Rating: 
Summary: More Ideas Than a Story
Review: And don't misinterpret my title!
Let me explain ... there isn't one gigantic plot line and it's not one big action packed story. Reading this, you get the impression that Arthur C. Clarke wrote this book because he wanted to show the reader his ideas about other alien races being not necessarily superior or inferior, but just different. An alien life form, evolved on another planet, would obviously not come out being anything that we could comprehend or imagine, and we would be just as alien to them as they are to us. And I think Clarke is trying to make the point that humanity cannot even begin to imagine life on another world. So he does the best that man kind can do, by bringing up ideas that are so out of the ordinary, complecated, and creative that they seem alien to the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: first timer
Review: On recommendation from my husband I read "Childhood's End." My husband mainly reads science fiction and I like reading cookbooks, so I did not expect to finish the first chapter of this book. I finished the book in one day, curled up on the bed under a cover, while dust bunnies multiplied under the furniture. The book also made me think about the way we treat children who are different. As a special education teacher I have seen how some adults dislike children who are labeled as "gifted and talented." And sometimes we need someone strong and honest looking over these children, so that their intelligence will not be "killed." ANy book that makes me stop and think about my inside and outside world is a book worth reading.That was my take on it.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable
Review: Good books can open a reader's eyes and reveal a greater truth about the world he or she lives in. Childhood's End goes a giant leap beyond that and opens the reader's eyes to the universe he or she is a part of. For the most part we go through life day by day, dreaming of adventure but living a dull, eventless life. For the first time in a long time, I was forced to think about how miraculous it is that we are here at all, and how mysterious the workings of time and the universe are.More than anything else, this book made me wonder about our place in the universe. Are we alone in the universe? Or are we simply one of many races out there, and not very high on the totem pole at that? (the book compares humans to an "Overmind" the way we might compare an amoeba to us). Either way, it makes the infighting we do amongst ourselves seem pretty pettty. Childhood's End is not a complicated book, it certainly doesn't take long to read, but it is easily among the best works ever of science fiction. I am amazed when I think that this book was written 50 years ago. Change a few numbers and terms and this book could easily have been written today. Given the fact that it was indeed written half a century ago, and that for the most part Clarke overestimated our accomplishments to date, it certainly puts things in perspective. Here's to hoping that in real life, it doesn't take Overlords to put things in order on Earth!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Science Fiction Book Ever?
Review: This is definitely Clarke's best work, and possibly my favorite sci-fi book ever. Clarke has the ability to combine social commentary with amazingly realistic and prophetic scientific visions. I could see a lot of his predictions coming true in the future (and some already have!). I've read this book twice, and plan to read it more in the future. Very dark, but strangely uplifting...
Rating:
Summary: The Silver Ships in Neil Young's Song
Review: Childhood's End should never be allowed to go out of print. And certain of his short stories: "Expedition To Earth," "Rescue Party," "Superiority." I have a few disconnected statements to say about this book. I assume you have read it. If you have not yet read it, go find a copy and sit down and don't get up until you have finished the last page. The whole idea of spaceships hovering in gigantic stillness over the cities was a gift of the imagination triggered by Clarke's descriptions in this novel. That vision has now besome a visual cliche in the movies.
The very title, Childhood's End, carries so much importance in communicating Clarke's vision of the next leap in human evolution. Man will become a mental/spiritual being without a body. He will become like God. When Karellen allows Stormgren to see him as he exits the room behind the one way mirror, Stormgren sees an image that echoes through the past and the future. To suggest that a future event is so staggering in importance that it becomes an ancient myth of the human race; that that future event is able to travel backward in time to become a common memory - is a philosophical thought of the highest order. When the dreams begin, it is also the beginning of the end of childhood. Dreaming is actually a form of traveling. You go to different worlds that are unlike the world you see everyday. Dreams are real travel. Whenever I hear Neil Young singing about being in a burnt-out basement, seeing the silver ships coming out of the sky, and lamenting that the loading had begun - this sends shivers through me. The imagery is from Childhood's End. Childhood's End is a must read philosophical novel. It is more that science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: "There is no way back, and no future for the world you know"
Review: It takes a good author to make a book the reader can laugh to, a great author to make a reader cry, and an extraordinary author to make his/her reader look at life in a new way. So speaking, Arthur C. Clarke doesn't disappoint. Clarke has created a superbly superior story in CHILDHOOD'S END. This book is not one that a reader appreciates in only one reading, but with each time around the reader encounters more insight into the story and life, itself.
Clarke's use of literary devices and dialect allows a complicated story to unravel into another life-like dimension. It is almost plausible to believe that events such as these could occur in the near-future, and that entities such as the Overminds exist. In fact, Clarke's creation has allowed an occasion for a reader to correlate humanity's cultural evolutions to that of humanity's intellectual/spiritual evolution in CHILDHOOD'S END. Clarke, again, has created a masterpiece that inspires readers of all ages.
Rating:
Summary: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of Sci Fi
Review: I can't speak as to his other works, but this work really is a bit of genius. It's an exciting read (I finished it in 2 sittings), with almost no fluff or triviality (excepting the physical appearance of the Overlords, which I found rather silly--and hardly universal). Though clothed as a sci-fi novel, it is philosophical in the extreme and is deeply influenced by Nietzsche. Consider: the "Overlords" (=ubermenschen), the "Last Man" and his pettiness in not being made for the stars, the implicit contrast between the Apollonian (the Overlords & their seemingly all-powerful intellect undercut with despair in its own ultimate failure and subservience to an incomprehensible Higher Power) and the Dionysian (humankind's evolutionary offspring, with their utter disregard for their own precursors in their collective absorption in transcendental, universe-bending ritual), and the author's deep interest in the occult (see Clarke's rambling new preface, in the [slightly] revised edition). A definite must-read, with layers of meaning and a disturbingly tragic ending.
Rating:
Summary: Everything that rises must converge...
Review: Although this is a science fiction classic its theme is consonant with the short story of the above name by the Christian writer Flannery O'Connor, who was profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin maintained the the universe and humankind were evolving toward a perfect state where all opposites and contradictions merge into oneness.
Clarke in this spare and still disquieting work offers a similar vision, more apocalyptic than evolutionary perhaps, but ultimately life-affirming. Clarke has the last man, as he views the final apotheosis, observe that religions had it all wrong, but this is true only of those who preach self-glorification. There is another, more philosophical religious tradition that views self-denial and the annihilation of personality as the ultimate goal of both individuals and the human race. Indeed Kierkegaard could provide the epigram for this thoughtful, metaphysical novel: All true religion begins in self-renunciation.
Not only in the origins of the universe (Big Bang theory) but in eschatology also, may religion and science be on the path to a new convergence.
Rating:
Summary: Rather depressing
Review: This novel is fun and exciting to read at first. as usual Clarke distributes the burden of the story on many Different characters and tries to build a plot that is consistent with current scientific knowledge. the end is gloomy, however, and doesnt reflect the usually optimistic view of SF writers
Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly interesting book!
Review: Down here in Brazil it's ard to get your hands on an un-translated sci-fi novel, so I was specially gald to have borrowed this one from a friend. It's an entertaining story, that you can read in a week or less. It deals with the final future of mankind and the last 50 pages provide an equisite and unpredicable ending. As the spaceships soar over Earth's skyscrapers for decades, I found myself as anxious to find out more about them as the book's characters, who lived in the city below. A truly great read.
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