I had pretty much the same reaction to the TV series V. The opening scenes were obviously inspired by “Childhood’s End.” I read “End” in high school. I still love the ending. I also like the experiences of the guy (can’t remember his name) who stowed away in the Overlord’s spacecraft. [sub]The giant eye… shudder[/sub]
If y’all want to experience Clarke’s playful side, read his “White Hart” short stories. The “White Hart” is a London pub where scientists and sci-fi writers hang out and tell stories, most of which are light and amusing; the story-tellers often challenge their listeners (and you, the reader) to explain the mystery of the story (which is revealed, don’t worry).
A “Childhood’s End” movie?! Starring Morgan Freeman?! Visuallized by Moebius?! And directed by David Fincher?!?! I’m THERE!!
I’ll salvage this by mentioning that Hugh Hefner threw a party in Clarke’s honor at the Playboy Mansion last night.
I once wrote a fan letter to Clarke and got a nice reply. Most of it was a form letter with a FAQ, but he included a hand-written note. I wish I still had it.
Hey guys! I just finished about 10 minutes ago. The book only took about 8 hours to read, but, with about 50 other pages of reading to do a night it still took awhile to fit in.
I haven’t checked this thread since Monday. I’m sorry! I had no idea you guys were waiting for me. Game on!
LateComer, nope, never read it before. You’d be surprised the number of staple SF books I’ve never read. There are just so many of them out there, that no one is going to be able to get to them all. So I browse used book stores until I find one that tickles me and I buy it.
As far as required reading in high school, there wasn’t much SF. Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm and…go on…guess.
C’mon, you’re not guessing.
OK Fine, don’t play. It was Ender’s Game
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. I liked it a lot more than 2001. Clarke doesn’t seem to like to stick to one character through a book, does he?
The whole Devil thing caught me by surprise. Very interesting twist, and it made sense within the context of the story. It’s funny how he integrates religion back into the storyline after bashing it through the whole book.
It’s also interesting to note how well this story has held up over 50 years. I never got the sense that it was dated.
But it was difficult to suspend my disbelief on the whole Golden Age/Utopia concept. I mean, there will be some people born mentally imbalanced. There will be some people born mentally retarded. There will be some people born who have a great propensity towards evil. And there will be some evil people on the planet when the Overlords show up who will not go quietly into that good night. It might take numerous displays to show them the error of their ways. But creating a utopian society is probably a tad more difficult than Mr. Clarke makes it out to be.
Indeed. I haven’t read Last and First Men (though I do have a copy), but I’ve read Star Maker – for an undergrad course on SF (Childhood’s End was also on the syllabus). I don’t think I’d have managed to finish it if I hadn’t had to, because it’s one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read, but it was well worth the effort. Or at least I thought so once we’d covered it in class.
Add me to the “creeped out by the ending” list. Decidedly disturbing, I think.
My favorite line from the book: “Jan had always been a first-class pianist, and now he was the best in the world.”
There is this theme of Utopia/Armageddon that runs through Clarke’s work. He builds up the perfect, idyllic society, only to have it completely and utterly destroyed. Aside from Childhood’s End, you can find it in The Fountains of Paradise, The Songs of Distant Earth, and the short story “The Star”. The last is possibly even creepier and more disturbing than Childhood’s End. In Songs…, Armageddon has already happened and the Earth has been destroyed. Fountains… is the most hopeful, perhaps because the world doesn’t truly end. Also, that last image of humanity’s greatest feat of engineering is just truly mind-bending and awe-inspiring.
Terminus Est, thanks for mentioning “The Star” (I would have, but at the moment my posting is pretty much confined to weekends). I have found ACC unusually good at delivering an evocative closing line/paragraph/chapter–but that one is a real gutpunch. Especially with The Season upon us.
So now I’m confused. Everyone is pissing in their pants excited to discuss this book, but they don’t out of respect for moi, who hasn’t finished it yet. Then I do finish the book, I want to discuss it, and this thread becomes more unpopular than a projectile vomiting leper with a bad case of dandruff.
What gives?
