“Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke

Reaching for the Stars.

As a longtime lover of science-fiction, I can also admit I’m guilty of falling into my niches. I gravitate naturally towards utopian and dystopian worlds, sometimes stories involving androids and robotics, but hardly ever do I go straight towards time travel or aliens. When I was told by my professor that “Childhood’s End” by THE Arthur C. Clarke was going to be my first novel-length foray into an alien story, I was excited.

The novel has been accused of being slow, but I feel that’s hardly a fair accusation to make. For a novel that takes place over centuries, I feel the story moves at an almost break-neck piece. It’s a challenge to get through centuries of evolution and the end of the human race in two-hundred and thirty-seven pages, but Clarke is more than capable. We are so used to stories that take place over only a few days– high-stakes situations are extremely popular in modern media. Look at “The Umbrella Academy” on Netflix. Sure, the show involves multiple jumps through time and perspective shifts, but in the end, the story takes place within an eight-day timeline. The characters have to stop the end of the world, and the end of the world must be a sudden event, right?

Arthur C. Clarke says “wrong.”

“Childhood’s End” is a story broken down into three sections, based on the stages humanity moves through after the Overlords appear. By the end of the novel, the Earth has irrevocably changed. Humanity no longer experiences crime, war, or poverty, but future generations are no longer “human” at this point. The Overlords have changed the fate of the world. The children of mankind begin to change; to develop powers and abilities beyond what can be imagined. The planet is an afterthought, the parents and grandparents of the children are an afterthought. The children of a new race are destined to join the Overmind, and live among the stars. Earth and humanity are inevitably destroyed, the children become part of the Overmind, and the Overlords move on to another planet and another race.

There has been much debate over the ending of “Childhood’s End.” The novel is very British in nature– this is not a story of man versus the world, forging his own path against all odds, which is the definition of the American dream. Think of “Moby Dick,” “Death of a Salesman,” and “The Call of the Wild.” Stories about the individual are America’s bread and butter. “Childhood’s End,” however, is a story about the power of a group, and how together, we can do just about anything we set our minds to. A “we” mindset is an idea that perhaps more of us could embrace in an age of extreme independence.

But is the ending of this story necessarily “happy?”

Millions of people dream of having a chance to someday explore space. They dream of the stars, of faraway galaxies, of stepping on soil that no life force has ever moved on before. They believe the space program deserves all the support it can get, so there can be answers to all of those “what if” questions.

But there are plenty of other people who believe space should be left well-enough alone. We have enough issues on our own planet– why should we bother with trying to live on another one? Shouldn’t we dedicate all of our time and resources to fixing the home we have?

I’m not sure which side of this debate I fall on. I know that Arthur Clarke was a very vocal supporter of the space program, and that shows in the rich ways he describes space in his novel. Clarke is a masterful storyteller, able to draw an audience in and keep them on their toes. Clarke writes of a planet frozen in time at the center of the universe, a planet with such heavy gravity that the only organisms that can survive there must live in two-dimensions, only a fraction of a centimeter in thickness. Most vividly of all, Clarke describes a sun, “too hot to be white, it was a searing ghost at the frontiers of the ultraviolet… It was a star against which Earth’s pale sun would have been as feeble as a glowworm at noon.”

I don’t have any desire to go to space myself– I enjoy the idea of the unknown too much. We spend more than enough of our lives trying to find answers for everything anyway. But Clarke’s descriptions of what could be beyond us are just as beautiful as they are haunting. His imagery does haunt me, because it makes me wonder: should we know? Should we try to see what is now beyond our reach?

I don’t necessarily read Clarke’s ending as “happy.” Perhaps it’s the American in me, but I feel humanity should have a say in how and where we end up. If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me, you know? But if our fate is our decision, then I believe we have a right to try and reach farther and farther out. No one looks at the beauty of a flower and compares it to the beauty of a star– but we haven’t figured out how to hold stars in our hands.

At least, not yet.