Childhoods End by Arthur C. Clarke

Imagine the skies suddenly shattering with the booms of ultra-sized spaceships as they dash through the atmosphere, Their magnificently sleek exterior shining like a steel spire in the sky. All stand in utter bewilderment as these incomprehensibly immense alien ships halt over the major cities and float as still as a sniper's finger on a trigger, seemingly ready to blast this world to pieces. Not one human dared to move, for these silver sentinels hung over the world like a guillotine, appalling even the most brilliant scientists and immediately intimidating these paltry cars and crude technologies.

"The stars are not for man."

These portentous figures, in fact, did nothing at all. However, one human being, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Rikki Stormgren, was the first earthly figure that greeted the aliens of that deep and enigmatic space above our heads. These aliens, called Overlords, were best represented by their leader, Karellen, who exchanged "talk" and questions with Stormgren. After a brief "skirmish" with Stormgren's unbearable need to find out how these alien's looked, Karellen finally said that humankind will see the Overlords as they are 50 years from now, a time that is beyond Stormgren's life at the age of 60. To spare the reader's captivity, I will withhold the appearances of the Overlords until you yourself read this wonderful book. One hint, the Overlords visited Earth earlier in history but made a bad initiating relationship with the humans, therefore giving them a bad "image" that was imprinted on the minds of human kind for the rest of time.

"All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by the correct application of power."

The Overlords establish a powerful hold on the human race, but not a choking one. Humankind is still able to enjoy life, and in fact, the Overlords have actually made life on Earth better by abolishing any negative form of human affairs, and making the cost of any merchandise in the world virtually free. Travel has revolutionized to it's highest extent when the schematics of the foreign alien vehicles of travel were handed down to humans, so any person can travel to any spot on the earth in a matter of minutes to hours. Also, academics is flourished with an unlimited boundary that allows any person to achieve their career aspirations. Prodigiously, every single human being has learned how to speak and understand English. At this point, humankind has reached the Utopian society that has crested the top of that golden hill that represents every facet of perfection: Peace, liberty, global comprehension, economical stability, and creativity.

Divulging in any more information will only wane your pleasures when reading this book, but believe me, many surprises and lessons are to be experienced.
One question I may offer, what lies beyond those distant stars? In the fertility of our lands and the hospitality of the trees, animals, and the air we breath, we find the home that has bred us like the first flakes of snow in the mountainous Fujiyama. These lakes, oceans, and winds have blown across the Earth's face like the blood that courses through our veins. However, how will these other worlds fare for us? More importantly, how will other beings react? There is no doubting the presence of higher intelligences beyond our atmosphere, so more constructively, we will react to them. Casting that aside, are we really the center of the universe? For so long, we have reveled the importance of our own existence, but has it ever occurred to us that there might be other beings out there that share similar characteristics -Religion, language, relations, even emotions- with us?

We may just be another grain of sand in this eternal desert of spectral wonders and enigmatic phenomena.