Conference noted::sf

    
    Having just read it recently...
    
    Aliens arive at Earth, but do not reveal either themselves or their
    real motives to man.  They eliminate war, improve the standard of
    living tremendously, and finally do interact on a limited basis with
    mankind.  Finally, the event they've been waiting for occurs: mankind's
    next evolution...
    
    FWIW, I found it decent, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped based on
    comments I'd heard about it.
    
    Joe

>    I have just recently purchased this book. Can someone give me a capsule
>    preview or a teaser as to what this book is about?

Wait a minute - you just bought the book.  
Aren't YOU supposed to be telling US?

- tom]  (who actually first read it around 1966)

    Reading the book would be a very good method to find out
    what it's about.
    
    Just a idea.
    
    Jim

    	I have read the book and I found it to be well written with a very
    dark undertone.  Clark writes well, and this book is a prime example.

I've found lately that I have an objection to some of Clarke's stuff, but it
wasn't pinned down for me until recently.  While I've read a large 
amount of his work and enjoyed it greatly, it wasn't until some of 
his collaborations with Lee Gentry that I realized what was missing for
me.  I know a number of people will probalby disagree greatly with me
on this, for I've seen a bunch of opinion's that say that Gentry has
totally ruined Clarke's works.  Take for example, the Rama stories.  Rendevous
with Rama was the first and was done solo.  The rest of the series has been
done with Gentry, and a lot of people have said the 'wonder' of Clarke's
writing went downhill with it.  For me, Gentry's addition has been to make
the characters come alive.  I frankly cannot remember a single separate
character from Rendevous, but from the rest, Nicole, Richard, the kids, 
the Italian reporter and even the robots have gained a life of their
own and are characters I care about.  Now, one may say that it's just
that I've seen these characters more recently, or read about them twice
as much, but I've read other Clarke solo works in between, and they only
enhance my opinion.  I was amazed when I found out that "Fountains of Paradise"
won a Hugo!  That was such an amazingly flat book for me that I could never
imagine it winning anything.  And while I enjoyed "The Hammer of God" more
than Fountain, I again noticed that the characters were very much background
to the science and the plot.  This is all personal opinion, of course.
While I've always enjoyed Clarke's stuff, having strong characters increases
my enjoyment of fiction, and this is not one of his strong points.

PeterT

    
    "Fountains" won a Hugo because an elevator to orbit is such a neat
    idea. And SF is still the literature of ideas.
    
    Peter, do you ever feel schizophrenic when this topic comes up in
    conversation? Whenever I discuss this with friends of the literati
    persuasion, it quickly degenerates into an argument and name-calling.
    
    Anyhow, I get to deal with characters constantly in real life...SF is
    also called "escapist literature" for good reason.
    
    JP
    
    

    Actually, I tend to agree with Peter:  Clarke's ideas are splendid, and
    his societies are well described, but for the most part his characters
    aren't all that memorable.
    
    Personally, I like the ideas so much I can be flexible about the lack
    of depth in the characters.
    					andrew

    I agree with Peter (.5) and Andrew (.7).  I'll add this qualifier:
    There is a modern fashion or prejudice in favor of deep and detailed
    characterization.  This is absolutely necessary for many kinds of
    stories, but completely unnecessary and even occasionally harmful in 
    adventure stories.  And most SF is some form of adventure story.  
    
    In discussing the theory of literary criticism for fantastic
    literature, C. S. Lewis once remarked (quoting from memory): "Gulliver
    is a commonplace man, and Alice is a commonplace little girl. ... To
    tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too many." 
    I think he was right.
    
    So it is no pain to me that many SF characters are simply drawn.
    
    However, Clarke often crosses the line.  It is one thing to have simple
    characterization; it is another thing to have NO characterization.  And
    many of Clarke's characters seem to me to be as nearly characterless as
    possible.
    
    I remember only three characters from "Childhood's End" who were at all
    vivid -- a chairman of the UN, the father of the first "new" people,
    and the Overlord Karellen.  Everyone else is a cipher.  And that was
    his best book.
    
