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Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is famous  as a scientist, a novelist, and the collaborator with Stanley Kubrick on the film 2001, a Space Odyssey. He believed at one time that humankind's future lay in space flight and was the first to propose earth-orbiting space stations in his non-fiction book The Exploration of Space (1951). (You may read more about him in the above links.)

There are two versions of Childhood’s End, differing only in the opening description of the arrival of the Overlords.  In the Prologue of the 1953 version, we are back in the time of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union are competing in Clarke's imagined future of 1975, to see who will be the first into space. The destination is only specified as “the stars.”

In the updated 1989 prologue (included in the back of the recent Del Rey edition) the Cold War has ended, and Clarke is perhaps overly optimistic about the “new brotherhood of man” that will follow.  The cosmonaut Helena Lyakhov is Deputy Commander of the Mars Expedition.  She is based at Star Village, the Russian cosmonaut training facility, on the brink of a launch to Mars. She is standing before the statue of Yuri Gargarin, the first man into space, who died in a plane crash in 1968. Star City has become an international facility for the scientists involved in the forthcoming Mars Expedition.  As Helena looks up at the sky, we shift to Mission Commander Mohan Kaleer in training at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. Both Commander and Deputy Commander are stopped from further plans by the appearance of the Overlords’ ships. 

The updating of the prologue was the only change Clarke made in the novel,  but in the 2001 Del Rey edition, just before his death, he returned to the 1953 preface, incorporating it as part of Chapter One while the '89 prologue was relegated to the back of the book.

The Future
Originally published over half a century ago, Childhood's End describes a future, some features of which –-such as birth control devices and DNA testing as well as the ubiquity of television-- have come to pass. But no forecast is perfect, and in fact science fiction does not exist in order to  forecast the future. Clarke did not foresee the development of the personal computer, or the Internet, for instance. Though the novel depicts an end to racism, that has not happened in spite of gains for minorities.  Clarke’s women characters are fairly stereotypical of the women in 50’s SF—and 50’s media in general.   

Moreover, Clarke and many intellectuals of the time believed that reason and science would replace religion; the nation-state was on the way out; and soon there would be a world government. Instead we have seen tremendous backlashes of religious fundamentalism and nationalism. 

Religion
In both beginnings, the launch of a space ship is forestalled by the appearance of aliens from a far superior culture. They are not the monsters of the human imagination (though they would have been perceived so had they revealed themselves right away). They are, instead, good aliens, come to save humankind.

A 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” had a similar premise: a saintly alien comes to earth to stop human beings from destroying each other with nuclear weapons. Perhaps this is the Overlords’ motive as well.

But like any outsider who threatens the status quo, the Overlords are not immediately welcomed by everyone, for many understand that the conflict is between the Overlords and the religions of humankind. Karellen tells the UN Secretary General, Rikki Stormgren, that “[t]hey know that we represent reason and science, and [...] they fear that we will overthrow their gods”(23). Clarke sets up a dichotomy here between reason and science on one hand and the irrational and “unscientific” part of human nature, including religion, on the other. Reason and science win out. Or seem to.

The instrument with which human beings can see the past and learn the truth about the origin of world religions wipes out these religions, a development seen by the narrator perhaps as a positive step on the way to maturity: “Humanity had lost its ancient gods: now it was old enough to have no need for new ones” (75).  Indeed Clarke is known for his impatience with organized religion. In 1965 he wrote: "The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods."  (Salon) 

But working against this idea like a kind of unconscious undertow is even the name given to the aliens, “Overlords,” as well as echoes of biblical imagery and the language of religion used in their description:

“And on the sixth day, Karellen, Supervisor for Earth, made himself known to the world” (18).

Stormgren “had faith in Karellen”(16) and his assistant admits that his real feeling toward Karellen is "one of overwhelming awe” (37) at their “illimitable power” (42). The Overlords have a “passion for justice and order” (44). They bring peace and comfort to humankind like a good parent taking care of hitherto unruly children. The old gods may be dead, but it seems that new ones have taken their place, and it can be argued that humanity has not grown up at all, simply substituted one set of parental gods with another.

