Childhood's End

Kurt Vonnegut once said of Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End that it is one of the few masterpieces of the science fiction genre.

The plot starts as many sci-fi stories start. A fleet of alien UFOs descend from space and park themselves over the major cities on Earth. However, there is no attack. There are no lasers fired, nor any swathes of destruction. The aliens, it seems, are benevolent. They are here to help guide humanity through this stage of potential peril. Remember, Childhood's End was written in 1953, during the height of nuclear tension.

Nobody ever sees the aliens, however, except for one individual. Their plans are kept equally secret, but slowly and with deliberate guidance they build the trust of humankind. By the time they are physically revealed, around the halfway point of the book, it becomes apparent why they were so secretive. They are the very image of the devil - red skin, horns, a pointed tail, and leathery wings. However, since they had shown their goodwill through the years, little was made of their “coincidental” resemblance to an ancient symbol of evil.

The narrative was initially a bit difficult to follow, as it moved around through time, following a different cast of characters at each step (only occasionally revisiting previously introduced characters). The humans are drawn quite flat, but they serve mostly as two dimensional vehicles to tell the larger story... one that culminates in a series of heady revelations.

I particularly like the racial memory (or racial premonition) ideas and the ideas of collective consciousness, and how this might relate to our civilization's coping of life with the Internet - something Clarke certainly could not have imagined in the early 1950's. I enjoyed how he plays with time, whether it's through the narrative that spans about 150 years, or when he describes the effects of near light speed travel and time dilation. Every aspect of this novel is crafted masterfully, so it's easy to understand why many consider it a landmark of its genre... and why it may be one book I return to again in the future.

The book is divided in 3 parts I think. The first one showed some promise, I could take the slow build up of the events into the revelation of what does the Overlords really look like and what are their motives. The story was interesting by itself, with a somewhat well defined main character.

Learning about the special powers this alien race, wondering why they wanted peace on Earth and how people resented being forced into having peace was fun.

The second part started off really well. It takes place many years latter, and there are a new cast of characters. There is no main character but that still could be have been fine. The Overlords have revealed themselves and it was time they make their plan known.

It seemed to start building up a dystopian future where there is no war, crime, diseases, anger, envy or anything bad, but mankind have lost its artistic creativity and the desire to explore space or to advance science in any way.

The Overlords have provided them with anything they needed. Any conflicts people had could be resolved by this special television that could see into any time and place in human history. So all of the religions were extinguished when they could actually see the truth of how they got started. Murderers were discouraged to commit crimes because they would certainly be caught.

But this was described in one page and nothing else happened. Although this is a small book, there is too little of a plot. It is mostly filled with mundane events, like talking trivialities at a party.

I stopped listening by the start of part 3, when things should be getting more interesting, but they just didn't.

This was written in 1953, but feels like it could have been written this year – which shows how timeless Clarkes style of science fiction is. The story is familiar if you've watched the movie Independence Day. But what happens if the aliens seem inteligent and malevolent? How long does it take for humans to accept aliens? This relatively short novel was beat out for Retro Hugo Award by Fahrenheit 451.

Il s'agit certainement de l'un des meilleurs romans de science-fiction que j'ai lus jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Une histoire de Premier Contact entre l'humanité et des extra-terrestres bienveillants mais dont les objectifs semblent obscurs aux habitants de la planète Terre. Bien pensé, intelligent, prenant du début à la fin.

Story : At first, this book gave me a vibe of Arrival, the movie, and I loved it! After these aliens get familiar with humans, the adventure just begun. Near the end of the book I was wondering why Clarke decided to go with this stroyline, but the final pages explained everything and it was perfect! One of my favorite elements of this book is how the Overlords try to explain our world through our history... interesting approach.

Characters : I want an Overlord... they are so kind and smart. The humans are humans and of course they want to eliminate what is unknown to them, but the aliens are much more intelligent than us. Our main characters are fine, didn't really cared what would happen to them... I liked Jan tho.

Overall : Amazing story about aliens coming on Earth, trying to save us from ourselves... it's funny how in almost every Hollywood movie, they try to destroy us because... I don't know, I can't see the logic in doing that.

