By skyforbes 
“Ben Salomon was no fanatic, but the memories of his childhood must have determined, to no small extent, the philosophy he was to put into practice. He could just remember what the world had been before the advent of the Overlords, and had no wish to return to it. Like not a few other intelligent and well-meaning men, he could appreciate all that Karellen had done for the human race, while still being unhappy about the Supervisor’s ultimate plans. Was it possible, he sometimes said to himself, that despite all their enormous intelligence the Overlords did not really understand mankind, and were making a terrible mistake from the best of motives? Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?” –Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Childhood’s End, published in 1953 continues to be in a class all its own. Similarly for the works of other “science fiction” authors publishing only a decade later (e.g. Le Guin and Delany), for Childhood’s End, the “science fiction” label feels insufficient and imprisoning. It has some hard science sprinkled through it without going into the depths of scientific minutiae like The Three-Body Problem. Clarke writes a novel that spans 150 years but forgoes the sweeping epic of Herbert’s Dune or Corey’s Expanse series. Mysticism, clairvoyance, and telekinesis are all fundamental parts of the narrative, yet they’re nowhere near as obtusely or arcanely symbolic as other mystic sci-fi novels, such as A Voyage to Arcturus. There are scenes with surreal (almost comic) imagery and others fueled by genuine tension — but unlike the bizarre worlds of Jack Vance or the violence-heavy Warhammer stories of Dan Abnett, Clarke is subtle and grounded. Even compared to other stories in the first-contact subgenre, such as Lang’s The Wanderer or Ito’s Remina, the overlap is the bare bones premise. No, Childhood’s End was and is an only child.
Distant cousins may be Blood Music by Greg Bear and Altered States by Paddy Chayefsky, related most directly through their themes:
the complex mixture of terror and hope that comes with large evolutionary steps forward, leading too an elevated relationship with the natural forces that govern us.
The method, however, in which these themes are executed and expressed in these three works, shows far more overlap between Bear’s work and Chayefsky’s (plots mostly pulled by intense and distant scientist characters), with Clarke’s thin novel holding its own, separate and self-sustaining.
The only story that could be considered, at the most, a step-brother with Childhood’s End is Clarke’s other (far more famous) novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Thematically, they’re both very similar, and even structurally, Clarke, in 2001, is using many of the same tricks he pioneered in Childhood’s End. And still there’s a key difference that carves out Childhood’s End unique and unmatched quality: this is the mixture of hard science with the arcane and ethereal, such as fortune-telling, telekinesis, and gnosticism. (These elements aren’t as symbolic as they are in David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, but they are just as important to the book’s overall theme, that religion was our childlike understanding of forces and feelings far greater than ourselves, which, because of their vastness, spell out our infinitesimal smallness and inevitable Death.)
While Childhood’s End is unique, terse masterpiece, all its own, I would highly recommend it to those who have either no or only a passing familiarity with the sci-fi genre.
In spite of its singularity, it perfectly exemplifies what science fiction can accomplish, providing the reader with a meta-perspective of humanity as a species, as a whole, as one integrated group as we, with all our foibles, face the terrifying majesty of the universe/Nature.
It’s quick and entertaining ( — rather than bogged by the references, theorems, and formulae of other hard science science fiction, the story isn’t slowed by long-winded or, sometimes worse, shallow explanations that disrupt the pace of the overall narrative — ) and its entertainment value comes from the structure of the story, which is itself indicative of the power of science fiction. More on that in a bit.
If I had to list a downside, at the risk of sounding like an interviewee asked to list their greatest weaknesses, the value of Childhood’s End, unrivaled that it is, may lead one to believe that there are many other books in the science fiction genre that meet its caliber. This is, unfortunately, what happened to me. And it took awhile before I stumbled onto some science fiction that I was as equally impressed and entertained by. So I will include a list of follow-up sci-fi reads at the end.
I’m aware that to this point, this “review” has discussed little of what the book is actually about has instead been a gush-fest over the novel’s exemplar status and masterfully developed structure. However, that element, its structure, is also unfortunately the very thing swaying me from revealing too much about plot specifics beyond “first contact”. Clarke is constantly keeping you guessing throughout, so knowing next to nothing prior to reading allows Clarke’s ultimate thesis to dawn on you at the same pace as the main character in the book (that main character being the rest of humanity).
Just when you think you’ve got a grip on the direction Clarke’s taking you, he yanks the carpet from under your feet; and this juggling of your expectations continues all the way until the last quarter of the novel when the end becomes clear, by which point you’ve become as resigned and confused as the characters.
To give a brief example, I’d like to point to the quote I included above. The quote doesn’t really spoil anything about the story, but you get a glimpse of the questions that crop up throughout the narrative (if reform, in its restructuring, fundamentally changes its object, can it truly be for the better?). Clarke’s style is showcased as well: its simple, to the point, yet still has a very American poetic quality to it. But what I specifically want to direct your attention to is “Ben Salomon,” the subject of this paragraph: though the questions he’s asking are central to the novel, he himself, as an individual person/character, is nowhere close to being central; in fact, very few characters are central to the narrative (which, when you finish the book, you discover is a thematically conducive stylistic choice). Clarke, even in this paragraph, and in the couple pages in which this character is mentioned, manipulates the reader into thinking a center has been found, only for this character, that plot line to slip away and develop into something entirely different, into something actually grander than what the reader initially thought.
In her essay, “Calvino engagé: Reading as Resistance in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” Linda C. Badley describes the transcending effect on the reader of Italo Calvino’s use of never-ending/-resolved beginnings throughout his novel, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler:
“Through his unfolding series of incipits, Calvino draws the reader into the text only to erase it, making it in effect ‘yours,’ and so propelling ‘you’ beyond it, into a world ‘somewhere beyond the book, beyond the author, beyond the conventions of writing’ toward a voice ‘from the unsaid, from what the world has not yet said of itself and does not yet have the words to say.’”
Though Childhood’s End isn’t quite made up of storylines that begin with no object (most of the vignetted plots have the vague shapes of hazy silhouettes), the point made by Clarke is that ends come unexpectedly and in unfamiliar forms, that ends are actually only perceived and are really the disguise of beginnings masking eternal continuance. Childhood’s End, by its structure and themes, depicts a future that “the world has not yet said of itself and does not yet have the words to say.”
This is why the book feels at once close — as if it were yours — and distant as if it were a cool reading of an emotionless future, outside of reason.
Very few books in the sci-fi genre are capable of achieving this balance, and yet it’s a balance that is ripe for the genre to harvest.
Suggested Follow-Up Reads to Childhood’s End
– A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
– Queen of Angels by Greg Bear
– Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer