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eely225 's review for:
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
Written more as three connected stories than as a novel proper, some work better than others. I was fully sucked in by the first book, likely because Clarke based it closely on a short story he'd already spent time on. Its relatively contained story of first contact is engaging and unique, leaving sufficient ambiguity while still allowing for some payoff.
There are issues in that first book, issues that start to become problems with the rest. Clarke is very uninterested in logistics, so he sweeps any potential problems away with simplistic explanations. No one was religious anymore because the aliens showed them it was illogical. There was no more crime because everyone's needs were met. People only did jobs for fun because robots.
The book is a product of its time, originally published in 1953 and full of the simple optimism of a newly atomic age that said "If we can just get past this Cold War thing, we'll create a new human society! It's all at our fingertips!" Clark does not exactly take that thinking all the way through, but it clearly informs his plot.
The ultimate issue is that the payoff of the book is such a simple, all-encompassing bore, lacking complexity or nuance, that you feel less like you're reading a novel than a collegiate philosophical treatise. The characters cease to act like people and seem simply to fully understand and accept their absurd scenario, seeming to echo "it is truly meet and right so to do."
Clarke hits an awkward point where, much as he seeks to marginalize the religious impulse, his conclusions read like a religious parable. Just not a very interesting one. I'd say he should've left the short story as it was.
There are issues in that first book, issues that start to become problems with the rest. Clarke is very uninterested in logistics, so he sweeps any potential problems away with simplistic explanations. No one was religious anymore because the aliens showed them it was illogical. There was no more crime because everyone's needs were met. People only did jobs for fun because robots.
The book is a product of its time, originally published in 1953 and full of the simple optimism of a newly atomic age that said "If we can just get past this Cold War thing, we'll create a new human society! It's all at our fingertips!" Clark does not exactly take that thinking all the way through, but it clearly informs his plot.
The ultimate issue is that the payoff of the book is such a simple, all-encompassing bore, lacking complexity or nuance, that you feel less like you're reading a novel than a collegiate philosophical treatise. The characters cease to act like people and seem simply to fully understand and accept their absurd scenario, seeming to echo "it is truly meet and right so to do."
Clarke hits an awkward point where, much as he seeks to marginalize the religious impulse, his conclusions read like a religious parable. Just not a very interesting one. I'd say he should've left the short story as it was.