The scenario is replete, moreover, with hints early in the narrative that all is not well: The alien ships pass overhead “like demon-driven clouds” (42). Also “[t]here is something in the future that [Karellen] seems to fear” (24), and he is careful to point out that he does not have absolute power (24), that his race has had its failures (64). There are “unknown powers above him”(64). There is clearly more to the Overlords’ visit to Earth than meets the eye.

At first it seems as if the problem resides solely in their superiority: “The invaders had brought peace and prosperity to Earth -– but who knew what the cost may be? History was not reassuring; even the most peaceable of contacts between races at very different cultural levels had often resulted in the obliteration of the more backward society. Nations [...] could lose their spirit when confronted by a challenge which they could not meet” (29). This certainly seems to be true by the end of Chapter 9: not only has religion vanished but scientific investigation has ground to a halt since what’s the point of proceeding if the Overlords have already done all the work.

Utopia
However, by ending war and other cruelties, the Overlords bring a true Utopia into being. Never mind that it could never have come about without their help. It seems that we are in need of a stern parent figure who can punish us if we go astray (Witness the fate of those attending the bull fight!). Is Clarke’s scenario, then, much better than what we have now?

Sure it is. There is less suffering in the world, no poverty, war, or race hatred, no cruelty to animals, worldwide opportunities for education and pleasure, and not just for the rich. Everyone has enough.

But there are losses, especially art and science, those two human accomplishments which spring from our creativity. And of course there are other drawbacks:

“No Utopia can give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart” (90).

Thus even with the benign domination of the Overlords, there is something within human beings that cannot quite be conquered.

Childhood’s End is not a prophecy of the future. It is a science fiction novel, and contains not only extrapolation and speculation about the future, but also the stuff of which novels are made –- images, narrative voice, characters. As a work of science fiction often referred to as the classic first contact novel, it takes on one of the major challenges of the genre, the depiction of alien life.

Imagery
The 1953 "Prologue" immediately sets up a major contrast in the novel, the warm familiar life on earth contrasted to the indifference of the rest of the universe: on the supposed eve of America’s venture into space, Reinhold Hoffman (a German scientist now working for the US) contemplates the island Taratua from which the spaceship Columbus is to be launched: "It was quiet here beneath the palms, high up on the rocky spine of the island.” We are told that he “had grown fond of these clustered palms....It saddened him to think that they would be blasted to atoms” when the Columbus leaves earth for the stars (7)--“the aloof indifferent stars,” which within minutes come to humankind as the Overlords’ ship sweeps down to earth (11).

That this comforting living world has not always been so is implied in the first sentence of the 1953 version of the novel: “The volcano that had reared Taratua up from the Pacific depths had been sleeping now for half a million years,” and this is followed by Reinhold’s thought that “Yet in a little while…the island would be bathed with fires fiercer than any that had attended its birth” as the Columbus “rose in flame and fury to the stars”(7). Humankind’s quest for the stars, then, will be more destructive than the fiery birth of islands.

Even the 1989 prologue –-  though lacking the passion of the original as though it were a job Clarke did not really want to do — retains some of this imagery in Mohan’s quick speculation that it was “hard to imagine the powers that had raged here as the tides of molten rock ebbed and flowed, creating the ramparts and terraces spread out before him” (4).

Life on earth, then, is a brief period of calm surrounded by violent cataclysm whether natural or man-made. The space ships will never leave earth, but we will witness cataclysm again before the novel is over as certain “sleeping” human powers awaken.

 

Narration and Characters
The selectively omniscient narrator telling us this story is most similar to the voice narrating “The Star,” far off and distant, with a similar godlike perspective, able at will to dip down into the lives of Reingold, Stormgren, Rupert Boyce, Jan Rodricks, Jean and George Greggson, characters who play their representative parts in the drama that is not focused on them and their development, but on the development of one of the book’s major characters, the human race.

