attempts to give here. I, myself, don't find it an appealing concept. I am not sure what I don't like about it other than that it seems Alien to me. Very alien. Which is why this is great SF... Clarke makes us feel that we humans can be aliens to ourselves, and not in a normal way. It is something that I think Asimov himself hooked into with his later Foundation novels and the Gaia concept... but Clarke did it first.

Clarke, along with other writers like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Fredrik Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and several others, made the future what, in many ways, it has become.

Clarke has written many other novels on, somewhat, the same concepts... "2001:A Space Odyssey", "Rendezvous with Rama" and "The City and the Stars" standing out, with this novel, as, in my opinion, his best work. Read this book for something that is more mature in outlook than the usual Hollywood faire that gets the sci-fi label.

Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed SF classic
Review: It sounds like a story you've heard before: great alien masters descend on Earth and take control of the world, ushering in a golden age that may be cleverly disguised creative slavery. But Clarke's legendary novel (equal to _Rendezvous with Rama_ and _2001: A Space Odyssey_ in fame) isn't about a human rebellion against alien overlords, but the evolution of humanity into its next stage, and the ultimate dwarfing power of the unknowable order of the cosmos. The narrative glides between different characters and different eons, occasionally with a seeming clumsiness that turns out to be purposeful plotting devices. The pay-off is sublime science-fiction poetry that shows the genre's power to transcend human drama and fly into the infinite. The sheer scope of its conclusions leaves the reader wiser and sadder, the sign of a superb novel.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Ideas about Humanity
Review: This book probably makes many people uncomfortable. There are a number of thoughts present that openly challenge religion, nationality and the sense of superiority that humanity possesses at times. Ultimately, the clever way in which these concepts were presented and woven into the story won me over.

The problem that hinders this text is the same as many of those stories that span across several generations. A constant influx of characters are introduced to the reader, and being this book is only ~230 pages, we can only briefly meet them. This prevents us from forming deep emotional bonds with the characters. These men and women are really only window dressing to the sweeping changes that are encompassing mankind.

I would recommend this book to those that enjoy looking at things from new and different perspectives. If you desire to learn more about human nature, Clarke's thoughts cover a wide range of human wants and emotions, leaving the reader with ideas wonderous, sobering, fulfilling and bittersweet.