Childhood's End is essentially a "coming of age" tale for the human race. The prose is fluent and readable, and I liked the way the story swept through a century, giving a breathtaking panoramic perspective with selected close-ups of various people at various points in the course of the unfolding events. The way Clarke handled the final scene is poignant and left me with a lingering sense of deep wistfulness.

If you like your fiction philosophical and nuanced, Childhood's End is a worthy read.


Childhood's OK   May 1, 2003
 28 out of 35 found this review helpful

I must admit to being slightly disappointed with CHILDHOOD'S END. It's not a bad book by any means; Clarke's imagination is at the forefront. The storyline is full of surprises, and while the characterizations are fairly shallow, that didn't adversely affect the overall book for me. Still, I couldn't help but feel that it wasn't quite as good as its hype would have one believe. It's a decent and engrossing novel, but I just didn't find it to be anything special.

There were parts of CHILDHOOD'S END that I just found to be too unbelievable. Now, I'm not talking about unrealistic science or an inability on my part to acknowledge the existence of aliens; I read quite a lot of science fiction, and these sorts of things I am more than willing to accept in fiction. No, to demonstrate what I found strange, I'll go through the back-cover blurb. It begins: "The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind." So far, so good. It continues: "Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war." Again, nothing too shocking. Friendly aliens aren't going to make me throw down the book in disbelief. But the following bit I found to be a bit much: "With little rebellion, mankind agreed, and a golden age began." Now personally I just can't see that happening as peacefully and simply as Clarke posits. And the book doesn't give us much more background that that short sentence. Clarke just skips right over parts like this that would be difficult to swallow.

I think part of my difficulty accepting large chunks of the exposition was the way in which Clarke chooses to deliver his narrative. The book skips and jumps through the decades, but also tries to keep itself grounded by introducing us to a variety of easily-exchangeable characters. Clarke is trying to do two things at once here, and in a book that's a slim 212 pages, he simply doesn't give himself enough room to do justice to both. He wants to give us a grand sweeping vision of the future, where the stories of individuals are washed away in the march of time. But then he'll suddenly jump back and relate a chapter or two focusing on a handful of characters. Then it'll be back to the grand historical approach, leaving those individuals far behind. I think that Clarke could have pulled off this approach if he had an extra hundred pages to play around with. Unfortunately, he didn't, and the book ends up being at times neither one thing nor the other.

It sounds as if I'm being a bit too hard on this book, and I've devoted more time that I meant to on highlighting the negative points. But I did find a lot to enjoy here. Clarke writes a plot that I simply couldn't anticipate; many of the surprises caught me off-guard. Clarke is thinking big here. He's looking at mankind's place in a large universe and comparing our progress to what limitless potential there is out there. I really appreciated the scope of his vision.

It just seemed to me as if Clarke was trying to cram too much into the short amount of pages allotted. It forces him to keep rushing forward, not giving himself time to dwell on some of the ideas that he confronts us with. It also forces him to provide exposition by dumping huge blocks of narration at us, or simply by having characters give long speeches at each other. CHILDHOOD'S END is full of thought-provoking ideas, and I'd classify it as a good science-fiction novel, but I cannot honestly say that I found it a great one.


Old Myths rewritten as a Sci-Fi   May 22, 2003
 17 out of 20 found this review helpful

I think most people have missed the point of this great work.
In this book, Clarke re-tells the old Christian-Islamic creation myth from a mystic point of view in a Science-Fiction novell!
According to this myth, man has a divine gift in him that allows him to finally join in with God , where as the Devil, though the archangel, made of fire instead of clay, can never reach this phase. Though by God's plan it serves His great purpose of making that final union of Man and God possible.
Clarke takes this , wraps it up in a Scientific world-view, even explains the origin of the above myth in its plot's context, in the mean time makes fun of all the prosaic results of the very same myth, and finally portrays the union in perhaps the most fascinating way ever told!
If this is not masterpiece , I don't know what is!

He also gives us a hint at the very first page where he writes :"the opinions expressed in this book are not that of the author".
Ofcourse they're not!
Clarke is a scientifically minded atheist, who uses the very core of modern religions to write a science fiction master piece!