Childhood's End

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1956 edition of Childhood's End

Childhood's End is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1953, and a version with a new first chapter was released in 1990 due to the anachronistic nature of the opening chapter (the first attempts to launch rockets into orbit by both the Americans and Russians are in progress but aborted suddenly when aliens arrive, with a sense of the death of a dream).

Contents

1 Plot summary
2 Similar themes in other literature
3 ''Childhood's End'' in other media
4 Notes
5 External links

Plot summary

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Childhood's End deals with humanity's transformation and integration into an interplanetary hive mind. The book also touches on the issues of the Occult, man's inability to live in a utopian society, cruelty to animals, as well as the cliché of being the last man on Earth.

In the 1953 edition, the one known to most readers, the book opens with enormous alien spaceships appearing one day over all of Earth's major cities. The aliens, who become known as the Overlords, quickly make radio contact and announce their benign intentions and desire to help mankind. The Overlords quickly end the arms race and colonialism. They also arrange person-to-person (though not face-to-face) meetings to be conducted between Secretary General of the United Nations Stormgren and the Overlord leader Karellen, albeit through a one-way mirror so that Stormgren cannot see Karellen. They promise to reveal themselves in fifty years, after which mankind will have lost its prejudice and become comfortable in their presence.

Mankind enters a golden age of the greatest peace and prosperity ever known, but at some expense of creativity and freedom, and not all people on Earth are content with the bargain, nor accept the longterm benign intentions of the Overlords. Although Stormgren survives being kidnapped by some subversives suspicious of the Overlords, Stormgren secretly harbours a lingering curiosity about the real nature of the Overlords. He smuggles a device onboard Karellen's vessel to glimpse behind the screen, but later tells questioners that the device failed to work; there are hints that Stormgren merely agrees with the Overlords that mankind is not yet ready for what it revealed.

True to their word, fifty years after their arrival, the Overlords appear in person. They have all the classical appearance of devils — dark skin, leathery wings, pointed tails, horns, etc.

The Overlords, after a hundred years on Earth, reveal their true purpose. They are in service to a corporate being of pure energy known as the Overmind. It is their purpose to nursemaid humanity's emergence into a higher plane of existence that would become part of the Overmind. The fact that they appear as devils in human folklore is explained by developing the concept of a racial memory that is not limited by humanity's concept of linear time, hence the fear of these creatures was based on an instinctive foreknowledge that their coming would herald the end of our species. It is revealed at the end of the book that the Overlords are an evolutionary dead end and will never join the Overmind, and are thus doomed to forever do its bidding.

One day, humanity's children start displaying telepathic and telekinetic abilities. These children soon become distant from their parents, and the Overlords quarantine all of them to their own continent.The continent is not named, at least the 1953 edition, but various suggestive hints are provided:

At the beginning of Chapter 23, Karellen says, in part, "... [we have] given them [the new children] a continent of their own"
Later in the same Chapter, their number is estimated at 300,000,000
Several subjective descriptions of the terrain are atypical of Africa

Identifying this landmass with Australia is as good a guess as any. Following the quarantine, no more normal children are born. Humanity ages and dies off; all the while their children change more and more in their evolution to become part of the Overmind.

