by Arthur C. Clarke, 1953
Wayne owns this book. He encouraged me to read it after the Islands in the Sky book I just read by Arthur C. Clarke. That was a children’s book. This book was fascinating! It’s about an advanced race coming down to Earth in their gigantic space ships. They are called Overlords. At first they hide themselves from humanity, but their gigantic space ships are parked over every major city. Wars cease. Nation/states crumble. Just by their presence, a golden age of peace and plenty and justice comes to the Earth. After many, many years, one child exhibits a special talent – telepathy like what has never been known. The Overlord takes special care of that child. His name is Jeff. He saves him from a tsunami. That child is the first of many with telepathic powers. Eventually, all of these telepathic children gravitate to one area on Earth. They don’t eat, they don’t bathe, they don’t communicate with one another. They just walk and crawl around on rocks, while dirty and naked. They have no emotions. They are living in another dimension but still physically unique. When the time is right, they all form into a funnel of light and color and geometric shapes and spin up to space to be with the Overmind. Earth at that point is beginning to disintegrate. The Overlords are leaving. Their work is done. There is one man left on Earth, Jan – a black man. He could have left with the Overlords but he had already been to their planet – he stowed away on a supply ship 80 years prior, and had just returned to Earth, having only aged a few months, while the rest of the humans (except the children) had aged 80 years and were now dead. What an interesting book!
Wayne gave me a final exam:
- Were the Overlords masters or servants? Explain your answer. The Overlords were both masters and servants. They were masters of mankind on Earth. They controlled people somehow. They eliminated all wars, and nations. Peace and justice on Earth came. They took care of all basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing. They didn’t “rule” over mankind, but they guided them and watched over them. They were waiting for someone – a child with telepathic powers. And when that child came, they watched over him carefully. That was Jeff. He would have died in a tsunami if an Overlord hadn’t told him to “Run!” Once every child on earth became telepathic and lived on a different plane mentally, their work on earth was almost done. They were servants of something called the Overmind. He was the Overlords’ Overlord.
- What was the OverLords task? The Overlords task was to care for mankind so they didn’t destroy themselves before the Overmind could assimilate the race of mankind into himself.
- What happened to the children? The children became one with the Overmind. They lost all personality, all individuality, all humanness. They gradually became less and less human, and more and more a part of a huge organism. In the end, they became geometric shapes and light and flowed upwards to be a part of the Overmind.
- At the story’s close, does mankind exist any longer? Explain. No, mankind does not exist any longer. Jan is the only one and he is doomed because the children have left and all of the older humans died years ago. Before all the children left, they had started to play with the moon and the stars, all the physical laws no longer applied; gravity was disappearing, the atmosphere was disappearing. Jan saw the children leave as a funnel of light and colors and geometric shapes and he described a feeling of fulfillment watching them leave. He could have gone with the Overlords who left moments before, but he had learned that the “stars were not for man,” as Karellen had told him.
- Is the book’s title appropriate to the big picture? Yes, Childhood’s End is an appropriate title. The children of that time period lost their childhood and became one with the Overmind and they were the last children on earth, so it was the end of childhood forever.
- In your own words: What is the major theme of this story? The major theme of this story is the uniqueness of humankind, and that we need each other. The beauty and hope of mankind lies in our children. Without children, we die, and there is no use for all of our art, music, culture, work, life. love. Without children, there is nothing to live for, work for, and love. What specific words would you choose to describe this theme? Love, care, family, individuality, struggles, work–all of these make us human and make life meaningful. Does this theme have a prominent place in scripture? What is that? In Creation, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and God breathed into us the breath of life. He placed us in a beautiful garden where we had meaningful work. He gave us each other so we wouldn’t be alone. We chose to sin and God sent Jesus to save us. In the book, man was going to destroy himself but the Overmind wanted to save them, so it sent the Overlords to protect them until they developed enough to be assimilated into the Overmind. At that point, they had ceased to be human – they no longer ate, drank, breathed. They were breathing air and in a light that was otherworldly. They became one in the end with the Overmind, and Jan had a feeling of fulfillment as he watched the children, what they had become, leaving the Earth. But our God will not take away our individuality like the Overmind did to the children. Our God created us individually and He respects our freedom. The children were not free. We will still have human-like bodies but they will be glorified. We will have faces. In this book, the children lost their faces – they had no emotions – blankness. That is not our God. The Overmind was not our God.
His take on the major theme of the book is much better (question 6). He says the Overlords and the Overmind were nurturing caretakers – like angels – and their job was to take care of the children until they could be taken to another level closer to God. He uses the verses about us being a new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
His interpretation fits with a sentence in the book near the end, page 224, where the Overlord named Rashaverak is explaining to Jan what their job on Earth was: “The Overmind collects the harvest–and we move on to another task. This is the fifth race whose apotheosis we have watched. Each time we learn a little more.”
Apotheosis means: the elevation or glorification of a subject—such as a human, living thing, or abstract idea—to divine rank (deification), or the highest and most perfect example of something (an epitome or peak). (Merriam-Webster)
I had read that sentence and thought I read assimilation, which would have made the Overmind like the Borg in Star Trek. But when I found the sentence again, after hearing Wayne’s ideas, it was not assimilation but apotheosis, and that is an entirely different thing. I like Wayne’s interpretation – the children had become a new creation and were on their way to be with God.
Here are some interesting parts of the book:
Pgs 74 and 75: “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 facing into the past as a nightmare vanishes with the dawn; soon it would lie outside the experience of all living men.
“With the energies of mankind directed into constructive channels, the face of the world had been remade. It was, almost literally, a new world….Production had become largely automatic: the robot factories poured forth consumer goods in such unending streams that all the ordinary necessities of life were virtually free. Men worked for the sake of the luxuries they desired: or they did not work at all.
“It was One World. …
“Crime had practically vanished. It had become both unnecessary and impossible. When no one lacks anything, there is no point in stealing. Moreover, all potential criminals knew that there could be no escape from the surveillance of the Overlords….”
Pg. 76: “One of the most noticeable changes had been a slowing down of the mad tempo that had so characterized the twentieth century. Life was more leisurely than it had been for generations. It therefore had less zest for the few, but more tranquility for the many. Western man had relearned–what the rest of the world had never forgotten–that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth.”
“…Education was now much more thorough and much more protracted…”
“…In particular, the patterns of sexual mores–insofar as there had ever been one pattern–had altered radically. It had been virtually shattered by two inventions, which were, ironically enough, of purely human origin and owed nothing to the Overlords.
“The first was a completely reliable oral contraceptive: the second was an equally infallible method –as certain as fingerprinting, and based on a very detailed analysis of the blood–of identifying the father of any child…”
Pg 76-77: “Another great change was the extreme mobility of the new society. Thanks to the perfection of air transport, everyone was free to go anywhere at a moment’s notice. There was more room in the skies than there had ever been on the roads…
“…The ordinary private flyer or aircar had no wings at all, or indeed any visible control surfaces. Even the clumsy rotor blades of the old helicopters had been banished. … Jet reaction, used both directly and in the more subtle form of boundary layer control, drove his flyers forward and held them in the air…”
“…It was a completely secular age. Of the faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overlords, only a from of purified Buddhism–perhaps the most austere of all religions–still survived. The creeds that had been based upon miracles and revelations had collapsed utterly…”
Pg 79, Wayne calls the last three paragraphs of Chapter 6 the thesis of the book. Here are the last 4 paragraphs of Chapter 6: “The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.
“No one worried except a few philosophers. The race was too intent upon savoring its new-found freedom to look beyond the pleasures of the present. Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias–boredom.
“Perhaps the Overlords had the answer to that, as they had to all other problems. No one knew — any more than they knew, a lifetime after their arrival, what their ultimate purpose might be. Mankind had grown to trust them, and to accept without question the superhuman altruism that had kept Karellen and his companions so long exiled from their homes.
“If, indeed, it was altruism. For there were still some who wondered if the policies of the Overlords would always coincide with the true welfare of humanity.”
Pg 119-120: “…The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world’s effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest…Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community, as roads, water, street lighting, and drainage had once been. A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever food he fancied–without handing over any money. He had earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community.
“There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden than providing for the armies of ticket collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, stock-brokers, and so forth, whose main function, when one took the global point of view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another.
“Nearly a quarter of the human race’s total activity, it had been calculated, was now expended on sports of various kinds, ranging from such sedentary occupations as chess to lethal pursuits like ski-gliding across mountain valleys. One unexpected result of this was the extinction of the professional sportsman. There were too many brilliant amateurs, and the changed economic conditions had made the old system obsolete.
“Next to sport, entertainment, in all its branches was the greatest single industry. For more than a hundred years there had been people who had believed that Hollywood was the center of the world. They could now make a better case for this claim than ever before, but it was safe to say that most of 2050’s productions would have seemed incomprehensibly highbrow to 1950. There had been some progress: the box office was no longer lord of all it surveyed.
“Yet among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question:
“Where do we go from here?“
Pg 133, Jan’s letter to his sister when he stowed away on the Overlord supply ship mentions a type of propulsion:
“I have made calculations based on what we know about the Stardrive, and using the firmly established results of the Relativity theory. From the viewpoint of the passengers on one of the Overlord ships, the journey to NGS 549672 will last not more than two months–even though by Earth’s reckoning forty years will have passed…“
Pgs 145-147: “Your race had shown a notable incapacity for dealing with the problems of its own rather small planet. When we arrived, you were on the point of destroying yourselves with the powers that science had rashly given you. Without our intervention, the Earth today would be a radioactive wilderness…”
…”In this galaxy of ours,” murmured Karellen, “there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. Even that figure gives only a faint idea of the immensity of space. In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world…”
…”It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”
…”They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen’s ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms.
“And only Karellen knew with what inexorable swiftness the Golden Age was rushing to its close.”
Pg 154: “When they destroyed the old nations and the way of life man had known since the beginning of history, they swept away many good things with the bad. The world’s now placid, featureless, and culturally dead: nothing really new has been created since the Overlords came. The reason’s obvious. 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? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”
Pg. 191: “But there is one analogy which is–well, suggestive and helpful. It occurs over and over again in your literature. Imagine that every man’s mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock form which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but their individuality would have gone.
“Telepathy, as you have called it, is something like this…”
Pg 192: “…We have never been more than guardians, doing a duty imposed upon us from–above….”
Pg 193: “Enjoy them while you may,” answered Rashaverak gently. “They will not be yours for long.”
Pg 195: “It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.”
Pg 205: “Slowly Jean turned towards him, and rested her head upon his shoulder. He clasped his arms about her waist, and the love he had once known came back to him, faint yet clear, like an echo from a distant range of hills. It was too late now to say all that was due to her, and the regrets he felt were less of his deceits than for his past indifference.
“Then Jean said quietly: “Good-by, my darling,” and tightened her arms about him. There was no time for George to answer, but even at that final moment he felt a brief astonishment as he wondered how she knew that the moment had arrived,
“Far down in the rock, the segments of uranium began to rush together, seeking the union they could never achieve.
“And the island rose to meet the dawn.”
Pg 212: “…Before them stretched a huge, half-empty hall, flooded with a familiar light that Jan had not seen since leaving Earth. It was faint, so that it would not pain the sensitive eyes of the Overlords, but it was, unmistakably, sunlight. Jan would never have believed that anything so simple or so commonplace could have evoked such yearning in his heart.”
Pg. 220 (Jan is back on Earth, watching a video of the children taken in the past.) “This will distress you,” said Karellen. “But remember that your standards no longer apply. You are not watching human children.”
“Yet that was the immediate impression that came to Jan’s mind, and no amount of logic could dispel it. They might have been savages, engaged in some complex ritual dance. They were naked and filthy, with matted hair obscuring their eyes. As far as Jan could tell, they were of all ages from five to fifteen, yet they all moved with the same speed, precision, and complete indifference to their surroundings.
“Then Jan saw their faces. He swallowed hard, and forced himself not to turn away. They were emptier than the faces of the dead, for even a corpse has some record carved by time’s chisel upon its features, to speak when the lips themselves are dumb. There was no more emotion or feeling here than in the face of a snake or an insect. The Overlords themselves were more human than this.”
Pg 221: three years later – “They never sleep, you know, and this lasted almost a year. Three hundred million of them, moving in a controlled pattern over a whole continent. We’ve analyzed that pattern endlessly, but it means nothing, perhaps because we can see only the physical part of it – the small portion that’s here on Earth. Possibly what we have called the Overmind is still training them, molding them into one unit before it can wholly absorb them into its being.”
Pg 221-222: “The little figures, so helpless and pathetic if one did not know the truth, stood motionless in forest and glade and plain. The camera roamed restlessly from one to the other: already, thought Jan, their faces were merging into a common mold. He had once seen some photographs made by the superposition of dozens of prints, to give on “average” face. The result had been as empty, as void of character as this.
“They seemed to be sleeping or entranced. Their eyes were tightly closed, and they showed no more awareness of their surroundings than did the trees under which they stood. What thoughts, Jan wondered, were echoing through the intricate network in which their minds were now no more — and yet no less — than the separate threads of some great tapestry? And a tapestry, he now realized, that covered many worlds and many races – and was growing still.
“It happened with a swiftness that dazzled the eye and stunned the brain. At one moment Jan was looking down upon a beautiful, fertile country with nothing strange about it save the countless small statues scattered – yet not randomly – over its length and breadth. And then in an instant all the trees and grass, all the living creatures that had inhabited this land, flickered out of existence and were gone. There were left only the still lakes, the winding rivers, the rolling brown hills, now stripped of their green carpet -and the silent, indifferent figures who had wrought all this destruction.”
Pgs 223-224: “”And at the end of the other path? There lay the Overmind, whatever it might be, bearing the same relation to man as man bore to amoeba. Potentially infinite, beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race after race as it spread across the stars? Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet might never attain? Now it had drawn into its being all that the human race had ever achieved. This was not tragedy, but fulfillment. The billions of transient sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker no more like fireflies against the night. But they had not lived utterly in vain.”
