reading (Childhood's End)

[eor]

I finished "Childhood's End" yesterday. It's old school science fiction, written in 1953. It's been a long time since I've read any of Clarke's writing (20 years), so I'd forgotten his style. I was surprised by how textbook like his fiction was, yet it still drew me in. He does that distant and removed thing that I criticize other writers for, but does it well enough that I was drawn in. When this book was written, chapters were chapters, well defined entities that had sensible starting points, sensible stopping points, and cohesion. It was striking how some of the chapters ended with short story style turns. There is some old fashion learning to be done on how to construct a book. I've seen some modern science fiction writers try to write in the third person removed style, but they just don't have the skill or imagination to pull it off like this.

48. Arthur C. Clarke "Childhood's End"