Childhood's End
.jpg?lang=en) Cover of first edition (hardcover) | |
| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
Publication date | 1953 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 214 pp |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
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). This story was originally a short story dubbed Guardian Angel which Clarke first published in 1950 for the Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine. It is basically the novel's section after the prologue, Earth and the Overlords but with some different text in certain places.
Plot summary
Childhood's End is about humanity's transformation and integration to an interstellar hive mind, the Occult, man's inability to live in a utopian society, cruelty to animals, and the idea of being "The Last Man on Earth".
The 1953 edition of the story begins when enormous alien spaceships one day appearing above all of the Earth's major cities. The aliens, who become known as the Overlords, quickly communicate by radio, announcing benign intention and desire to help mankind. They quickly end the arms race and colonialism. They also arrange personal, though not face-to-face, meetings between Secretary General of the United Nations Rikki Stormgren and Karellen, the Overlord leader, albeit via two-way mirror, so that the earthman cannot see the extraterrestrial alien. Karellen has a special relationship with Stormgren, though short of traditional friendship. The Overlords promise to reveal themselves in fifty years, after which time mankind will have lost their prejudice, becoming comfortable with their presence.
Mankind enters a golden age of the greatest peace and prosperity ever known, but at the expense of some creativity and freedom; not every Earthling is content with the bargain, nor accepts the beneficence of the Overlords' long-term intentions. Although Stormgren, with Karellen's help, survives kidnap by subversive humans suspicious of the Overlords, he secretly harbours lingering curiosity about the real Overlord nature and smuggles a device aboard Karellen's spaceship to see behind the screen. Yet, he later tells questioners the device failed; the novel strongly hints that Stormgren agrees with the Overlords that mankind are unready for what he saw revealed.
True to their word, fifty years after arrival, the Overlords appear in person. They are beings resembling the traditional human folklore image of demons: bipeds with large wings, horned heads, and tails. The Overlords are taller than humans and of proportionally more massive bodies covered with a hard, black armour shell. They are greatly photosensitive to yellow sunlight, because they are from a planet with a dimmer light spectrum, and, though they can breathe Earth air, they prefer their own specific atmosphere gas. Mankind accept them with open arms, and with their help, create an utopian world.
Although humanity and the Overlords are in good relations, the spread of equal goods and the ban on building space ships that can travel past the moon causes sects of humanity to believe their innovation and independence is being stagnated. In response, those sects establish the New Athens island colony.
After one hundred years on earth, human children (starting in New Athens) begin displaying telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Because of that, they soon become distant from their parents. Karellen then reveals the true purpose of why the Overlords came to Earth. They are in service to the Overmind, an amorphous being of pure energy. It has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind. Also, the Overlords' resemblance to the devil of human folklore is explained with the concept of racial memory unlimited by humanity's linear concept of time; hence, fear of them was based upon instinct, the foreknowledge that they herald the end of the human species.
Karellen announces that the children will be quarantined on a continent of their own and because of them, all hopes of humanity are over because it will only be the children who will merge with the Overmind. The Overlords are also shown to be trapped in an evolutionary dead end who will never merge with the Overmind, and thus are doomed to forever do its bidding. Because of this, Karellen states his race will forever envy humanity. Despite how the Overlords are trapped in their current forms, Karellen hopes that his race will learn what causes the stage that will be taken by the Overmind and that eventually his race will discover how. Following the quarantine, no more children are born; the narration subtly hints that most of the parents commit suicide, while their children evolve towards merging with the Overmind. New Athens is then destroyed by the leaders detonating a nuclear bomb on it.
The last man alive is Jan Rodricks, a physicist, who will witness mankind's final evolutionary transformation. He stowed away on an Overlord supply ship earlier in the story in a successful attempt to travel to the Overlord home planet, which he correctly guessed orbits a star of the Carina constellation. As a physicist, Rodricks knows of the relativistic twin paradox effect: however brief the round trip to the Overlord planet is in his subjective, personal time-frame, the shortest time elapsed on planet Earth, for a "twin" person of the same age, would be the round trip light-travel time. Given that the Overlord planet is forty light-years distant, at least eighty years elapsed on Earth before his return (eighty years is the lower limit, the actual time is longer).
Therefore, when Rodricks returns from the Overlord home world, he expects no one on Earth will remember him, nevertheless, he is unprepared for the return: mankind, as he knew it, died. About 300,000,000 naked young beings physically human, but otherwise with nothing common to Man, remain on the quarantined continent. They are the final, physical form of human evolution before merging with the Overmind. Life — not only human life, but all other forms on the planet — was exterminated by them, and the vast cities that Jan remembers are all dark, worldwide.
Although no human beings remain on Earth, some Overlords remain, studying the evolved children. The two whom Rodricks knows are Karellen and Rashaverak; they expected his return. They briefly remain after Rodricks's return, trying to understand mankind's transformation, which is denied to their race despite its great achievements in other realms. It also is revealed here that the Overlords have met and conditioned other races for the Overmind, and that humanity is the fifth race the Overmind will collect.
When the evolved children exploit their powers — altering the Earth's rotation, effecting other, dangerous planetary adjustments — making it too dangerous to remain, the Overlords prepare to leave. They offer Rodricks the opportunity of leaving with them, but he chooses to remain as witness to Earth's dissolution; mankind's offspring evolved to a higher existence, requiring neither a body nor a place, so ends mankind's childhood.
The story's last scene details Karellen's final backward look, through hyperspace, at the doomed Solar System. He is emotionally depressed, having seen yet another race evolve to the beyond, while he and his race are limited to their current form. Despite that, he renders a final salute to mankind, considering whether or not conditioning them for the Overmind helped his goal of deciphering the evolutionary secret for his race to merge with the Overmind. He then turns away from the view, the reader presumes, to await the Overmind's next order.
Similar themes in other literature
The idea of humanity reaching an end point through transformation to a higher form of existence is the main idea behind the concept of the Omega Point.
It is also 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.
Translations
- Russian: "Конец детства" ("Childhood's End"), 1988, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003.
- Czech language: ["Konec dětství"] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: cz (help) ("Childhood's End"), 1992, 2005.
- Hungarian: "A gyermekkor vége" ("Childhood's End"), 1990.
- Estonian: "Lapsepõlve lõpp" ("Childhood's End"), 1999.
Childhood's End in other media
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 for years been sold and traded in the movie business, but has not been produced yet. Actress Hilary Swank was once attached to the project.
- The story's opening scene, in which the spaceships appear over Earth’s major cities appeared in the openings of both the American television 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 primitive stage and ascending to a higher plane of existence. The fourth-season finale, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", depicts mankind one million years in the future as having evolved into true beings of energy, like in the conclusion of 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 final scene of his theatrical climax to the series, The End of Evangelion, also mirrors that of the book.
- The 15th episode of the Japanese science fiction anime RahXephon is named "Child Hood's End" (sic).
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- The song "Childhood's End" by Kathy Mar on her 1983 filk album "Songbird"
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 addition, both Overminds try to collect humanity in an attempt to merge it with itself. The Zerg also progress by assimilating other species into their own; needless to say, these infested individuals are controlled by the Overmind.
- 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".
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.
External links
