The collection includes one of the first novels by the famous English science-fiction writer A. Clarke—“Childhood’s End”—and one of his last published novels, “2061: Odyssey Three.”
What did the compilers mean by calling this collection “An Odyssey for a Lifetime”? Judging by everything, it reflects his sincere devotion to Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction, carried through the years. A man who—nothing less—commented on the Americans’ moon landing, he never doubted humanity’s cosmic future. The appearance of intelligent life on Earth for Clarke was not something accidental; it was merely the next step in a long chain of evolution. Far from the last. For many years, the writer thought about what the next step would be. What will replace today’s humanity? Collective mind, as in “Childhood’s End,” or an immortal, forever lonely cosmic wanderer, racing from star to star? Like many classics of science fiction, Clarke kept returning to the same question, the same theme—varying it in different ways and playing with it in different combinations.