Rating: 
Summary: religious overtones
Review: I read this book many years ago and it is one of the few that has always stayed in my thoughts. The book deals with some of mans Myths and Archetypes and leads you along one path regarding these things and yet at the very end returns you to them as you see the overlords in a new somewhat tragic light.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Childhood's End is the kind of book that, when you finish reading it, you sit and stare at the wall for ten minutes because you can't completely wrap your mind around everything that has happened. Then it hits you, and you buy every Clarke book you can find. Childhood's End is the author's apocalyptic vision of humanity's future. In the book, the author shows his hesitation for man to go plowing through space not knowing what dangers it may face. That, I think, is the message Clarke is trying to convey with this story. If you want a completely original Sci-Fi, you definitely need to go get this book.
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Summary: Humanity, aliens and the coming of age of man
Review: This novel has three different parts: Earth and the Overlords, The Golden Age and the Last Generation. The basic premise of the novel is that at some point in the 20th century, extremely powerful aliens (hereafter called the "Overlords") arrive and take over Earth.However, the twist to the novel is that the aliens are not interested in conquest or any sort of domination. Rather, they saw Earth as a something of a tiresome chore, to be managed and put into order. While they are some that resist the aliens on principle, there is little to complain about. Hunger, disease, war are all gone. But all original art and science are gone; humanity starts to stagnate. There is tremendous pressure in Part 1 for the Overlords to reveal themselves. They resist this pressure and remain mysterious. The Overlords say that they will reveal themselves in 50 years... When the Overlords reveal themselves, it is a moving scene. I don't want to reveal what happens but it was good. Later on in Part 2 (The Golden Age), there are many benefits. Yet, not all was well. "Profounder things had also passed. It was a completely secular age. Of the faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overloads, only a form of purified Buddhism - perhaps the most austere of all religions - still survived. The creeds that had been based upon miracles and revelation had collapsed utterly. With the rise of education, they had already been slowly dissolving, but for a while the Overlords had taken so sides in the matter. Though Karellen was often asked to express his views on religion, all that he would say was that a man's beliefs were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty of others." (page 74) This is one trend that seems to plague much of science fiction, this assumption that science is true and that theistic religion has no basis in reality, that it is merely superstitious nonsense. Mainly because this is assumed with no argument or discussion, I find it distasteful and arrogant. Note, if you don’t want to spoil the best parts of the novel, don’t read anything further. That aside, the novel was very enjoyable. There were several powerful scenes in the novel. The ending of the novel, with Karellen (the ‘leader’ of the Overlords in charge of Earth) and the death of the last man in the world, was particularly poignant. In the middle part (The Last Generation), I think Clarke implies that mere pleasure is not enough. At this point in time, there was enough wealth to feed everybody and those who wanted luxuries had to work for them, but in the field of their choosing. Machines had eliminated manual labour and the only thing left was sports and other such amusements. Then, a new colony called New Athens is founded to encourage new art and new culture, something that had not been produced since the coming of the Overlords. All through the novel, I wondered what did the title mean. In the final chapters of the novel, it is explained. Suddenly, a whole generation of children developed, indeed leapt forward into a whole new state. They could manipulate matter, did not need to eat and ultimately left Earth. It was the end of humanity’s “childhood.” The last man in the world had traveled, as a stowaway on an Overlord ship, to the Overlord home world. Due to the relativity of time in near light speed travel, he aged only six months while eighty years passed on Earth. He returned to an empty Earth… This is the first Clarke novel that I have read and I was very impressed by it. The science is plausible but it is not dominant.
