Childhood's End

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This article is about a novel. For other uses, see Childhood's End (disambiguation).
Childhood's End

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author Arthur C. Clarke
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Science fiction
Publisher Ballantine Books
Publication date 1953
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 214 pp
ISBN ISBN 0-345-34795-4

Childhood's End is a science fiction novel by the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, dealing with the role of Mind in the cosmos, and the plausible implications of that role for the evolution of the human race. It was originally published in 1953. The story first appeared as a short story dubbed Guardian Angel  which Clarke published in 1950 for the Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine, which is basically the novel's section after the prologue, Earth and the Overlords, with some different text in certain places. A new first chapter was substituted in 1990 due to anachronisms in the opening scene (Clarke wrongly assumed the "Moon Race" would take place in the late-1970s), but editions since have appeared with the original opening, or containing both alternatives.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Childhood's End  is about humanity's transformation and integration to an interstellar "hive mind", the Overmind. It also touches upon such matters as cruelty to animals, man's inability to live in a utopian society, and the idea of being "The Last Man on Earth". The 1953 edition of the story begins at the height of the cold war some thirty years after the fall of the Third Reich, with attempts by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to launch nuclear rockets into space for military purposes, threatening imminent doom.

The arms race is suddenly arrested when enormous alien spaceships appear without warning and hang silent and motionless above all the Earth's great cities. After a week of growing tension, the aliens, who become known as the Overlords, announce by world-wide broadcast that they have benign intentions and desire to help humanity, but that they will henceforth assume such control as is minimally necessary to accomplish their aims. As the enforcers of peace, they bring salvation and life, and yet also a sense of the death of some dreams, as complete independence is lost, and certain scientific explorations, in particular that of space, are also halted.

Feeding suspicion about their true motives is the circumstance that the Overlords never appear in person. They do arrange meetings, not quite face-to-face, between the Secretary General of the United Nations, Rikki Stormgren, and the Overlord "Supervisor for Earth", Karellen. Karellen develops a special relationship with Stormgren, though short of the traditional friendship of peers. To allay the inevitable suspicions of some, Karellen promises the Overlords will reveal themselves physically in fifty years, after humanity has matured and become 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 the one-way screen that separates them. Years later he tells a questioning reporter the device failed. The novel strongly hints that Stormgren agrees with the Overlords, that mankind is 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 accepts them with open arms, and with their help, creates a utopian world.

Although humanity and the Overlords come into good relations, the spread of equal goods and the ban on building space ships that can travel past the moon causes some sects to believe their innovation and independence is being suppressed and that culture is becoming stagnant. In response, those sects establish "New Athens", an island colony.

1968 edition of Childhood's End.
1968 edition of Childhood's End.

Some ten years after the Overlords showed themselves, 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, a cosmic mind formed of many amalgamated ancient galactic civilizations, freed from the limitations of ordinary matter. It has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind. The Overlords' resemblance to the devil of human folklore is later 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: although the round trip to the Overlord planet only is 2 x two months 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 star system -- known as NGS 549672 to astronomers on Earth -- 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 three hundred million 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, affecting 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 at the Solar System, whose existence among the stars is soon no more noticeable than its recent loss of one small planet. 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.

[edit] Similar themes in other literature

1956 edition of Childhood's End.
1956 edition of Childhood's End.

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 and of the technological singularity. The idea of self-transcendence appealed to devotees of psychedelic mind expansion, too, and Tom Wolfe would offer a quote from the novel at the conclusion of his LSD-soaked memoir The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

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, Sideshow by Sherri S. Tepper, the Vernor Vinge novels incorporating the "Singularity", Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker and, in Iain M Banks' "Culture" novels, the "sublimation" which advanced civilizations may undergo.

[edit] Translations

  • Russian: "Конец детства" ("Childhood's End"), 1988, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003.
  • Czech: "Konec dětství" ("Childhood's End"), 1992, 2005.
  • Hungarian: "A gyermekkor vége" ("Childhood's End"), 1990, 2008.
  • Estonian: "Lapsepõlve lõpp" ("Childhood's End"), 1999.
  • Norwegian: "Skygger fra fremtiden" ("Shadows from the future"), 1971.
  • Spanish: "El Fin de la Infancia" ("The End of Childhood"), 2000, 2008.
  • Serbian: "Kraj detinjstva" ("Childhood's End"), 1976.
  • Hebrew: "Ketz Hayaldoot"‎ ("Childhood's End"), 1985.
  • Greek: "Οι Επικυρίαρχοι" ("The Overlords"), 1978.
  • Italian: "Le guide del tramonto" ("The guides of the sunset"), 1967.
  • Croatian: "Kraj djetinjstva" ("Childhood's End"), 1996.
  • French: "Les enfants d'Icare" ("Icarus' children"), 1978.

[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 for years been sold and traded in the movie business, but has not been produced yet. Director Kimberly Peirce and actress Hilary Swank have been 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. The TV movie Babylon 5: The River of Souls also examines this concept, although it deals with the evolution of an alien race to a pure energy state, and a Soul Hunter's mistaken assumption that this is a racial extinction.
  • 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.

[edit] Music

[edit] Games

  • The 1998 console role playing game Xenogears contained a character named Krelian; in the original Japanese version, his name was Kareruren (カレルレン), which can be more correctly romanized as Karel'len. 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".
  • Infinite Line's plot is based around 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.
  • There is no star named NGS 549672. According to the Hipparcos survey, real-life red dwarf stars located approximately 40 light years in the constellation of Carina include HIP 55042 (distance 40.9ly.) and HIP 31862 (distance 42.6 ly.).


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Novels by Arthur C. Clarke
Space Odyssey
Rama series
A Time Odyssey
Vanamonde series
Other