Title: Childhood's End
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Genre: Science Fiction
Year Published: 1953
Rating: 8 / 10

And the copy I have is the above one, first printing!!! WHOOT.
I ended up reading this book because of The Sentinel. Reading the short story, Guardian Angel will give you a good idea whether or not you would want to read this book. I ended up really enjoying it in the end, even though the book was not written as well as some other of Clarke's books. Most books of this type always leave you hanging too much in the end, letting you decide what may have happened and the final outcome of the story is. But in this book, I felt he left the story off just at the right place, giving you enough conclusion to the story and human civilization. The ending of the book is where the genius of Clarke really comes out. I highly recommend this book, it is a quick read, nothing too heavy, a great Sunday afternoon type of novel.

The idea of having a supreme beings come to earth and virtually take over is not an new one. The main difference is in this book we find out that they are just doing a job for another higher power. The Overlords as they become to be known slowly help mold our world into accepting them as they are. Since superstitions in so deeply embedded into our psyche, the Overlords realize that they will have to be very delicate of humanities fear center. The story describes that the Overlords have been seen once before by humans, not physically, but by some deep embedded memory, thus the need for secrecy and the need to remove superstitions, specifically the devil. For what we have called evil and been frightened of, would in the end watch over us, as humanity as we know it dies. As we find out, the Overlords are here to over see the evolution of Homo-Sapiens, into a higher being. The book goes into and begins to describe how truly marvelous and strange the universe can be, and how in our current state could never hope to understand it. The example given is a nearly two dimensional being living on a flat surface trying to understand the third dimension. The story ends as all the children under the age of 15 begin to evolve further than anyone had ever imagined. All of a sudden, they stop being human, they develop incredible powers, make rivers run backwards, and the moon spin. The rest of humanity does not take this well, having all the worlds children taken from them, knowing that they are the last, that death is at hand. The children begin to exhibit stranger and stranger behaviors, slowly becoming one being made up of many cells and finally evolve, leaving the Earth behind, taking all of it's energy with it and joining the Overmind. As we discover in the end, the Overlords are jealous of us, and of the many other races they have supervised during this evolutionary stage. Despite their technology which to the humans seemed god like, they are stuck, never to transcend their current state.

One interesting aspect was the Overlords willingness to partake in their function. Their acceptance of a higher power instructing them what to do, and knowing they cannot evolve to the same level. Watching an Earth, transcend from barbaric animals into the same being that governs and controls the Overlords must have been a difficult thing to watch. But time after time as this evolutionary step has happened, they study it, they watch trying to understand how they can be next. Our childhood ended, but they seem to be stuck for ever, as adolescent teens.