Childhood’s End (1953)

I first read this Arthur C. Clarke novel, a certified science fiction classic, when I was in my 20s, but I didn’t remember much about it except I had a meh reaction. I liked it more this time but still think it’s within range of meh. The streaks of mysticism seem out of place to me. The larger view is of human evolution going to places we can only imagine, much like the movie and novel he collaborated on with Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a general way that novel and movie is equally hard to fathom. There’s no denying the ambition of Childhood’s End even as short as it is. It starts with a first contact story (the 1996 movie Independence Day lifted a lot of ideas about how it would go) and ends with the last generation of human beings as we know them. The universe here is mostly rational, ordered, and hierarchical. The “Overlords” who take over running planet Earth have their own masters up the chain. This “Overlords” thing is funny—the Overlords don’t like the term. It reminds me of one of the best gags in The Simpsons, from broadcast news anchor Kent Brockman: “And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.” Humanity gonna humanity! For the most part I appreciate what the Overlords do, wiping out war and poverty and such. It’s not their primary purpose here, but that’s where the mysticism cup begins to froth over. In many ways it’s a pastiche of nuclear anxiety, riffing on relativity and time dilation in space travel, and seeking for the greater purposes of life. Clarke has a lot of ideas that keep it interesting, such as exploring the mysteries of the ocean depths. There is a notable passivity to the human beings here, but that’s plausibly understood as the ultimate response to the Overlords’ superior powers. There’s something cringy for me about the physical appearance of the Overlords, which they don’t reveal until 50 years after the occupation. It's kind of like the way we’ve been denied information about the JFK assassination. When the reveal finally came it struck me as very silly. But that doesn’t mean Childhood’s End is not still entertaining as a classic of SF.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.