Childhood’s End (review)

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He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in the moment of success, the stars — the aloof, indifferent stars — had come to him. This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride. All that the past ages had achieved was as nothing now . . . The human race was no longer alone.

• Title: Childhood’s End
• Author: Arthur C. Clarke
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Year: 1953

And so the Overlords arrive to put the human house in order: no more war, no more poverty, no more space flight. The alien visitors are mysterious, they do not allow themselves to be seen and remain within their great ships parked above earth’s major cities, instead communicating their directives through broadcasts. But they are benign, paternal, and they share with us their knowledge and their power and lift humankind out of the competition of nations and factions and into a technological utopia. But why? And at what price?

Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is one of the core canonical works of classic science fiction; it’s on every must-read list and on the shelves of every serious fan of the genre. And for good reason. Despite the initial situation, this is not a novel of first contact (or, not primarily about first contact), instead it tells a story on a grander, cosmological scale; the story of humanity’s future, its extinction and rebirth. It’s a novel of ideas, and difficult to review without ruining much of the pleasant surprises and logical revelations that lend this relatively simple story a timeless resonance.

Childhood’s End is divided in three main sections, each advancing into the future by several decades. The first, ‘Earth and the Overlords,’ feels much like a classic short story of the time. It centers on the difficulties of the period immediately after the Overlords’ arrival, perhaps sometime in the then near future of the 1970s or 80s. The UN Secretary General, who has become the Overlord’s main instrument of policy on Earth, finds himself at odds with an anti-Overlord organization called the Freedom League, an extremest wing of which intends to resort to terrorism to resist the invader’s plans for humanity. The doubts of large segments of the population are mirrored to some extent by the Secretary General himself, who is bothered in particular by the Overlord’s unwillingness to show themselves.

This section raises the core theme of the book, whether or not humanity can stand on its own, and whether it is itself an adult species, or currently undergoing a troubled adolescence. The Overlords, and Clarke, are certain the later notion is the truth, though not without qualifications or sympathy. By the end of ‘The Earth and the Overlords,’ the absolute coercive power of the Earth’s masters is established, and humanity’s new direction is underway.

Fast-forward fifty years to ‘The Golden Age,’ and to a utopian, unified earth; free of want, of struggle, and even the need to work. Religion and nationalism are dead, but so is science, art, and culture. Humanity has it too easy under its new masters, and life has become safely stagnant. As one of Clarke’s characters, the inhabitant of a ‘back to basics’ colony, says:

We’ve no hostility towards the Overlords: we simply want to be left alone to go our own way. When they destroyed the old nations and the way of life man had known since the beginning of history, they swept away many good things with the bad. The world’s now placid, featureless, and culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. The reason’s obvious. There is nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? . . . No wonder the people are becoming passive sponges, absorbing but never creating. Did you know the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day?

According to the A. C. Nielsen Co., the average American of today watches four hours a day and, when you factor in internet and other digital media, Clarke’s conclusion that “Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more” has a contemporary resonance, and suggests that, perhaps, we really are living in a science fiction world.

While Clarke’s golden age has plenty of familiar elements — the change in sexual mores from the development of a birth control pill and paternity testing are just one small, concrete example of the changes Clarke foresees in this world of fifty or a hundred years in his future — it also has flying cars, deep sea colonies, and several alien technologies such as a viewer that lets one watch past events. And all of this is fascinating reading, told as it is with logic and inventiveness while raising even greater mysterious about the Overlord’s mission, and ultimate cosmic truths that remain hidden just beneath the surface of things.

While there are a few characters to ground the plot (the most interesting of which is a young astronomer who decides to do something about pursuing his dream of the stars despite the Overlord ban), Childhood’s End is really about the future sweep of human history as a whole. By the time of ‘The Last Generation,’ something radical has occurred to transform humanity out of all recognition. It is the thing the Overlords have been waiting for, what they saved us from ourselves to realize. And it is, quite frankly, chilling to contemplate, and in scale it dwarfs all our human notions of existence. Clarke achieves a real sense of cosmic sweep here, of a minute intelligence encountering the vastly inconceivable truths of space and time.

In the end, one wonders just how much of Childhood’s End is Clarke truly advocating, and how much has just grown from the logic of the story. Clarke does have the ability to be coolly dispassionate, almost ruthless, when focusing on the big picture, and I do not deny his sincerity when he suggests that humankind will destroy itself if it remains unchecked. But it is also apparent that he keenly feels the loss to human society when it undergoes its several transformations over the course of the novel. I think the answer must be that Clarke, like any good writer, embodies both notions and sees the positives and negatives inherent in each — and in the end goes where the story dictates. What the reader must decided is, does Childhood’s End represent mankind’s apotheosis, or apocalypse?

But this was a book written over fifty years ago, and Clarke’s opinions on certain aspects of it have changed over time. One surprising element for fans of Clarke is that various supernatural elements, such as ghosts and psychic abilities, are given some credence and are actually integral to the direction of the plot. Clarke himself has said that he no longer agrees with his earlier notions of such phenomena, but that doesn’t diminish the impact of the novel.

It has been said that science fiction is the literature of ideas, and also that its central tenet is change. Childhood’s End embodies both notions perfectly, and is one of the defining works from one of the genre’s master storytellers.

• Childhood’s End at Amazon
• An Arthur C. Clarke website