"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke; 7/10

This is the book that made Arthur C. Clarke's career, and weirdly enough it is the only one of his I have read that isn't permeated with realistic physics.  It is, however, permeated with concepts of transcendent evolution, which idea was also the basis of his most famous work, "2001: A Space Odyssey," reviewed here earlier.

This book's concept differs from that one in a few important ways.  Rather than going to the stars to gain (unintentional) evolutionary advances from an alien race, the aliens come to us in this book.  I don't want to spoil much about that, but this part of it winds up being easily the most interesting facet of the book. The aliens, in particular, are fascinating.

This book basically breaks down into three parts, though I can't remember if they are divided that way in the book itself, which address standard scifi tropes.  The first of these parts addresses an original concept for an alien encounter, and one vision for the establishment of a utopian society.  The second deals with technology in that society... and ESP.  In the introduction Clarke says that after thorough investigation of the evidence he is no longer really into ESP, but he was at the time.  Part three is where he tackles evolution.

On the whole this is I think the most interesting thing by Clarke that I have read, though I think it is frequently flawed and occasionally silly.  Also queue my broken record about his general writing failings (characters, style, etc.). Still, though it doesn't necessarily hold up perfectly, a great read from the golden age of Science Fiction, and one of the more entertaining novels from the period I have yet read.