Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke: Review
Book: Childhood’s End. Date of Publication: January 1, 1953. Pages: 224. Genre: Science Fiction
Shamelessly recycling the opening remarks from my review of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine:
Science fiction, no matter how forward thinking, is always based in the world of today. First published in 1953, Childhood’s End is filled with the existential angst that you’d expect from its early atomic age origins. When the threat of humanity’s implosion was both novel and omnipresent. Now it is just omnipresent and by that fact almost unremarkable.
Massive space ships suddenly appear over every major city on Earth. They belong to an alien race that come to be known as the Overlords. Their technological superiority is immediately and utterly evident. Fortunately they come in peace. Their only request for mankind is to eliminate war and end poverty on a global scale. The ultimate purpose unknown to everyone but themselves.
Some in the populace believe the Overlords harbor ill intentions and agitate for self-determination. Most are happy to live under their direction and in a few generations mankind is in a utopia of peace and prosperity. Without crisis and conflict though there is also no impetus for innovation and there have been no groundbreaking works of art or science since the Overlords’ arrival. There are some pockets of resistance to this species-wide creative block, like an artist enclave in Athens and an intrepid student determined to see the stars. But they are the exception and it seems that whatever the Overlords want, they will achieve.
It is revealed that the Overlords work in service of a vast unified consciousness known as the Overmind. They intervened to prevent our destruction and guide our evolution to its conclusion. This is to develop psychic powers and join with the Overmind, shedding our physical embodiment. This process begins with a single child developing telekinetic powers but soon spreads to all the children of the world. The last generation of adults who are not taken in this wave quickly drive themselves to extinction, having been rendered obsolete.
It is a uniquely depressing viewpoint to take on the purpose of imagination. Science only occurs when it allows us to avoid death by resource constraints or conflict. Art only occurs to soothe the trauma of living with uncertainty and violence. It is purely an evolutionary adaptation, one that we naturally grow out of when it is no longer necessary and our energy can be channeled into other avenues. But, in a world where that characteristic has brought us to the very brink of disaster, I can see how it’s a hopeful repudiation. Our ultimate destiny could be beyond the pale of our wildest dreams and our wildest fears and maybe that would be for the best.
Random thoughts:
- There is a section where the Overlords remark that without their careful guidance mankind could have become a malignant psychic force wreaking havoc on the universe. I immediately thought of Warhammer 40k. My new theory is that the Imperium of Man is what happens when the Overlords arrive too late. Bonus headcanon: the T‘au Empire is how they’re trying to fix the mess that is the 40k universe, they are the Ethereals!
- I think one of my favorite SCPs might be inspired by this story. SCP-2003: “Preferred Option” describes the different future scenarios that the Foundation scouts out using a time machine that they build with anomalous technology. Every future is horrifying in its own right but this one kept me up at night. At least the date references are out of date now so it doesn’t seem as creepy.
Beings strongly resembling human-sized, animate versions of SCP-███ manifest in most major population centers on August 13, 2019. Rather than causing alarm, these beings quickly become accepted by humanity after offering major advances in medical science, energy production, crop cultivation, and the arts. By the close of 2022, thousands of people willingly join an experimental program to combine the consciousness of multitudes of humans into a singular entity. In 2024, a fully mature human believed to possess a mind composed of the transferred consciousness of approximately 134,000 people is created by these beings. This human is then confined to a cell, left with only automatically-dispensed supplies of food and water, and sealed off from all outside contact. All other humans are systematically exterminated by the end of 2024.
- Excerpt from SCP-2003
