looking for an author and short story name

[iaskuy]

Hello Everyone,

I've been trying to find a short story authors name and his or her book? When I was in high school, almost 8 years ago, my english teacher would let us read some short stories. One in particular was realy interesting to read. My teacher was way into sci-fi books and good authors like JRR Tolken, The Hobbit. Also other stories he would make us read, was "The Monkeys Paw, short story" The Outsiders and The Chrystalids... just to name a few. Good stuff.

Anyways, the story and author I'm looking for a science fiction short story.
The story starts, in a near future, or maybe now, it turns around certain character, I think its a man. Anyways, earth is sudenly contacted and surounded by ships and we are contacted by the creature inside these ships. It takes awhile before anyone actualy meets any of these aliens, we first think its an initial take over, then these aliens want to learn about us. After some time, this main character is trusted by these alien, then he ends up having initial contacts with them. He then finds out that they look strangly like what we see as being the devil or stanic. They have wings, have tails and horns, I think they are also alot biger then any humans. Also they are very inteligent. I remember imagining one of them being decribes by the author, one reading in one of our human libraries, almost looking like a gargoile.
These are some of the details of the story, some parts I can't remember, since its been awhile.

If anyone can hlep me out, with an author and maybe the name of the story, that would be nice.

Thanks again

Dvd

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I'm almost certain that this is the short story which Arthur C Clarke later expanded into the novel, 'Childhood's End'. That novel deals with a race of aliens who take control of earth, propel it into a sort of utopian state and refuse to be seen by humans because they have hooves, horns and a barbed tail and an 'earlier encounter' with humanity has left us with rather unpleasant racial memories of them. Their leader is called Karellen and the main human protagonist is a sort of ambassador to Karellen who deicded to try and figure out the alien's true appearance on the day of his last meeting with Karellen, before he retires.

I can't place the name of the original short story right now, that'll have to wait until I go home and rifle through my collection, so watch this space!

 

[littlemissattitude]

"Childhood's End" was the first thing that came to my mind, as well, when I read the plot synopsis. But then I didn't know that it started out as a short story, so I didn't post anything. I'll be looking forward to you finding the title to that, too.

As a side note: it's really funny, when I originally typed this post, instead of "read", I wrote "heard", and instead of post, I wrote "say". Am I the only one who tends to think of posting here in terms of talking and hearing instead of reading and writing? I just noticed that I do that, and it seems really strange to me.

 

[dwndrgn]

"Childhood's End" was the first thing that came to my mind, as well, when I read the plot synopsis. But then I didn't know that it started out as a short story, so I didn't post anything. I'll be looking forward to you finding the title to that, too.

As a side note: it's really funny, when I originally typed this post, instead of "read", I wrote "heard", and instead of post, I wrote "say". Am I the only one who tends to think of posting here in terms of talking and hearing instead of reading and writing? I just noticed that I do that, and it seems really strange to me.

You're not alone LittleMiss!

 

[angrybuddhist]

The short story that was the seed for Childhood's End is called "Guardian Angel", published in 1950.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Yes, that's the one. I sat and re-read it last night by the way - a most engaging little story, well worth digging out.

 

[Arwynn]

i think ill look it up. it sounds fascinating...