Pg 224: “No,” said Rashaverak, “it has limits. In the past, we know, it has attempted to act directly upon the minds of other races, and to influence their cultural development. It’s always failed, perhaps because the gulf is too great. We are the interpreters – the guardians. Or to use one of our other metaphors, we till the field until the crop is ripe. The Overmind collects the harvest–and we move on to another task. This is the fifth race whose apotheosis we have watched. Each time we learn a little more.”
Pg 227: “There was everything here that he needed to maintain him for the rest of his life, but what he wanted most was an electronic piano and certain Bach transcriptions…Music had become his talisman against the loneliness which, one day, just surely overwhelm him.”
Pgs 229-230: “…The moon had begun to turn upon its axis.
“This could mean only one thing. On the other side of the Earth, in the land that they had stripped so suddenly of life, they were emerging from their long trance…
…”They are still playing,” said Rashaverak. “What logic is there in the actions of a child? And in many ways the entity that your race has become is still a child. It is not yet ready to unite with the Overmind. But very soon it will be, and then you will have the Earth to yourself.”
Pg 233-234: “Hello! They must have been waiting for you to leave. Something’s starting to happen. The stars are becoming dimmer. It’s as if a great cloud is coming up, very swiftly, over all the sky. But it isn’t really a cloud. It seems to have some sort of structure–I can glimpse a hazy network of lines and bands that keep changing their positions. It’s almost as if the stars are tangled in a ghostly spider’s web.
“The whole network is beginning to glow, to pulse with light, exactly as if it were alive….
“Yes – I might have guessed. There’s a great burning column, like a tree of fire, reaching above the western horizon. It’s a long way off, right around the world. I know where it springs from: they’re on their way at last, to become part of the Overmind. Their probation is ended: they’re leaving the last remnants of matter behind…”
…”The whole landscape is lit up–it’s brighter than day–reds and golds and greens are chasing each other across the sky – oh, it’s beyond words, it doesn’t seem fair that I’m the only one to see it – I never thought such colors..”
…”Of course – the atmosphere’s escaping…”
Pg. 235 – “That great burning column is still there, but it’s constricting, narrowing; it looks like the funnel of a tornado, about to retract into the clouds. And – oh, this is hard to describe, but just then I felt a great wave of emotion sweep over me. It wasn’t joy or sorrow; it was a sense of fulfillment, achievement. Did I imagine it? Or did it come from outside? I don’t know.
“And now – this can’t be all imagination – the world feels empty. Utterly empty. It’s like listening to a radio set that’s suddenly gone dead. …
…”The buildings round me, the ground, the mountains — everything’s like glass – I can see through it. Earth’s dissolving. My weight has almost gone. You were right – they’ve finished playing with their toys.
“It’s only a few seconds away. There go the mountains, like wisps of smoke. Good-by, Karellen, Rashaverak — I am sorry for you. Though I cannot understand it, I’ve seen what my race became. Everything we ever achieved has gone up there into the stars. Perhaps that’s what the old religions were trying to say. But they got it all wrong: they thought mankind was so important, yet we’re only one race in – do you know how many? Yet now we’ve become something that you could never be.
“There goes the river. No change in the sky, though. I can hardly breathe. Strange to see the moon still shining up there. I’m glad they left it, but it will be lonely now–
“The light! From beneath me-inside the Earth-shining upward, through the rocks, the ground, everything – growing brighter, brighter, blinding–“
“In a soundless concussion of light, Earth’s core gave up its hoarded energies…
…”Six thousand million kilometers beyond the orbit of Pluto, Karellen sat before a suddenly darkened screen. The record was complete, the mission ended; he was homeward bound for the world he had left so long ago. The weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel. He did not mourn for man: his sorrow was for his own race, forever barred from greatness by forces it could not overcome.”
Pg 237. …”For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that has passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt, where the thunder sported above the glaciers and the air was clear and keen. There the sun still walked, transfiguring the peaks with glory, when all the land below was wrapped in darkness. And they could only watch and wonder; they could never scale those heights.
“Yet, Karellen knew, they would hold fast until the end: they would await without despair whatever destiny was theirs. They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service they would not lose their souls.”
Wayne replaced the words “not lose” with the word “gain” in this sentence: “They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service they would not lose their souls.” to “They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service they would gain their souls.”
Wayne explains: “Their service was compulsory but they were still gaining by it in an important way, and that is the nature of service, sometimes it may feel compulsory but we gain from it. Jesus gained from His service: Because He died on the cross, God raised Him and gave Him the name above every name.” He saw the Overlords “in an entirely positive light. This is a race in an evolutionary cul-de-sac, they can never achieve what humanity can – they can never be united to the Overmind, but they serve both the Overmind and the species that they are shepherding through the change and that is a noble thing.”