Strangely-Normal.com

A fleet of highly advanced aliens come to earth in peace. They allow the people of earth to mostly continue on the paths they have chosen, with a few exceptions. All war ceases. Scientific inquiry is allowed to flourish with the exception of space travel, religions slowly peter out. After a couple of decades, the human race has mostly been pacified and domesticated. The overlords are essentially benevolent non-dictators and their presence is mostly a positive one. Society seems almost Utopian. And then the damn humans have to go and mess it all up, because people can’t stand Utopian societies. They always go wrong.

Childhood’s End is a really fun book. The alien overlords seem nice and mostly harmless, and even though the plot isn’t exceptionally shocking, it flows at a nice pace and keeps one interested. I like how there was a Trojan giant squid that didn’t really seem to further the plot line at all, and how a Ouija board played a central part in the major turn in the plot. It was good.

This book was my first Arthur C. Clarke, and from it, I would definately read more.

Just finished Ray Bradbury’s classic The Martian Chronicles. It’s a collection of short stories revolving around a general storyline: the early colonization of Mars through the settlement and then eventual desertion of Mars.
Though I found it tough to get through some of the stories, I liked the general storyline, and the stories picked up my interest in the last few stories, where Earth went to war with itself and was destroyed.

This book wasn’t one of my favourites of Bradbury’s. I would recommend someone new to Bradbury’s work to instead pick up Dandelion Wine, or Something Wicked This Way Comes. I think I still like Isaac Asimov more.