This is the first book review on Everything Geeky! I’ve kept to a pretty simple format, I jump around a bit from plot overview, to discussion of themes, to my own thoughts on the piece. At the end, I’ve given the book a score out of 10, although I’m not sure how I feel about ranking a work that way. Ah well, I hope you enjoy!
Childhood’s End (1953) is perhaps the perfect example of what a great sci-fi book is supposed to do. Huge concepts are grappled with by Arthur C. Clarke throughout the novel, always giving us pause to think, and to consider our place – humanity’s place – in the wider universe. If a smorgasbord of traditional sci-fi themes is the bedrock of the novel, then the twists and turns of the plot are the hills and valleys, and fauna that makes Childhood’s End a beautifully thoughtful book.
Arthur C. Clarke stands as one of science fiction’s giants, his work helping mould the genre; Clarke’s pen helped carve out what some saw as the golden age of science fiction (although exactly when the golden age was is a matter of some debate, and will be a topic of a future blog post). The ideas that Clarke deals with in Childhood’s End – alien overlordship and its impact on human society, psychic groupthink, human evolution – would become mainstays in the genre forevermore.
Childhood’s End is considered by many to be Arthur C. Clarke’s best novel, and it is certainly a book with a lot going for it. I would even say it was ahead of its time, not only in its ideas, but in the matter of plot and characters.
An example of this would be in the prologue, which stands completely on its own from the rest of the book. Set in the late 20th Century, the Cold War is still in full swing, with both the United States and the Soviet Union in a race to reach the stars. Both sides are busy constructing massive starships, when, without warning, alien ships descend on Earth. The reader’s expectations are shredded here; we are led along a path, made out to believe that between the covers of the book lies a Cold War thriller, all completely blown apart almost immediately.
The Cold War ends unceremoniously with the arrival of the alien Overlords. It is the first example of how contact will change the face of our world forever. In 1953, when the book was written, the Cold war was a reality. For many, it would have been an unalterable reality. Capitalism and Communism were meant to oppose each other. People believed in this, in their country’s own righteousness against the other’s wickedness, with unrestrained fervour. This was the time of McCarthyism, there was no middle ground, no if’s or but’s.
To have all that shattered in a prologue of a novel is a revolutionary masterstroke by Arthur C. Clarke. More than three decades before Ronald Reagan stood up at the United Nations, speaking of how an extra-terrestrial encounter would force humanity to come together, here was Clarke exploring that same idea.
The book comes in three parts I would say. The first is the political turmoil and eventual assimilation of humanity under the Overlord’s rule. This is mainly told through the point of view of the UN General Secretary and his discussions with the Overlord leader, a being called Karellen. This climaxes decades after the arrival of the Overlords, where Karellen reveals himself at last to humanity. The appearance of the Overlords – huge, winged, horned, demons straight out of mythology – is the reason they remained hidden so long. They did not wish to terrify humans into reckless action; it seems the image of the Overlords had imprinted itself upon the collective mind of humanity aeons ago, an echo that travels into the past. This is the novel’s first hint of collective hive mind that will be important later.
The second part of the book – or I could call it a secondary plotline – is the decision of Jan Rodricks to travel to the home planet of the Overlords. During an Ouija Board session a house-party, Jan asks the board the location of the Overlord’s star-system, and to everyone’s surprise, he receives an answer, an answer which he uses to identify the location in space of the planet. This is the second instance of the collective hivemind, where it turns out Jan’s sister has a greater connection to that metaphysical realm – the reason the Ouija Board behaved the way it did was because of her (and her unborn child).
The climax of the novel deals with that unborn child (who becomes a born child, you’ll be unsurprised to hear). In a colony called New Athens, George and Jean (of the unfortunate Ouija Board incident) live a life that hearkens back to the days of old, before the arrival of the Overlords. Here a collection of artists strive to create a culture that can be viewed as human, with little interference from the Overlords. Jeffrey, the young child of George and Jean, soon begins to dream of other worlds, as the final stages of the Overlords’ task on Earth transpire. Jeffrey is the first, but soon other children, every child, leaves their physical bodies behind. The children become beings of pure mind, interconnected as one hivemind, but not exactly human anymore.
It is revealed that this was the task of the Overlords all along. They were to prepare humanity for this next step on the evolutionary ladder. The Overlords cannot make this step themselves, they can only nurse along other species capable of making the jump to super-consciousness. The question posed here is a difficult one: the children have lost their individuality, they are one mind, not human, but in possession of all the knowledge in the universe. They become the universe in the end. But is it worth it?
The last pages of this novel will stay with me forevermore. Jan Rodricks returns to earth. Because of time dilation, eighty or so years have passed on Earth since he left to visit the homeworld of the Overlords, yet for him, it is barely a few months. He has received knowledge beyond imagining, but now returns to find an Earth with no human beings left alive. The Overords leave, Jan is left as the last human, as what once were the children ascend to the heavens, and destroying the Earth as they leave.
The first pages of the novel were set in the Cold War, and all its dangers. The seeking of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and in the Cold War, it could have destroyed us all. In the final pages of the novel, humanity has gained infinite knowledge in a collective hivemind, yet that makes them humanity no longer. The Earth is still destroyed. The Overlords claimed they stepped in and saved humanity from destroying the planet. But the Earth is destroyed in the end. Does it matter if some version of man has joined the stars? Humanity and its home are gone.
I do not believe that such an end is worth it. Then again, I am human, so am not supposed to know. Jan Rodricks felt a great emptiness by the end, a feeling I think most of us would have, if our end was to have our planet destroyed for knowledge we cannot possibly comprehend…
Overall, Childhood’s End is a fast-paced, thought-provoking sci-fi masterpiece. I did feel the prose might have been more colourful, the characters more complex. However, in a work like this, the larger themes are the main attraction, and on that score, Arthur C. Clarke wrote a near-flawless piece of work that will live forever.
My Score: 8.7/10
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