Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and now the stars – the aloof, indifferent stars – had come to him.

This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride.

‘When I was a boy, the Federation of Europe was a dream

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.

while others were merely expressing a sense of inferiority. They felt, with good reason, much as a cultured Indian of the nineteenth century must have done as he contemplated the British Raj.

History was not reassuring; even the most peaceable of contacts between races at very different cultural levels had often resulted in the obliteration of the more backward society.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

Western man had relearned – what the rest of the world had never forgotten – that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.

By the flame of the lighter – George was fond of such antiques – he could now recognize his fellow guest, a strikingly handsome young Negro whose name George had been told but had immediately forgotten, like those of the twenty other complete strangers at the party.

nature. Men’s minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photoelectric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform.

MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE OFF :-)

Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels?

youtube?

No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges – absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!

And when the ‘program’ was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life – indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself.