Childhood's End

Arthur C. Clarke

1953

As Mankind continued on its usual bickering way into the 21st century, it is suddenly confronted by proof that there is life Out There.

Massive starships take up station above all the major capital cities. No threats are issued. No demands made. Just silence.

When the tension grew too much for one country, a missile was launched at one of the ships in orbit. Whatever happened, those who launched the missile thought they would be all right - it wasn't their city the alien was hovering over after all!

But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. No detonation of the missile. No retaliation for the attempt. Just a continuing silence.

A generation after they had first arrived, those aboard the space ships opened contact with a much-changed Earth. The Great Judaeo Christian religions had gradually faded away, leaving behind a sort of Buddhism. International tensions had largely died away too, leading to a great flowering of technical and scientific skills.

As the General Secretary of the United Nations awaited the arrival of the leader of the aliens, most of the ships that had become a permanent part of the scenery in Earth's skies just blinking out of existence, proving to have been brilliant illusions. When the aliens stand revealed, a remaining sense of atavistic shock is felt by those whose parents had been Christians for the Overlords were revealed to be spitting images of the conventional depiction of the Devil.

But these are pacific daemons and mankind edges uneasily into a Golden Age of technological ease.

But is this really a Golden Age, or are there hidden reasons for the Overlords' apparently beneficent nature?

The closing scenes of this book are amongst the most chilling in Science Fiction.

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This is part of the Masterworks Hardback series

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