Childhood’s End

I enjoyed this classic of science fiction by the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Had managed to miss it in my own childhood during the 1950s (it was published when I was nine), but finally got it read last week. I can see how it’s been a prototype for many a book and movie about space aliens. The Overlords, who rule by fear and awe rather than violence, and the Overmind, which rules them, are arresting inventions. But the ending is bleak, and it’s amusing that, in the 2001 edition I have, Clarke says he grew away from the book’s major themes, such that he was by then, forty-eight years later, ninety-nine percent skeptical of the paranormal and a total disbeliever in UFOs.