The other major character is, of course, Karellen. In presenting the Overlords, Clarke is shrewd in building suspense about their appearance. Stormgren’s assistant, Pieter Van Ryberg, theorizes as to why Karellen does not reveal himself: "My theory is that his little fleet's lost in space and is looking for a new home. He doesn't want us to know how few he and his comrades are. Perhaps all those other ships are automatic"(ch 2).  Stormgren tells him "you [...] have been reading too much science-fiction," and Van Ryberg grins "sheepishly." SF is the most self-referential of genres, often mentioning itself as if in conspiratorial in-group parody. Ironically Van Ryberg is half right: there is only one ship and the others are merely projections.  It is perhaps impossible to read too much SF!

The reader is swept along, wondering, like human beings in the novel do, first what the aliens look like and then why they are here. The revelation that they resemble demons explains why they have kept themselves hidden, but not why the memory has stayed so long in the myths of humankind. We -– and the characters -- assume that the Overlords encountered human beings millions of years ago and it was not a happy meeting.

Just after the ouija board reveals the name of the Overlord’s sun, for the first time, we see two of the aliens alone together, discussing the incident. Clarke is clever at circumventing the problem of describing their conversation — the narrator admits that he can’t:

“'This man Boyce,’ said Karellen. ‘Tell me all about him.’
“The Supervisor did not use those actual word, of course, and the thoughts he really expressed were far more subtle. A human listener would have heard a short burst of rapidly modulated sound"(101).

In this way we are able to eavesdrop on members of a species whose language is to us unknowable because of their superiority, and it’s here that we begin to see concrete evidence that the Overlords' purpose on earth is not altruistic. In studying Rupert Boyce’s collection of psychic phenomena, Rashaverak has noted “eleven clear cases of partial breakthrough” (102) and designates Jean Morrell “too old to be a Prime Contact herself” and thus placed in “Category Purple.” She is “the most important human being alive”(103). We don’t know why yet, but we will.

Alien Encounter Fiction
Childhood’s End fits neatly into that sub-genre known as “alien encounter fiction,” where the alien is an Other who is comparable though superior to human beings. The contrast between us and the Overlords is significant: Seeing ourselves through Karellen’s eyes, we are introduced afresh not only to all our problems as a species but also to our great creative powers (which, ironically, are dampened by the Overlords’ arrival). Karellen tells Rashaverak: “Human beings are remarkably ingenious and often very persistent. It is never safe to underrate them” (104). He is doubtlessly remembering Stormgren’s neat trick by which he found out the truth of Karellen’s appearance (We will never know if Karellen deliberately and affectionately rewarded his ingenuity with a glimpse, though Stormgren to his dying day believes so). Karellen sees in Jan Rodricks the same ingenuity, and so will we. The human race receives a collective pat on the back as even the far-superior alien realizes that there is some value to human beings, perhaps abilities that the Overlords can not match.

Though alien encounter fiction can involve mutants, alter egos, and sentient computers, the most common encounter is with extraterrestrials. The problem is how to depict them: “A complaint about the depiction of extraterrestrials is that they are never really alien; for how can a writer create something that is truly Other? Absolute Otherness is an artistic impossibility. That which is completely Other would also be completely incomprehensible to the reader” (Carl Malmgren, Worlds Apart, 57). We need some sort of comparison to earthly beings or we could make no sense of what we were seeing and no writer could describe it.

If you look carefully at the descriptions of Overlords you will see that they do not look human at all. When George Greggson meets Rashaverak in Rupert Boyce's library he feels: "There was nothing really anthropomorphic about Rashavaerak [....]The body was neither like that of a man nor that of any animal Earth had ever known"(82). They are giants, with wings, horns and tails. Still, they are analogously human -- they walk upright, have a head, a face, a body, two legs, two arms, two hands. They may talk and think too fast for us to understand, but they are an extrapolation from our own rationality and technical expertise, a model of what we might become with the appropriate passage of time.

But who has sent them? We haven’t met all the aliens yet. Keep reading.