What really struck me about this book was the time frame. I think this is the first Science Fiction book I ever read that fortold events occuring WAY after they really did. Like, I read that the prez elected in 2000 was saying stuff like, “We will get to the moon!” Whereas he was really saying stuff like, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
(As I was thinking about that, sitting in my bed late at night, I realized–hey, it’s 2001. It’s the freaking future man! Woah! And then I had to put the book down and eat a cookie and stop being weirded out.)
What do I wanna discuss? I dunno. The book and stuff?
Clarke has an interesting way of writing a story. He’s more of a conceptual storyteller than a narrative one. Certainly he gives more description here of the changed world than he does of life in 2001 or 2010, but even here the book is broken up into several timeframes. Each one lasts long enough to tell the story that needs to be told and no longer. Certainly one can say he’s a minimalist in the art of writing, but it doesn’t allow much character depth when every 50 pages we’re introduced to a new timeframe. You want to scream “wait, I was just getting used to Stormgren, bring him back!”
Also, I have the feeling that the utopian society wouldn’t work out the way it’s portrayed here. There would be A LOT of resentment that aliens are controlling their lives…even if it was for the humans’ own good. Even if they knew it was for their own good. Our sense of free will is too strong to just allow something like that to occur without a fight.
I just finished reading Childhood’s End today. Blech. Blah. It was supposed to be good? Ha ha, they’re devils. I guess.
I, also, had to reread the bit where the humans see the Overlords. I was like, okay, they’re big and have leathery wings, so… they’re either pterodactyls or kinda like Satany looking or something. He eventually ekes a few more words of description from this 218-page tome ( :rolleyes: ) and I learn that they have cheek-gills. Or something.
I always thought it would be cool to write a book, but I don’t seriously plan to because I’m afraid my writing style will turn out like this book: dull, plodding, clinical, declarative, boring.
The OP mentions the Vorlons; that’s a good analogy: like in B5, the mystery of what the aliens look like keeps me interested. And in both, we find out what they look like and that the mystery was hiding crappy writing. Okay, so Childhood’s End has the decency to have some more mysteries. Why are they interested in paranormal activity? What’s going to happen to the kids? Well, we find that out, too. And whoopdy-do. Yawn. Whatever. Who cares? There aren’t the words to describe how I felt after reading this book. Let me try anyway: unexcited, nonfascinated, agripped, and anti-stimulated. Violently uninterested. Apathetic with homicidal underpinnings.
“But jmonster,” you may say, “you’ve just been spoiled by all the other Sci-Fi stuff that has been directly or indirectly influenced by Old Art.” Well, don’t worry, I’m full aware of the Tolkien/Clarke effect. I give him full credit for coming up with the idea between 1941 and 1953. But it would have been better if he had just sat on it until 1980 and handed it over to Piers Anthony. At least then there would be some puerilely titillating sex scenes.
Well, OK, jmonster. As I remember it, Childhood’s End ends with the destruction of the Earth as the whole of humanity achieves a sort of racial apotheosis. Your response to this is “Yeah. Whatever”. Fine. That isn’t my response, but, well, it’d be a funny old world if we were all the same, wouldn’t it?
And you don’t like Clarke’s writing style… I think I’m closer to seeing your point here: Clarke does have a restrained and rather understated style (perhaps exemplified by the famous, matter-of-fact last line of “The Nine Billion Names of God”). Nonetheless, I respectfully disagree; Childhood’s End is an excellent example of what some critics have called Clarke’s “keening elegiac tone”; didacticism and exposition are kept reasonably within bounds, and, on the whole, I think the book’s at least competently written.
But… why the rolling eyes at “218 pages”? I’m a firm believer in the idea that a story should be as long as it needs to be, and no longer. I realise the current fashion seems to be for vast lumpy novels you can’t lift with one hand, but as far as I’m concerned, if Sir Arthur can wrap up his narrative in 218 pages, more power to his elbow. As a matter of fact, I think many writers suffer from spreading themselves out at length; certainly, Stephen King needs to be edited with a chainsaw (I think he’s admitted as much himself), and the decline of Clive Barker (whose short stories are punchy, disturbing and to-the-point) into huge wobbling bloated pseudo-epics has often distressed me. Short novel != flawed novel.
