When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all

I just finished reading Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. It was tight. Originally published in 1953, there's a few really dated elements (like "hi-tech" rooms filled with fax machines, yowzas!), but aside from those few minor issues, it's a pretty timeless sci-fi tale about mankind's future destiny. I don't really want to give away too much information about the book, because I thought that the story was much more effective having read it with no knowledge at all of the story, not even a general synopsis, but suffice it to say, it appealed strongly to my sense of science and mysticism coexisting. I'm slowly finding that I'm into that sort of stuff. This is probably making for a horrible book review.

To make this failure of a post worthwhile, follow this link to Wikipedia's article about the book for tons of tight/nerdy trivia bits...

Hideaki Anno, main designer and director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, has stated that Childhood's End was one of his principal influences. The end of the novel seems to have directly inspired the Human Instrumentality Project.

The final scenes of the book, in which Earth's children gather in Australia and become the hive-mind entity, inspired the cover of the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy.

...and so on!

Next up on the sci-fi book queue: Songmaster by Orson Scott Card.