Rating: 
Summary: Cosmic view of human evolution
Review: Childhood's End is an interesting interpretation of the spiritual/metaphysical realm of our known Universe. With scientists continually theororizing about smaller and smaller indivisible micro-atomistic particles (i.e. read current speculations about 10-11 dimensional string theory and p-brane model of the universe), it seems that science in it's presence state is itself a religion, using theory and believable symbols and illustrations to "make sense" of our mysterious world. Without solid empirical evidence that is noticeable to sight and with the blockades that the uncertainty principle poses, spirituality is left to fill in the gaps. In this case, Arthur C. Clarke, the prophetic visionary of satellite communications interprets an encounter with another race of being and the eventual hypnotic capture of our souls by the Overlords and hence their capture by an even more powerful force toward a journey of the creative destruction in combining intellectual and "sixth sense" forces into an aggrandized mass, leaves many ethical conflicts to ponder not only our self-created hectic evolutionary advancement, but one that may be imposed on us by a mysterious, hard to communicate with outside force. Concerning selfish, ignorant thinking, a subservient role served to avoid harm and anger and destructive danger, sacrificing self-expression for safety, good health, and prosperity, and generally being censured for secure matters are very relevant for today's world. While the book is somewhat simply written and jumps to certain expected interpretations of events if followed in a logical, chronological order, it still leaves the greatest task of reader (to imagine a scenario, vision, image) up to the reader himself. Not his best work (2001 and Rendevous with Rama) but still admirably authentic classic sci-fi.
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Summary: SF's greatest visionary practicing his unique magic
Review: Never has SF produced another visionary as stirring as Arthur C. Clarke, and in "Childhood's End" Clarke presents a future breathtaking even when judged by the high standards he has set. "Childhood's End" opens with mankind making its first contact with an alien race, a very dramatic contact, with giant ships hovering over the major cities of Earth and the alien leader Karellen announcing his stewardship over the governments of man. Why the Overlords have arrived to steer mankind's destiny is unknown. The direction in which they guide it and the profound metamorphosis of humanity that results are revealed as the drama unfolds. Clarke's novels are the epic poems of the 20th century, the "Odyssey" and the "Aeneid" of the modern age, with the entire race of man as the hero and the conquering and mastery of the universe as its trial. With a protagonist so broad Clarke has little space to devote to the development of individual characters. The humans in "Childhood's End" are all fashioned from the same mold, brought out to advance certain plot lines and then discarded, and dredged up again when required. Only the Overlord Karellen is developed to an extent such that the reader cares what befalls him. The fate which befalls humanity presents another problem for "Childhood's End." The novel is divided into three sections, the first describing Karellen's shepherding of Earth and the subsequent two tracing the evolution of man. The first part of the triad is markedly better than the others; the evolution Clarke envisions is not convincingly argued, and one gets the impression that Clarke didn't find it very persuasive himself and had difficulty justifying it. Despite these flaws, "Childhood's End" remains an excellent novel. The spreading of the action over several generations, with only one cast of characters being insufficient to encompass the entirety of man's development, evokes in the reader a sense of the grandiosity of Clarke's vision, capturing him and keeping him frantically turning pages to discover what wondrous future Clarke has planned for the human race.
Rating:
Summary: Clarke's "Brick in the Wall"?
Review: Is "Childhood's End" Clarke's "Brick in the Wall"? I think it is!
Just imagine waking up to the news that huge flying saucers have positioned
themselves above every major city in the world. Later that day, you and your astonished
friends and family shudder to discover that every radio and television station in the world
has been co-opted by the aliens in the spacecrafts and the following message is repeated
over and over in all the worlds languages. "We are not here to harm you, we are friendly,
we want to help you, protect you and guide you. We will not allow you to destroy yourselves.
Warfare will no longer be allowed." The message goes on, but that's the gist of how Arthur
C. Clarke in his book "Childhood's End" envisioned how contact would begin between the
aliens and earth. Clarke goes on to tell how the aliens use their powers to stop warfare; how they
communicated to the earth through one man, the head of the United Nations; how the
friendly space men took upon themselves the re-education of the planet through the
co-opted radio and television frequencies. The aliens revealed. how they had helped to
engineer the evolutionary development of the race, and how throughout our history they
had worked through chosen vessels like Moses, Gautama, Confucius, Baha lai, Jesus,
Mohamed and many others to try and steer the human race down paths of survival.
