Posted on 12/14/2015 11:33:24 AM PST by EveningStar
Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction classic "Childhood's End" has been reimagined for the 21st century, and brought to the small screen, in a new TV miniseries debuting tonight (Dec. 14).
When a fleet of spaceships appears in the sky above Earth's largest cities, the alien beings onboard insist that they have arrived to help the human race. The visitors slowly begin to eliminate war, disease and poverty -- but what will be the cost of building heaven on Earth?
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Forgive spelling errors. I’m on my iPad and it is sometimes harder to catch them on here than on my computer.
Sort of but the Ringworld wasn’t a ship- it was a structure around a star
Then there's the "Human Chronicles "...
Dune got the Twin Peaks treatment and just came out weird.
Maybe the book was too barren to expect anything better,
now that I think about it.
Niven’s U.N. is a tyranny. Which seems more plausible.
Clarke’s U.N. is a benevolent force guiding people into enlightenment and away from superstition.
And I have far less tolerance for the idea that the best and the brightest know the way to enlightened than I did when I was twelve.
No not ringworld, Probably Rendezvous with Rama.The paperback had great cover art showing the cylinder from the inside.
Among the opening scenes is an announcement that the wall between the Palestinians and Israel had vanished and both sides were hugging and dancing together in celebration - have at it.
Clarke was an atheist, and some of his books dismiss God quite cavalierly (e.g. 3001). But in many of his major works (e.g. 2001, Rendezvous with Rama, and Childhood's End), basically he just lets the god-like aliens do the heavy lifting for Him.
I wonder what would happen if humanity adopted the three laws in the right order.
It, along with Niven's Ringworld and Asimov's Foundation trilogy, are on my "why haven't they made a movie of this yet?" list. I can understand if at some time in the past they were considered unfilmable, but what can't Hollywood do with CGI these days?
Based on their butchering of Herbert's Dune, I wouldn't get up a lot of hope.
I thought Dune was pretty well-done, myself. It was at least more faithful to Herbert's story than David Lynch's feature was, though admittedly the latter was more visually impressive. One thing SyFy got right that Lynch seemed to have missed was that the "prophecies" about the Fremen Mahdi were pure propaganda, and initially Paul (who was also more accurately portrayed as a teenager) was quite cynical about being a political pawn of the Bene Gesserit.
“In Conquest Born” by Cherryh was great. It was also an all in one novel, start to finish, instead of many books that drag out the plot because someone wants to drag out the royalties.
For the truly cerebral, Donald Moffitt wrote “Second Genesis” and “Genesis Quest”. Humans send out instructions to make people out into space before they go extinct, the Nar recreate our species, and after a struggle, some descendants of humanity try to return home.
Near light speed travel plus immortality treatment = 70-100 million year epic, rise and fall of several intelligent species on Earth, and interesting contrast of human to alien.
That was very far left. Discussing how the wall was vanished, right after saying you’ll end all injustice - a heavily political statement that the Israelis with the wall are bad, not the Muslims continually attacking the Jews, along with Yazidi, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.
And then the separate scene of how Jews and Muslims have come together.
Heavily suggests it is all the Jews’ fault.
Are you going to watch it?
You bet!
Two thumbs up or down?
I look forward to your esteemed verdict.
I’m waiting to binge watch the entire show this weekend, but Clarke wrote a short story that was in the Hugo Winners Vol 1 called “The Star”. It’s three or four pages, very short.
It blew my mind when I read it in HS, but I think it might explain why he is not a Christian.
I had nightmares for days afterwards, I still cry thinking of it.
Yes, far Leftist propaganda. I wonder how much their viewership will drop from the first to the second nights?
If that’s the story I’m thinking of, the expedition to a dead alien planet discovers their civilization died when the supernova that was the “Christmas star” over Jesus’ birth was created.
That is the story. There were two stories I read in HS that moved me to tears. This was one and “Flowers for Algernon” was another.
Oh to be 12-13 again and have that experience reading a book.
yes it was. i was also thinking of this series whose name escapes me where this race of aliens was assimilating into our society. their organization was called the synod, and they had neat flying contraptions, and their communicators had screens that unrolled. favored humans were given the technology and taught to fly the vehicles...
Earth: Final Conflict
Canadian series in the ‘90s.
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