Childhood's End

Inspired by La Walton's recent piece on Tor, I've been re-visiting Clarke's Childhood's End. Not having read it for decades, I was pleased to find that it was every good as bit as I remembered and found the ending as beautifully ambiguous as ever. There's something beautifully bittersweet about the closing pages where Karellen's confidence and optimism finally falter, and he realises that for all his brilliance — and Clarke's plot shows that he really is dazzlingly intelligent and deeply compassionate — his existence is ultimately empty because he can't follow where the children have led.