1968 edition of Childhood's End

Jan Rodricks is the last living human being, and he will witness the final transformation. He had stowed away on an Overlord supply ship in a successful attempt to travel to the Overworld home planet, which he had correctly guessed to orbit a star located in the Carina constellation. As a physicist by training, before stowing away, Jan is mindful of the relativistic effect known as the twin paradox, so that however brief the round trip to the Overlord homeworld might be in his personal (subjective) time-frame, the elapsed time on Earth for a "twin" (person of the same age remaining behind) will be at least the light-travel time there and back: since the Overlord home star is 40 light-years away, this means that at least 80 years would elapse on Earth before he returned (eighty years is only the lower limit; the actual elapsed time could be much greater, and is not specified in the book). Therefore, when he returns from the Overlords' homeworld, he fully expects that nobody on Earth will remember him. Nevertheless, that does not prepare him for what awaits him upon his return to Earth: humanity as he knew it has died out. About 300,000,000 naked young beings physically resembling humans but otherwise having nothing in common with Man remain on their own continent. Life, not only humans, but other life forms, on the other continents has been exterminated by the remaining humanoids, and the vast cities that Jan remembers are all dark worldwide. Although no humans as he knew them remain on Earth, two Overlords are still there and become the only "people" he knows. They stay on for a short time after Jan's return to try to understand mankind's transformation which is denied to their own race despite its great achievements in other realms. However, new humans begin to exploit their strange new powers to alter the rotation of the Earth, and make other dangerous adjustments, so that staying behind becomes too risky. Therefore, they make preparations for final departure. They give Jan the option of leaving with them, but Jan elects to stay behind and witness the final transformation: Earth itself dissolves away. Humanity's offspring have evolved to a higher plane of existence, and the childhood of mankind comes to an end.

Similar themes in other literature

The idea of humanity reaching an end point through transformation to a higher form of existence is reminiscent of the belief held by some Christians in the "Rapture" and has been used in a number of science fiction works written since Childhood's End, the most famous being Clarke's [[2001: A Space Odyssey]]. Other examples include Blood Music, Darwin's Radio, and its sequel Darwin's Children by Greg Bear, the Vernor Vinge novels incorporating the "Singularity", and Iain M Banks' "Culture" novels and the "Sublimation" that advanced civilizations may undergo.

Childhood's End in other media

The BBC produced a two-hour radio dramatisation of the novel, which was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 1997.
A screenplay of the novel has been sold and traded throughout the movie industry for years, but has never been produced.
The book's dramatic opening scene, in which the spaceships appear over Earth’s major cities, was echoed by the opening scenes of both the American TV movie V and the movie Independence Day.
In [[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]], Decker (representing The Creator) and Vejur join and apparently ascend to a higher level of being. The starship Enterprise crew conjectures they saw the birth of a new life form and Man's possible next step.
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. It is also believed that the end of the novel also inspired the Human Instrumentality Project in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The lyrics in David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things" from the album Hunky Dory recall the evolution of man as presented in Childhood's End and were likely influenced by the novel.#redirect [[Template:Fact]]
The novel also inspired a song of the same name by Pink Floyd on the album Obscured by Clouds.
Iron Maiden also has a song entitled "Childhood's End" on the album Fear of the Dark; however, it is uncertain whether the song was inspired by the book.
And Marillion also has a song entitled "Childhood's End" on their 1985 album Misplaced Childhood; again, it's uncertain whether the song was inspired by the book or instead is semi-autobiographical.
"Childhood's End" was the name of a Stargate Atlantis episode, but there are no shared plot elements short of children.
Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have the recurring theme of human evolution to a higher plane of existence as energy beings (referred to as "ascension" in the series). The ascended beings actively and passively help other humans ascend.
Hideaki Anno, main designer and director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, has stated that Childhood's End was one of his principal influences.
The 1998 console role playing game, Xenogears contained a character named Krelian. The role of this character was to force the evolution of humans so they may ultimately become part of a man-made god. The name of this character in the original Japanese release was Karalen.
The popular computer game StarCraft features a hive-minded alien race called the Zerg, a race which not only is ruled by a being called the "Overmind," but features lesser supervising creatures called "Overlords." The Terrans in the StarCraft backstory also have emerging psychic powers, and the actions of the Xel'Naga are similar to those of the Overlords in Childhood's End.
An Overlord is illustrated in Wayne Douglas Barlowe's bestiary, Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. The Overlord is also on the cover, in the upper left position.
The Genesis song "Watcher of the Skies" was inspired by the novel, as was Peter Gabriel's bat-winged stage costume.
The song "A Childlike Faith in Childhood's End" by Van der Graaf Generator was inspired by the novel (but no bat-wings for Peter Hammill).

Notes

External links

[ArthurCClarke.net : fan community & discussion site]
[A review of the book], by Tal Cohen
[Utopia in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke], by Zoran Živković

The Novels of Arthur C. Clarke

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