Unfortunately, according to the aliens, all these enlightened teachers soon had their
teachings corrupted and turned into religion. That's why they, our space brothers, were
here; to correct our misunderstanding and to help us in our evolutionary development. Clark's writes that the aliens had revealed themselves in order to help the human race take
the next big step in it's evolutionary progress. This next stage, as Clarke imagined it,
involved the youth of the world metamorphosing into a universal mind and floating off the
planet like a butterfly into another dimension. This coincided with the end of the ability of
the race to procreate itself --the adults were left behind to grow old and just die off, thus the title
of the book: "Childhood's End" Clarke, like many today, really believe that the human race
is headed for a great evolutionary leap and that it could actually occur along the lines that
he fictionalized in his book. Clarke wrote, that after the initial coming in their flying saucers, that
it took decades before the aliens could actually reveal themselves personally to the people
of earth. They first had to re-educate the planet and especially de-mystify the
devil--because the funny thing was, that when the friendly space brothers finally did reveal
themselves to the earth they looked like the spittin' image of the devil himself, or at least, how the
old Christian artists had painted the devil--with horns, cloven feet, and a tail! Now Clarke envisioned it taking decades of re-education by the aliens in order to get the
people to the point where the aliens could reveal themselves without freaking everybody
out of their minds. However, Clarke wrote this back in the 50's, and didn't anticipate the
stupendous progress made in public education and the media towards demystifying religion and
softening the minds of the masses to accept a demonic intrusion of Earth as a "Close Encounter
Of The Third Kind".Today the entire western world is in a post-Christian era . It does have a
Christian veneer, but underlying that is the new western paradigm of evolution with it's befuddled
logic and a mind-set that is wide open to receive the great evolutionary deception of our friendly
space brothers. They are ready to receive the the Devil himself! "And Satan was cast out into the
Earth, and his angels were cast out with him" Revelation 12:9 ......
Rating:
Summary: Questioning beliefs and humanity's achievements
Review: After reading Childhood's End, it still awes me. The book follows three stories. Th first, Earth and the Overlords, is about the strange, large ships that appearover the reat cities of earth, and the Overlord, Karellen. Karellen talks with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Rikki Stormgren. No one else of that generation has ever, or will ever see an Overlord, but Stormgren plans to be the first. In the Golden Years, Rupert and Maia get married and have a big party decades later. The Overlords have shown themselves to humanity, and their secrecy on appearance is apparent. Yet a mystery still remains. Jam, Maia's brother, questions what planet are they from? The answer he gets will surprise him. In the third story, Jan plans to stowaay n an Overlord ship and travel to their planet. It will take 40 Earth years to get there, but he will only age a few weeks. What he sees there stuns and awes him. He returns to Earth 80 years after he left, only to discover Childhood's End. I hope I didn't give away too much about this bok. It was really a great book, provoking many thoughts about how we believe and how great man's accomplishments truly are. At first it was tough getting into this book because the reader has no clue what is truly going on. All they know is that there are alien ships above the world's greatest cities, and because of that there is a great change that takes place. After getting into this book, the reader becomes enthralled in the destiny of Earth and her children.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Yeah!!!!
Review: I wish we could give fractional ratings.... I would give this one 4.5 stars. This is another great book from a great author. I read it a long time ago and really enjoyed it. I recently re-read it and still enjoyed it. What an idea... Clarke can really come up with great story concepts. I will not give the story away. But, this one will really make you think. A must read for all hardcore Sci-Fi readers.
Rating:
Summary: best of the golden age of sci-fi
Review: Of the golden age sci-fi writers generation, Clarke may be the only one who produced true literature. His books are so finely written, so superby researched, and so subtle and dramatic that he set the standard for the best who were to follow. Childhood's end is probably the best of his earlier books. Clarke maintains a sense of mystery until the very end, titillating the reader with clues. Without revealing the plot, humankind is visited by enigmatic space craft, perched over the major cities of the planet. The aliens will not allow themselves to be seen and they let mankind develop more or less as it pleases, though subtly guiding it and rarely overtly. While reading it, you feel the vastness of the universe and the wonder of existence, which sounds pretentious but Clarke pulls it off. He also weaves in certain grand themes, such as the unity of apocalyptic visions in the major religions, the complexity of time, and the destiny of the human mind, all of which are inter-linked. This creates a permanent space in the imagination of the reader, to be nutured for a lifetime. Recommended as a great introduction to the world of sci-fi.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: I'm not the kind of person who really enjoys reading, but I had to read for my English class, and I really liked this book. It was a short and easy book to read, and it was very good. I don't think someone who doesn't like Sci-Fi would enjoy it, but certainly someone who neither likes Sci-Fi nor dislikes it would enjoy the book (Wow that's a long sentence). It's worth buying -- or at least checking out at the library. It's a good read.
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