"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

An advanced alien race arrives at Earth in the 1970's, bringing peace and prosperity to humanity through the promotion of equality and justice, animal rights, and an end to armed conflict. The aliens (referred to as "overlords") are secretive about their purpose and origin, which remains a mystery until the latter part of the novel, where it is revealed that humans are a "chosen" race capable of transcendence into a higher state of being or evolution, and that the overlords are there to witness and provide support to the human race during the transformation, themselves overseen by an even more advanced alien entity, the "overmind".

The story is told through a series of characters spanning approximately 150 years including, Rikki Stormgren, the secretary general of the united nations, George Greggson and Jean Morrel, the parents of the first child to experience transcendence and Jan Rodericks, an adventurous astronomer who stows away on an overlord starship bound for the overlord homeworld and becomes the last human being alive. Generally speaking, Clarke's characters are fairly uninteresting and are really only there to move the larger-scale plot along, i.e. a hypothetical account of advanced aliens visiting Earth in peace. The story starts off pretty slow; I found most of the first half of the novel fairly uninspiring; it didn't seem to go anywhere, except to build up the suspense behind the overlords revelling their physical form, which was a fairly ho-hum revelation. That said, things picked up towards the latter part of the book, where the epic scope makes for very interesting reading. Aspects of the book felt a bit dated, such as Clarke's adamance about gender and racial equality following humanity's enlightenment only to be followed be gender-stereotypical interactions between the characters (i.e. George's affair, Maia (Jan's sister) as the object of desire at the dinner party, Clarke's commentary on marriage and men/women through his characters).

Overall "Childhood's End" was mostly an easy read and nice and short. I'm glad I've read it, at least to have a background knowledge of what is considered one of the best science fiction stories (at least historically).

I found some really cool conceptual art for the novel here.

"Ubik" by Philip K. Dick

"Ubik" is based in a near future world with "half-life", where the dying are placed in a state of suspended animation, and can be "switched-on" to talk to via radio and microphone, until inevitably "worn-out", when they proceed into full-death. Telepaths and pre-cogs (able to predict small distances into the future) are hired to infiltrate organisations and steal secrets; at odds with "prudence" organisation, that hire/rent anti-telepaths and anti-pre-cogs (known as inertials) that nullify the talents of their opponents.

Glen Runciter is the head of one of the largest prudence organisation and is contracted to a job on a Luna base along with eleven of his best inertials and Joe Chip, a non-inertial technician and second in charge of the company. The job is a setup (presumably arranged by business rival Ray Hollis), and an android-bomb explodes in proximity of the group, mortally-wounding Runciter. Joe Chip and the other inertials attempt to save Runciter into a state of half-life, but have difficulty establishing a connection, while aspects of their own reality begin to warp; Glen Runciter appears on live television commercials, one-sided phone calls and on the money they find in their wallets while other objects in the universe such as cigarettes, coffee and electronics decay rapidly or revert into antiquated forms.

After several of the group start to be "killed-off" through a process of rapid decay, it is revealed that in fact Joe Chip and the other inertial died during the explosion and the sole-survivor Glen Runciter has been trying to revive them all into half-life. The mysterious killings are the work of another half-lifer, a young-boy Jory, who resides in the Beloved Brethren Moratorium with the suspended bodies of the group, and invades/devours the half-life souls of other residents. As the other inertials are overwhelmed by Jory, Joe Chip is assisted by the half-life soul of Ella Runciter (Glen's long dead wife, who also resides at the Moratorium) who has leant to resist Jory (and other half-lifers of his kind) through the use of "Ubik", an all-powerful, life restoring force, manifested in several forms one of which is an aerosol spray-can.

Philip K. Dick is really miles ahead of any other sf writer for his imagination and ability to make strangeness and seemingly crazy concepts and ideas into completely convincing, enjoyable parts of the plot. I love the subtle humour of the book; financially-irresponsible Joe Chip and his arguments with his all-talking, all-thinking automatic front door which demands a five-cent tip for every time he uses it. The reality-bending of the book is great; I particularly liked how one of the inertials, Pat Conley has the ability to change events that happened in the past and does so to make herself married to and then not married to Joe Chip. The characters are great, particularly Chip. There is a certain oddity in the dialogue between the characters that ties in so well to the strangeness of the rest of the book. I think Dick did a better job of building tension towards the climax at the end of the book than perhaps in his other books (i.e. Electric Sheep). I really felt like I was choking while reading the entire stair-climbing scene with Joe and Pat.

Negative aspects of the book? Very little to complain about. The only thing I can think of is perhaps that there are some small loose ends in the plot or development of ideas, i.e. why does Pat suddenly get a surname? what is the relevance of Joe's realisation that the faux-1939 reality will be very difficult to live in and the surrounding ideas that are opened up but then never really finished? is this intentional?

Read this novel.