    He often does better in short stories, where the concentrated action
    sufficies to distill character, or the lack of character is not felt
    and therefore not important.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Schizophrenic?  No.  Demented sometimes, perhaps.   My first love is 
Science Fiction, but I read other things too (not to say that anyone
else doesn't).  I tend not to get into arguments with people over SF anymore,
and if somebody tries to start one up I just point out that Faulkner and
Shakespeare are my favorite authors and fail to mention that I also love
Sturgeon, Vance, Brin, and numerous others.  I agree that SF is a literature
of ideas, and I don't NEED strong characters, but I find they can enhance
my enjoyment of a good story.  Sometimes though, it can swing the other
way.  I like some of Gordon Dickson's work, but I've never really gotten
into the Dorsai stuff.  The last book I read of his was, I think, "The
Way of the Pilgrim" (which I don't think is one of the Dorsai books)
and I found it to be VERY plodding and heavily into 
characterization.  Maybe it was just too depressing for me to enjoy it
that much.  I'm willing to look at his stuff again, but it hasn't moved
me as much as some of Brin's chimps or dolphins ;-)  
 
The idea of a orbital tower is indeed interesting, but it is not all that
new in the SF literature (though Clarke may well have been the first to 
suggest it, though that was before "Fountains") and I just found it to be
an interesting idea, done in a pretty dull fashion.  He's done better.

PeterT

re .5
    
>I know a number of people will probably disagree greatly with me on this
    
    De gustibus non est disputandum.
    
>For me, Gentry's addition has been to make the characters come alive. I
>frankly cannot remember a single separate character from Rendevous, but from
>the rest, Nicole, Richard, the kids, the Italian reporter and even the robots
>have gained a life of their own and are characters I care about.
    
    Your point is well taken. I found even Richard's robots memorable which
    in turn illuminated the character of Richard himself.
    
    On the other hand IMHO large slabs of "Garden of Rama" bordered on soap
    opera and the story didn't end, one merely encountered "end of file".
    (No spoilers for "Rama Revealed" please as I haven't read it yet.)
    
    A (solo) Clarke story that had characters that moved me is "The Songs of
    Distant Earth" (but I notice in topic 335 that it didn't meet with much
    approval with the readers here). Naturally degree of characterisation
    is not the only factor that influences whether the reader empathises with
    the characters.

While Clarke was a ground-breaker in SF literature in the 50s and 60s,
from the early 80s on (post-Rama I), his work has become much more mundane.
I just write this off as a dabbling retirement.
He can slack off as he likes, he earned it.  (Lawrence Olivier did essentially
the same thing as a film actor, in essentially the same time frame.)

Now I don't have to like the output produced, and I won't praise it,
but I won't condemn him for it.  While one might condemn a publisher
for marketing by name ("Clarke" in big letters, "Gentry" in small
on the cover), well, what else can a publisher market?

On the matter of characterization, I find my most critical factor in 
whether I like a story or not is how well the characters' actions
are motivated.  This applies to written and acted stories.
I need a certain level of characterization written into the story
to elaborate the motivation, but the plot has to carry and be consistent
with the characterization.  
Sometimes the characters ARE just pawns in the game, and you don't even need
to know their names, but this is a rare extreme.

I like the quote about "commonplace people" and "one oddity too many"
in the earlier reply, I hadn't seen that before, but a deeply characterized
person doesn't have to  be an oddity.
Stephen King and Orson Scott Card write incredibly deeply characterized
characters, not ALL of whom are oddities.

- tom]

    Is Clarke's lack of characterisation deliberate, do you think?  The
    book left me with the distinct impression that, as a member of Mankind,
    *I* had been given a swift kick up the backside in that it caused me to
    examine what drives us.  I think it's fair to say that we would all
    like to receive something for nothing, preferably on a regular basis. 
    "Childhood's End" brings it well and truly home that, if you want the
    easy life, you'd better be prepared to get off your butt and go work
    for it first, no matter how unpleasant the experience is.  Refreshing
    change from the usual run of the mill in which aliens come bearing
    *gifts* of new knowledge and technology.  I imagine that the reading of
    the book by the original Noter has now taken place so it should be safe
    to use the bullfight as an example:  Man is *taught* that it is wrong
    to carry out such torture; little green men do not drop by and show him
    how to eliminate the animals' suffering.  The lot of the planet as a
    whole is enriched as a result.
    
    I only read this recently, and will read it again and again.  Good,
    thought-provoking stuff prompting (for me anyway) closer examination of
    many, if not all, aspects of our society with the eventual emergence of
    the aliens being probably the most powerful prompt of all.  To those
    who dislike Clarke's lack of character depth, I would like to suggest
    that you re-read the book and this time paint your own faces and those
    of people you know and respect wherever you feel there is room for more
    detail.