While catching up on reviewing the countless books from past several years which I’ve let slip through the cracks, I realized that I had never reviewed this fifth book from my Siblings’ 2018 Book Club, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. I believe this had originally been my selection, as I had recently finished Clarke’s fantastic short-story collection, The Nine Billion Names of God, and could recall being blown away by 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was really looking forward to this full-length novel about I-knew-not-what, and ultimately, I was satisfied.

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I’m definitely not a sci-fi fan, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for a good tale about the end of humanity-as-we-know-it, that may or may not also involve aliens in a supporting role, and that’s pretty much how I’d describe Childhood’s End. Another favorite set of stories, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, falls into this category too.

The plot of this novel is fairly straightforward: Humanity is visited by aliens who take their sweet time (over 500 years!) to finally reveal themselves. “The Overlords”, as they’re called, bring a lasting peace to the world by abolishing any need for warfare or religion (yet not politics):

By the standards of all earlier ages, it was Utopia. Ignorance, disease, poverty and fear had virtually ceased to exist. The memory of war was fading into the past as a nightmare vanishes with the dawn: soon it would lie outside the experience of all living men. (66)

About the loss of religion, an Overlord apologetically confesses:

Believe me, it gives us no pleasure to destroy men’s faiths, but all the world’s religions cannot be right-and they know it. Sooner or later man has to learn the truth: but that time is not yet. (16)

The world, for the most part, learned to live with this great, cosmic change. In their delusion, most of humanity went about their lives slowly giving up all responsibility to the Overlords. They succumbed to a growing desire to be entertained. The world described in this novel seems almost painfully familiar, and I don’t believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has done anything to quell our delusions. Take this entertainment-driven description as an example:

There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that’s available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges-absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? (139)

Oh, if Clarke could see us now! I don’t recall the exact number, but I heard several years ago that 48 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, and I imagine that the numbers have only increased since then. The digital world around us offers so many distractions, it’s a wonder how we all haven’t reached that passive-sponge stage, absorbing but never creating.

Despite the world’s acceptance of this godless Utopia, there still continued a small band of untrusting humans who craved to know why the Overlords had appeared and what their ultimate purpose was. The Overlords patiently dealt with the curiosity of this small sect of doubters, stating: “There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.” (52) When it came right down to it, though, the Overlords did have a purpose for coming to Earth and so patiently deluding the people—and it was far less omnipotent and almighty than at first expected

“Despite all their powers and their brilliance,” Clarke tells us, “the Overlords were trapped in some evolutionary cul-de-sac. Here was a great and noble race, in almost every way superior to mankind; yet it had no future, and it was aware of it.” (177) In fact, the deeper one human is able to dig, the bigger the picture he’s able to see. They eventually confess to him, “You called us the Overlords, not knowing the irony of that title. Let us say that above us is the Over-mind, using us as the potter uses his wheel.” (184) Ah! The Truth man had to sooner or later learn! Religion they’d abandoned, the Over-mind is still there, still mighty, and still needed. No matter what man (or Nietzsche’s Overman) wants to say, if all gods have been killed, all that leaves us with is a God-shaped emptiness that can only be filled with our sovereign God—who incidentally cannot be killed.

This may not have been Arthur C. Clarke’s message in this novel. I know from my passing experience that Isaac Asimov was more un-apologetically religious than Clarke, but still, I believe the message rings true.

The book also contains a number of great lines, lines that are specifically informative for our present quarantine lifestyle. Here are a few of my favorites:

“The supreme enemy of all Utopias: boredom.” (70)

“A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.” (109)

“Few artists thrive in solitude, and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.” (145)

“If all artists are abnormal, and all men are artists, we have an interesting syllogism.” (162)

This was an enjoyable read, but probably only fits inside a niche that isn’t for everyone. Even for me, I need to be in the right mood to enjoy a good sci-fi.

©2020 E.T.

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Read More from Arthur C. Clarke:

• Childhood’s End (1953)
• Expedition to Earth (1953)
• Reach for Tomorrow (1957)
• Tales from the White Hart (1957)
• Earthlight and Other Stories (1960)
• The Nine Billion Names of God (1966)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Time’s Eye (2003)