I liked (but didn't love) Childhood's End, but then I liked (but didn't love) most of the other Clarke I've read. The City and the Stars had more of an effect on me, but that may just be because I started it too young and ended up reading the beginning several times before I got through the rest of the book.
Children of the Atom is worth reading; it's a collection of a series of short stories about genius kids. The first story, "In Hiding," is a classic, and I think fairly important to the field even though most of it is probably old hat by now. The series as a whole prefigured Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" (and to some extent the novels that grew out of that), as well as the entire idea of the X-Men; "outcast genius kids find each other" is a classic sf theme, and "In Hiding" (1948) wasn't the first such story nor the best known (cf Slan, 1940), but it was imo one of the best. The Shiras stories after the first one aren't as good and aren't as important, except that the plot resolution of the overall story is one that I see as extremely rare in sf on this theme. Also of possible interest: Wilmar H. Shiras was one of the few women writing sf at the time, though she didn't write very much sf and wasn't nearly as well-known as some of the others.
Blish: I still haven't read all of Cities in Flight (I think I read the first bit of it but it never really, um, got off the ground for me), but I did read all of the Star Trek episode novelizations (storyizations?) as a kid; it wasn't 'til years later that I learned that "the Star Trek guy" was an important sf writer. I also still haven't read his more famous and influential novel A Case of Conscience, but I plan to. However, I strongly recommend his best-known short story, "Surface Tension."
Forever War is certainly worth reading -- though as with some of the others I mention above, its influence has worked its way so deeply into sf that it may read as kind of cliched and predictable by now.
Gateway also worth reading, though I started to lose interest in the series around book 3 or so. I should note that I read most of the ones I'm talking about around age 10-15, which may have influenced my perceptions of their quality. Gateway wasn't as influential on the field as most of the works I've mentioned above, though.
Speaking of influential, I'm surprised you've never heard of On the Beach -- I don't know about the book, but the movie was (I'm told) one of the defining movies of a generation. I've neither read the book nor seen the movie yet, though. Howard Waldrop's essay "A Summer Place, On the Beach, Beyond the Sea," collected in Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, gives (iIrc) some idea of what a big impact the movie had.
And Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up (which I may've liked marginally better, but I tend to mix up the two of them) were also quite influential, in style, scope, and subject matter; yet again, stuff that was really eye-opening to writers if they hadn't seen it before, but may not seem so unusual now. But still good.
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Children of the Atom is worth reading; it's a collection of a series of short stories about genius kids. The first story, "In Hiding," is a classic, and I think fairly important to the field even though most of it is probably old hat by now. The series as a whole prefigured Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" (and to some extent the novels that grew out of that), as well as the entire idea of the X-Men; "outcast genius kids find each other" is a classic sf theme, and "In Hiding" (1948) wasn't the first such story nor the best known (cf Slan, 1940), but it was imo one of the best. The Shiras stories after the first one aren't as good and aren't as important, except that the plot resolution of the overall story is one that I see as extremely rare in sf on this theme. Also of possible interest: Wilmar H. Shiras was one of the few women writing sf at the time, though she didn't write very much sf and wasn't nearly as well-known as some of the others.
Blish: I still haven't read all of Cities in Flight (I think I read the first bit of it but it never really, um, got off the ground for me), but I did read all of the Star Trek episode novelizations (storyizations?) as a kid; it wasn't 'til years later that I learned that "the Star Trek guy" was an important sf writer. I also still haven't read his more famous and influential novel A Case of Conscience, but I plan to. However, I strongly recommend his best-known short story, "Surface Tension."
Forever War is certainly worth reading -- though as with some of the others I mention above, its influence has worked its way so deeply into sf that it may read as kind of cliched and predictable by now.
Gateway also worth reading, though I started to lose interest in the series around book 3 or so. I should note that I read most of the ones I'm talking about around age 10-15, which may have influenced my perceptions of their quality. Gateway wasn't as influential on the field as most of the works I've mentioned above, though.
Speaking of influential, I'm surprised you've never heard of On the Beach -- I don't know about the book, but the movie was (I'm told) one of the defining movies of a generation. I've neither read the book nor seen the movie yet, though. Howard Waldrop's essay "A Summer Place, On the Beach, Beyond the Sea," collected in Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, gives (iIrc) some idea of what a big impact the movie had.
And Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up (which I may've liked marginally better, but I tend to mix up the two of them) were also quite influential, in style, scope, and subject matter; yet again, stuff that was really eye-opening to writers if they hadn't seen it before, but may not seem so unusual now. But still good.