Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End is coming to TV

[credoconsolans]

Speaking of plot holes:

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Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

Yeah, in the book they don't destroy the planet. There's no reason for that, especially no reason for the girl to stick around 80 years and then blow the planet just after he lands. I'm used to Hollywood adaptions chopping out a lot but this one added a lot of nonsense and needlessly omitted closing some holes. (For example, why do they look like evil incarnate? The book addresses this very easily--there was a prior contact in the dawn of history that went badly.)

Except they don't look like evil incarnate - unless you're a Christian or Muslim.

To the rest of the pagan world, they look like nature gods.

So the book is Christian-centric too?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, in the book they don't destroy the planet. There's no reason for that, especially no reason for the girl to stick around 80 years and then blow the planet just after he lands. I'm used to Hollywood adaptions chopping out a lot but this one added a lot of nonsense and needlessly omitted closing some holes. (For example, why do they look like evil incarnate? The book addresses this very easily--there was a prior contact in the dawn of history that went badly.)

No, but in the book, they made everyone sterile so that the human race would die out. Pretty much the same thing.

That's not my memory--I thought kids could still be born but would join the ones that left.

 

[Underseer]

No, but in the book, they made everyone sterile so that the human race would die out. Pretty much the same thing.

That's not my memory--I thought kids could still be born but would join the ones that left.

That still results in the effective destruction of human civilization.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's not my memory--I thought kids could still be born but would join the ones that left.

That still results in the effective destruction of human civilization.

I do agree it destroyed humanity.

 

[Narapoia]

Speaking of plot holes:

Show

Why was it necessary to wipe out mankind? The whole goal of that project was to extract a generation of children to join the Overmind. Great. So why not leave the rest of the Earth the fuck alone and let them go about their business? Why make everyone sterile and then destroy the planet?

Yeah, in the book they don't destroy the planet. There's no reason for that, especially no reason for the girl to stick around 80 years and then blow the planet just after he lands. I'm used to Hollywood adaptions chopping out a lot but this one added a lot of nonsense and needlessly omitted closing some holes. (For example, why do they look like evil incarnate? The book addresses this very easily--there was a prior contact in the dawn of history that went badly.)

That's not my memory of the book. I seem to remember it being explained weakly by a cultural/species 'memory' that works both back and forward in time - so the natural revulsion towards the form of the aliens is a result of people 'remembering' that they augured our destruction. I had a quick look and it appears we both remembered right! I still think the defiance of time was a dumb idea - stood out to me when I read it initially.

As discussed here: Greenwood's Encyclopedia of SF

"Later it is proposed that that the race memory defies time, and that the ominous aura of this physical shape arises from its association with humanity's cataclysmic end"