(I’m assuming “Worst novel ever” is dramatic hyperbole. Because, if Childhood’s End is really the worst novel you’ve ever read - whoo boy, have you led a sheltered life…)
Well, obviously, I couldn’t disagree more with jmonster’s assessment.
Clarke doesn’t write adventure yarns. No romantic subplots. No zappy laser guns. No three-page long descriptions of slavering monsters.
If that’s what you’re looking for, you might want to check out some of my other favorite authors . . .
Why do you say:
Do you mean that Clarke hid the appearance of the Overlords because he couldn’t write a good description of them, or are you getting at something else?
Personally, I have a very vivid mental picture of what the Overlords look like, which is probably quite different from other people’s mental pictures. This is not a problem because the exact appearance of the Overlords is not important to the plot. Imagine what a devil looks like. Now, morph that a little so it looks like an alien rather than the cartoon guy with the goatee and pitchfork. Now imagine it curled up in the library reading a book on the paranormal. Clarke doesn’t need to spell the details, because the reader’s imagination is perfectly capable of filling in the blanks.
(And then we’re back to Vorlons again. “And you, Ambassador Mollari, What did you see?” “Nothing. I saw nothing.”)
First, before hitting my main topic, there is a very nice illustration of what the Overlords look like in Barlowe’s Guide to Exterrestrials. Just wanted to point that out.
Now, to the main point. I like a great deal of Clarke’s work but I didn’t care for Childhood’s End that much. (More than I liked 3001, but we won’t go there…:))
Of course, given that I like Clarke, I have to ask why I didn’t like this one.
I think it is because I tend to project myself into the things I read. To stick with Clarke, I wonder how I would react if I was faced with a malfunctioning or malicious HAL in 2001. What would I do if given the opportunity to explore Rama? Or, what would my thoughts be if I looked up and saw the stars “quietly going out”?
End doesn’t give me this chance. I’m not one of the last generation of children. I can’t relate to them. I’m with those who watch and who are simply tossed aside when the next generation goes beyond the rim, or whatever. “So sorry, but you’ve been consigned to the trash heap of existance. Goodbye!”
Maybe that was the point. I don’t know. I just know the book left me feeling depressed.
I don’t read books to feel depressed; real life can do that for me quite well, thank you. You can argue that this means End is well written since it has that much of an effect on me. OK, maybe it is. But, does the fact that it was well written mean that I have to enjoy it? I don’t think so.
I read it. I was depressed. It’s been on my shelf ever since.
I too am gratified that others find Childhood’s End as moving and influential as I did… (scene shimmers, harps glissands, scene reappears in black and white where a 10 year old boy dubiously picks up a thick hardback book.)
My parents subscribed to a Book-of-the-Month club and probably forgot to send in a card. The book was an Arthur C. Clarke compendium - I believe it had three volumes of short stories and two novels, one of which was CE.
I was at first intimidated by the book because it was too big, too small a print, and no pictures. But when I started reading the short stories I was hooked for life! Eventually the short stories ran out and I was left with the novels. Even at that age, CE got to me. I’ve since re-read it many times and am always deeply disturbed and moved by the ending.
btw the other novel was Earthlight - it was ACC’s “hard science” style and very good read too. Another “poetic visionary” work worth checking out is The City and the Stars which is a revision of the earlier Against the Fall of Night
Not sure if anyone’s explicitly mentioned this but, CE (man trancending to another level) and The Sentinel (we’ve been visited before and they’re waiting for us to set off the alarm) form the basic concept of 2001: A Space Odyssey
I agree that the shifting of character perspective (our eyes in the book) is unnerving. Still, the ambiguity of how to feel about mankind’s transcence and the Overlord’s limitations was enlightening. And I still wonder if a metaconsciousness can exist, similar to an Overmind. Have ever since I first read it, despite the fact that I do not believe in the paranormal at all.
