I can’t believe I’ve never got around to reading this book, one of Clarke’s most famous! But that is now rectified. I tend to struggle with reading older classic SF but not this one and that alone has impressed me!
Childhood’s End is a first contact by a benevolent advanced alien but manages to be so much more than that with a couple of very interesting twists in it. Though I did find the first one a bit contrived, I certainly didn’t find the second one to be so. I was a little disappointed by the paranormal stuff, especially coming from the man who presented the TV show Clarke’s World of Strange Powers in which he mostly debunked various paranormal claims. But, to be fair, this book was written a long time before the TV series and in an afterword Clarke does confess to a little embarrassment about that aspect of the book, but does go on to say that at the time (1953) so little was known about what the rapid advances of post-war science might reveal that almost anything was consider possible.
Regardless he presents an excellent well-paced and intriguing story of first contact and its consequences for all humanity. It does feel a little serialised as it has to cover a long period of a hundred years. But he manages to keep the pace and suspense going despite a couple of long gaps in the narrative.
A very good book that is really quite remarkable for when it was written, though Clarke did update the first chapter decades later with some of the real events which he naturally missed in the first edition.
4/5 stars
Childhood’s End is a first contact by a benevolent advanced alien but manages to be so much more than that with a couple of very interesting twists in it. Though I did find the first one a bit contrived, I certainly didn’t find the second one to be so. I was a little disappointed by the paranormal stuff, especially coming from the man who presented the TV show Clarke’s World of Strange Powers in which he mostly debunked various paranormal claims. But, to be fair, this book was written a long time before the TV series and in an afterword Clarke does confess to a little embarrassment about that aspect of the book, but does go on to say that at the time (1953) so little was known about what the rapid advances of post-war science might reveal that almost anything was consider possible.
Regardless he presents an excellent well-paced and intriguing story of first contact and its consequences for all humanity. It does feel a little serialised as it has to cover a long period of a hundred years. But he manages to keep the pace and suspense going despite a couple of long gaps in the narrative.
A very good book that is really quite remarkable for when it was written, though Clarke did update the first chapter decades later with some of the real events which he naturally missed in the first edition.
4/5 stars
