Childhood's End Story Journey Diagram

This diagram was found to be useful in explaining the stories major plot evens.
Also what provided is the a review of the book which examines the stories overlapping and even changing situation between the main human characters and the Overlord aliens.



Wow! Wait, What? Wow!: Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End
Jo Walton, 2012

You’ve got to like having the rug pulled out from under you to enjoy this book, and when I was twelve I wasn’t at all sure about it. People talk about SF written now that can only be read by people familiar with how SF works. If there ever was a book that epitomises that it’s Childhood’s End. It’s a roller coaster ride that relies on you lulling you into thinking you know what it’s doing and then shocking you out of that. It’s a very post-modern book in some ways, very meta, especially for something written in 1953. And for it to work properly, you have to know SF, SF expectations, the kinds of things SF normally does, so that you can settle down enough to be going along smoothly and then get the “Wow” when you hit the next big drop. 


Now, of course, these successive “wow” hits are the thing that I admire about the book the most. You think you’re getting a rocket-ship story? Surprise, alien invasion! You think you’re getting an alien domination story with intrigue and the unification of Earth? Surprise, you have a mystery about the appearance of the aliens with a truly cool answer. (And that cool answer is going to be overturned again at the end.) You think you have a utopia with mysterious aliens, with the big question being about what the all-powerful aliens are really up to? Actually no, this is a story about humanity’s children developing psychic powers and disappearing, almost a horror story. Except that there was this one guy who stowed away on an alien ship and he comes back when there are no more humans and witnesses what happens at the very end, and it turns out that the all-powerful aliens you’ve been wondering about have a lot of things they’re wondering about themselves

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