Clarke's work is fascinating both in his philosophy and his accessible style. I was most intrigued by the Utopia created by the Overlords' arrival on Earth. At first, it clashed with everything I know about my own species. Then, when I set all my what if's aside, I started to wonder if we were not closing in on this space ourselves. As a person who already finds most of her waking hours devoted to leisure, devoted to consumption, I was terrified at the idea that that might be it for an adult like me who can't evolve any further. The book seems at once pessimistic in our human limits, yet optimistic in what we might mean to that great beyond. It's not the kind of book I can write a one paragraph blurb on, but it's one that has further stimulated questions I will seek to answer in my own writing from this sentence on.

This book has everything that makes me love old sci-fi: A positivist view of humanity, open to the possibility of the truly strange, and progressive social and philosophical ideals underlying the story.
The basic premise is that alien overlords come down to Earth and presume to rule humanity. It turns out that they're much better at running the world than humans and that their motives seem to be altruistic. However, they are very secretive and refuse to reveal why they are so interested in helping humans.
This book is timeless, but it's also a beautiful reflection of popular ideas from the 50s and 60s, when interests in aliens, psychics and the paranormal really became popular. In Clarke's style, the characters are secondary and the plot doesn't follow a standard build-up, but there are so many brilliant concepts squished into this story that build-up really isn't necessary.
This book is very unique compared to modern stories. I recommend this to anyone who is looking to read something “different”.

The strengths in Childhood's End come from its three part structure, which offers glimpses of humanity at different stages of its first contact story, as well as the overall philosophical, religious, and scientific questions that Clarke presents through his human, and alien, protagonists.

The first part of three is structurally the best, following the expected first contact plot threads while adding an air of mystery and intrigue. Although it's the shortest, it offers a genuine look into what the story is aiming to explore: what if aliens came to Earth, not to conquer it, but to usher it into an era of peace?

The next two parts do not hold up as well, however. Despite its rather dated approaches to race, especially around black Americans , including a brief section about how the n-word is just a commonplace word, much like "republican or methodist, conservative or liberal," and has lot all its taboo-ness in polite society, that offer nothing for the story other than an awkward commentary, the narrative suffers from pacing issues, leaving much less interesting characters to follow for the remainder of the story. By the time one part of the story gets interesting, it falls off in favor of moving on to a different perspective.

The ending, while interesting in concept, feels heavy-handed with large chunks of info-dumping that could have been formatted differently through normal exposition or dialogue. The ending leaves the story on a rather somber note, and while I wasn't expecting a happy ending from a story that seemed to be on a downward spiral since its second part, I do wish there was a finality to it.

Of course, it's easy to pick at a classic through a modern lens and a back catalogue of current sci-fi works that have propelled the genre in a streamlined manner. Childhood's End is a classic for a reason. Despite its shortcomings for me, the thought process that went into crafting such a narrative is still admirable, and you can feel its lasting impact in tons of sci-fi stories today.

A fascinatingly speculative view of first contact from the perspective of the 1950's. It would be very easy to poke holes in the narrative, but that is not really fair given when it was written. As ever with works of this era, the things they fail to predict are often more interesting than the things they do predict (in the 21st century computers are still huge and “thousands of meters of film” are still required for recording). Having said that, also as ever, Clarke is startlingly spot on with other predictions (particularly related to entertainment media and its consumption).

As a feat of imagination it is impressive, although the denoument may raise a few eyebrows. In fact, what saved the book for me in the end was, in my edition at least, a fascinating addendum from the author explaining his thinking and how it had changed in the intervening years.

I am tempted to give this 5 stars, however I am not sure I would want to read this a second time (my usual criteria for 5 stars). A very good 4 star novel.

This was written in 1953, but feels like it could have been written this year – which shows how timeless Clarkes style of science fiction is. The story is familiar if you've watched the movie Independence Day. But what happens if the aliens seem inteligent and malevolent? How long does it take for humans to accept aliens? This relatively short novel was beat out for Retro Hugo Award by Fahrenheit 451.

The book starts out very dry. The author allows his speculative theorizing to get in the way of telling a good story. I almost get a Looking Backward vibe from the heavy handed and interminable descriptions of societal transformation, with painfully obvious political biases courtesy of the author.

The second half is much more engaging and novel, and vindicates the book.