Childhoods End

So good im blogging it twice - actually its a consequence of scanning the book as I cracked the spine and the pages loosened, so I thought id illustrate the kind of entry that Barlowes Guide to E.T's consists of. This is the Overlord, the dominant alien species from Clarkes 'Childhoods End', and an extremely demonic looking creature which so impressed me back in '79 that I went out and found a copy of the book to read. A lot of the illustrations in the volume compelled me to look into the stories behind them such as the cool alien arthropods from Hal Clements 'Mission of Gravity', the Mesklinites; which lived on an oblate world suffering extremes of gravity at various points on its surface or the truly alien, energy devouring Ixtl from Van Vogts 'Voyage of the Space Beagle'. Some of my explorations led to really great reads but in other ways, such as my expectations of seeing the 'Master' from the 'City of Gold and Lead' in the BBC tv series, 'The Tripods' - were a definite disappointment.