Clarke has a great talent for saying just enough. His descriptions in the book are perfect: of strange creatures, landscapes, and vehicles. Our imaginations will always be better than any sets of paragraphs at stimulating our fears and excitement, and Clarke knows that it is the job of any author not to spell out his fantasy, but to encourage ours.
Childhood’s end has a solid premise: aliens arrive but barely interact with the earth, yet ensure the peace, prosperity and security of all people. What could be their ulterior motives?
I have trouble with some of Clarke’s assumptions: humans in his world stop attempting to achieve great things, whether in art, adventure, or science because they couldn’t possibly match their alien visitors. Would this really happen? Computers have long ago erased any possibility of human supremacy in chess yet our desire to still excel above others in that game persists.
Despite this, following Clarke’s probing and inquisitive mind is rewarding. His book is existential and questions the nature of what it means to be human, perhaps like all great science fiction. He soon arrives at a harrowing phrase ‘The stars are not for man’, with all their millions and billions, far too much to be counted or controlled. Now in lockdown, isolated from other people, seeing some work collectively towards a common good, this feels more poignant than ever.