Childhood's End
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 Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
| Released | 1953 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 214 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
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).
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[edit] Plot summary
Childhood's End deals with humanity's transformation and integration into an interstellar hive mind. The book also touches on the issues of the Occult, man's inability to live in a utopian society, and cruelty to animals, as well as 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 Rikki Stormgren and the Overlord leader Karellen, albeit through a one-way mirror so that Stormgren cannot see Karellen. Karellen seems to share a special relationship with Stormgren, although a bit short of the traditional definition of friendship. The Overlords promise to reveal themselves in fifty years, after which mankind will have lost its prejudice and become comfortable with 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 that the long-term intentions of the Overlords are benign. Although Stormgren, with Karellen's help, survives being kidnapped by some subversives suspicious of the Overlords, he 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; the novel strongly hints that Stormgren actually 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 are cybernetic beings somewhat resembling demons because they possess large wings, horns on their heads, and tails. They are taller than humans, and proportionally more massive. They are accepted with open arms by humanity. However, an island colony called New Athens is built by humanity to show independence from the Overlords.
The Overlords, after a hundred years on Earth, reveal their true purpose. They are in service to a non-corporeal being of pure energy known as the Overmind. It has charged them with the duty to foster humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind. The fact that they somewhat resemble 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. It is also revealed they have met other races to "till" for the Overmind and that humanity is the fifth race the Overmind will collect. It is Karellen's intention to learn from the last men how humanity's caterpillar from matter and transfiguration comes about in the hopes that eventually his own race can learn enough to join the Overmind.
One day, humanity's children (starting in New Athens) 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. Karellen states that it would best to exterminate the parents but he can not bring himself to do it. He also states that his race will forever envy humanity due to their evolution still being fertile. 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.
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 the continent on which they were previously quarantined by the Overlords. Life — not only humans, but all other life forms on the children's continent — has been exterminated by them, and the vast cities that Jan remembers are all dark worldwide. Although no humans as he knew them remain on Earth, a few Overlords are still there, studying the children. The only two he knows are Karellen and Rashaverak, who had been expecting his return. 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, the children 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, needing neither physical bodies nor physical surroundings, and so the childhood of mankind comes to an end.
The very last scene details Karellen looking back on the Milky Way through hyperspace. The past events he experienced cause him to mourn but only for his own race and not humanity. However, he does give a silent farewell and salute to humanity. He then turns his back from the view and it is presumed he will await the next order from the Overmind.
[edit] 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", Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker and Iain M Banks' "Culture" novels, and the "Sublimation" that advanced civilizations may undergo. A quote from the end of the novel also exists in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.
[edit] Childhood's End in other media
[edit] Movies and television
- 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 mini-series V and the movie Independence Day.
- The television series Babylon 5 features as one of its main themes the concept of "younger races" like humanity growing past its early, primitive stages and ascending to some higher plane of existence. Its fourth-season finale, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", depicts the mankind of one million years in the future as having physically evolved past mortal, "corporeal" bodies into true beings of energy, similar to the conclusion of Clarke's Childhood's End. The first season episode "Mind War" also touches on this theme, through the fate of Jason Ironheart.
- In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Decker (representing The Creator) and V'ger 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.
- In Star Trek: The Next Generation 3rd season episode "Transfigurations", a humanoid with amazing powers is found by the starship Enterprise. He is hunted by his own species, which is on the verge of an evolutionary change (their rulers fear a loss of power and want to destroy the first members to go through the metamorphosis). Eventually the humanoid evolves into a form of energy and leaves, possibly to his homeworld so that others would have the chance to join him.
- In the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Ben Sisko becomes a Bajoran Prophet, or wormhole alien, who appear to be bodiless energy creatures.
- The Q species in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager also appears to be a species of energy beings on a higher plane of existence. To humanoids the Q seem omnipotent.
- Hideaki Anno, main designer and director of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, has stated that Childhood's End was one of his principal influences. The end of the novel seems to have directly inspired the Human Instrumentality Project.
- The 15th episode of the Japanese science fiction anime RahXephon is named "Child Hood's End" (sic).
- The final episode of Babylon 5's fourth season, "The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars", revolves around a distant-future-human (1 million years in the future) watching recordings of past events, detailing reactions to the events of the series throughout the thousand years after it was set. The human is an energy-being (similar to the Shadows, Vorlons, Walkers, Lorien and others) capable of taking human-like form.
- 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.
- "Childhood's End" was the name of a Stargate: Atlantis episode, but there are no shared plot elements short of children.
- The ending scene of End of Evangelion mirrors that of the book.
[edit] Music
- The final scenes of the book, in which Earth's children gather and become an entity of the Overmind, inspired the cover of the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy.
- 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 probably influenced by the novel.[citation needed]
- 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 unlikely that the song (bar the title) was inspired by the book.
- Marillion also released a song entitled "Childhood's End" on their 1985 album Misplaced Childhood; again, it is uncertain whether the song was inspired by the book or instead is semi-autobiographical.
- 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).
- The song "Exciter" on Judas Priest's 1978 album Stained Class is about an alien visitor who brings across the salvation of humanity through implied assimilation into a hive mind.
[edit] Games
- 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 is an obvious reference to Karellen, the Overlord supervisor.
- 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.
- In the computer game Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, one of the factions, the Cult of Planet, may build a base named "Childhood's End".
[edit] Other
- 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.
- Simon & Simon producer Philip DeGuere, who once wished to produce the movie, had a large model of Karellen in his office.
- The premise of X-Men's mutants being a higher evolved form of humans with special abilities is similar to the effects of Earth's children joining with the Overmind and gaining their paranormal abilities.
[edit] External links
- ArthurCClarke.net : fan community & discussion site
- Arthur C. Clarke links & image archive
- A review of the book, by Tal Cohen
- Utopia in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, by Zoran Živković
