Science Fiction Blitz

Childhood’s End - Arthur C Clarke

Nightfall              - Isaac Asimov

The last few days, my waking time has centered around two things. Losing myself in the worlds of Clarke and Asimov followed by a post reading hangover thinking about what I just read. These books transcend ordinary science fiction and focus more on the human element of the stories.  Coming under the category of social science fiction, these books showcase reactions of humans (or equivalent races) to ingeniously defined scenarios.

 Childhood’s End describes the coming of age of the human race while under the control of an alien civilization and delves into the psyche of prominent humans in the age that follows while at the same time describing the reactions of the human race as a whole. The description and subtlety with which the book deals with the politics of taking care of a civilization as random as the human race, from the perspective of the overlords ensures that the reader is never sure which civilization he would rather side with. The book has several overlapping themes including science (obviously), philosophy, politics, psychology and surprisingly even spirituality, Para physics and mythology. Clarke manages to maintain suspense in the book with the plot shifting in ways that are unimaginable and ends on a very refreshing note being neither optimistic nor pessimistic.  It leaves the reader thinking of how we are tuned to only certain cues and never manage to be completely open minded even on things which we have never thought of or experienced.

“"You will find men like him in all the world's religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods.”

Nightfall has often been called the best science fiction short story ever written. Its theme revolves around a quotation, “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God! “ and describes a scenario on a planet where night arrives for the first time in 2049 years.  The book provides a nearly complete scientific description for the event and psycho analyses the event from the points of view of a skeptic, an astronaut and a cult follower who believes that stars are gods and describes the events that follow. The story is written well enough that the reader feels the dread that builds up in the story and towards the end of the story realizes the nature and insanity of phobias.

"The tiny bit of encroaching blackness was perhaps the width of a fingernail, but to the staring watchers it magnified itself into the crack of doom."

It takes stories like these to make one realize that science fiction is not just about humor or weird sounding names or slaying aliens in spaceships but can as well be an instrument to think of the social and cultural significance of events in history and to think of how society could react to unexpected events in the future as we reach farther and farther into the unknown.