CLARKE, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
[Amazon|Powell's] (1953). A visionary,
eschatological novel about Earth's children changing into pure
mentality and joining the Overmind. Clarke is one of the three
best-known contemporary science-fiction writers of his time (the
other two were Asimov and Heinlein) and worth reading in any of his
three moods: extrapolative, poetic, philosophical. Other important
books:
The City and the
Stars (1956) [Amazon|Powell's];
Rendezvous with
Rama [Amazon|Powell's], Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, 1974;
The Fountains of
Paradise [Amazon|Powell's], Hugo, Nebula, 1979; and the novelization of the Stanley
Kubrick film,
2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968) [Amazon|Powell's].