Childhood's End

Childhood’s End is Arthur C. Clarke’s first successful novel. Set in the future, the novel spans over 130 years from the arrival of the alien race known as Overlords to the completed absorption of the world’s children to the entity known as the Overmind. Clarke was a celebrated science fiction writer, commonly considered one of the “big three” science fiction authors, along with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. In addition to his writing, Clarke was also an engineer. He was instrumental in the development of geostationary satellites, which revolutionized communication worldwide. He also worked extensively in developing ethical space exploration plans with the United Nations. Childhood’s End was originally published in 1953 and is considered a major work in the genre of science fiction.

There are three different editions of the novel: the original published in 1953, the edition republished in 1990 with a revised first chapter, and the final edition published in 2001, which restores the original first chapter and includes the 1990 revision as an appendix at the end. Adapted into a BBC radio production in 1997 and a SyFy Channel miniseries in 2015, Childhood’s End was also nominated for the 1954 Hugo Award in science fiction.