Arthur C. Clarke Reads His Classic Sci-Fi Works: Childhood’s End and “The Star”

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the sci­ence fic­tion author best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, start­ed writ­ing at the end of World War II and the begin­ning of the nuclear age, a time when tech­nol­o­gy promised to bring untold ben­e­fit to human­i­ty and had the poten­tial to utter­ly destroy it. So he wrote sci­ence fic­tion with some actu­al sci­ence in it, tales about space trav­el, alien encoun­ters and human evo­lu­tion.

The future was a con­tin­u­ing object of fas­ci­na­tion for Clarke. He proved to be uncan­ni­ly accu­rate at mak­ing div­ina­tions about the course of tech­nol­o­gy. Back in 1964, he pre­dict­ed vir­tu­al surgery, 3D print­ers and the inter­net. Of course, he also pre­dict­ed that we would have an army of mon­key ser­vants to cater to our every whim. You can’t always be right.

But thanks to the mag­ic of one of his pre­dic­tions – the inter­net – you can lis­ten to Clarke read two of his most acclaimed works – Childhood’s End and “The Star.”

The for­mer tale, writ­ten in 1953, is about a mys­te­ri­ous alien race that brings the Cold War to a screech­ing halt and kick starts human evo­lu­tion. But at what cost? Stan­ley Kubrick was report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing the book until he set­tled on 2001. Lis­ten to Clarke read long excerpts from Childhood’s End at the top of this post.

The lat­ter sto­ry, pub­lished in 1955, might very well be the best sci-fi Christ­mas sto­ry ever. It was adapt­ed into a Twi­light Zone episode that thor­ough­ly freaked me out as a kid. Lis­ten to “The Star” just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Nar­rates Film on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals; David Gilmour Pro­vides the Sound­track

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.