Ratings216
Average rating4
The strengths in Childhood's End come from its three part structure, which offers glimpses of humanity at different stages of its first contact story, as well as the overall philosophical, religious, and scientific questions that Clarke presents through his human, and alien, protagonists.
The first part of three is structurally the best, following the expected first contact plot threads while adding an air of mystery and intrigue. Although it's the shortest, it offers a genuine look into what the story is aiming to explore: what if aliens came to Earth, not to conquer it, but to usher it into an era of peace?
The next two parts do not hold up as well, however. Despite its rather dated approaches to race, especially around black Americans , including a brief section about how the n-word is just a commonplace word, much like "republican or methodist, conservative or liberal," and has lot all its taboo-ness in polite society, that offer nothing for the story other than an awkward commentary, the narrative suffers from pacing issues, leaving much less interesting characters to follow for the remainder of the story. By the time one part of the story gets interesting, it falls off in favor of moving on to a different perspective.
The ending, while interesting in concept, feels heavy-handed with large chunks of info-dumping that could have been formatted differently through normal exposition or dialogue. The ending leaves the story on a rather somber note, and while I wasn't expecting a happy ending from a story that seemed to be on a downward spiral since its second part, I do wish there was a finality to it.
Of course, it's easy to pick at a classic through a modern lens and a back catalogue of current sci-fi works that have propelled the genre in a streamlined manner. Childhood's End is a classic for a reason. Despite its shortcomings for me, the thought process that went into crafting such a narrative is still admirable, and you can feel its lasting impact in tons of sci-fi stories today.