Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

When this book was written in the early 1950s, I was still quite impressed by the evidence for what is generally called the paranormal and used it as a main theme of the story. Four decades later, after spending some millions of dollars of Yorkshire Television’s money researching my Mysterious World and Strange Powers programs, I became an almost total skeptic. I had seen far too many claims dissolve into thin air, far too many demonstrations exposed as fakes. It had been a long, and sometimes embarrassing, learning process.

Childhood’s End first appeared, many readers were baffled by the opening disclaimer: “The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author.” This was not entirely facetious; a year earlier, I had published The Exploration of Space and painted an optimistic picture of our future expansion into the universe. Now, I had written a book that said, “The stars are not for Man” and did not want anyone to think I had suddenly recanted.

100 percent of UFO “encounters.” I would be greatly distressed if this book contributed still further to the seduction of the gullible, now cynically exploited by all the media.

Clarke’s pointing out that all current claims are bullshit.

“The Russians are nearly level with us. They’ve got some kind of atomic drive—it may even be more efficient than ours, and they’re building a ship on the shores of Lake Baikal. We don’t know how far they’ve got, but Intelligence believes it may be launched this year. You know what that means.” Yes, thought Reinhold, I know. The race is on—and we may not win it. “Do you know who’s running their team?” he had asked, not really expecting an answer. To his surprise, Colonel Sandmeyer had pushed across a typewritten sheet and there at its head was the name: Konrad Schneider.

After 1975, thirty years since Reinhold had parted ways with Konrad Schneider when the West and East split after WWII.

We’ll show them that Democracy can get to the moon first.”

The huge and silent shadows driving across the stars, more miles above his head than he dared to guess, were as far beyond his little “Columbus” as it surpassed the log canoes of paleolithic man.

This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride.

only one thought echoed and re-echoed through Reinhold’s brain: The human race was no longer alone.

“Can you deny that the Overlords have brought security, peace, and prosperity to the world?” “That is true. But they have taken our liberty. Man does not live—” “—by bread alone. Yes, I know—but this is the first age in which every man was sure of getting even that. In any case, what freedom have we lost compared with that which the Overlords have given us for the first time in human history?” “Freedom to control our own lives, under God’s guidance.” At last, thought Stormgren, we’ve got to the point. Basically, the conflict is a religious one, however much it may be disguised.

“We have many objections to the Overlords—but above all we detest their secretiveness. You are the only human being who has ever spoken with Karellen, and even you have never seen him! Is it surprising that we doubt his motives?” “Despite all that he has done for humanity?” “Yes—despite that. I do not know which we resent more—Karellen’s omnipotence, or his secrecy. If he has nothing to hide, why will he never reveal himself? Next time you speak with the Supervisor, Mr. Stormgren, ask him that!”

the context of the speech was more staggering even than its delivery. By any standards, it was a work of superlative genius, showing a complete and absolute mastery of human affairs. There could be no doubt that its scholarship and virtuosity, its tantalizing glimpses of knowledge still untapped, were deliberately designed to convince mankind that it was in the presence of overwhelming intellectual power. When Karellen had finished, the nations of Earth knew that their days of precarious sovereignty had ended.

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.

“He’s immortal, isn’t he?” “Yes, by our standards, though there’s something in the future he seems to fear. I can’t imagine what it is. And that’s really all I know about him.” “It isn’t very conclusive. 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, and there’s no one in any of them. They’re just an imposing façade.” “You,” said Stormgren, “have been reading too much science-fiction.”

The alien supervisor, “Karellen”.

The invaders had brought peace and prosperity to Earth—but who knew what the cost might 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.

I’m sure the Overlords’ own apparatus won’t use anything as crude as an actual physical screen—they’ll probably materialize images directly in space.

Display screen, Clarke already presumes ours are primitive and predicts holographic images from future technology.

Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

There was no mistake. The leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail—all were there. The most terrible of all legends had come to life, out of the unknown past. Yet now it stood smiling, in ebon majesty, with the sunlight gleaming upon its tremendous body, and with a human child resting trustfully on either arm.

Satan per the statue Baphomet: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/satanic-temples-nativity-display-new-hampshire-destroyed-dem-rep-calls-new-display

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. Few people left college before twenty—and that was merely the first stage, since they normally returned again at twenty-five for at least three more years, after travel and experience had broadened their minds. Even then, they would probably take refresher courses at intervals for the remainder of their lives in the subjects that particularly interested them.

No Utopia can ever 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.

At twenty-seven, Jan still had several years of college life ahead of him before he needed to think seriously about his career.

The average working week was now twenty hours—but those twenty hours were no sinecure.

The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world’s effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest.

“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. “Now you have a world at peace, and a united race. Soon you will be sufficiently civilized to run your planet without our assistance. Perhaps you could eventually handle the problems of an entire solar system—say fifty moons and planets. But do you really imagine that you could ever cope with this?”

“It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”

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!

Clarke wrote this book in 1952, years prior to TV watching becoming a predominant component of people’s lives. It’s pretty prescient of him to imagine this could happen in the future.

once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization….

“Everybody on this island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”

he filled to perfection the classic recipe for a small boy: “a noise surrounded by dirt.”

You called us the Overlords, not knowing the irony of that title. Let us say that above us is the Overmind, using us as the potter uses his wheel. “And your race is the clay that is being shaped on that wheel. “We believe—it is only a theory—that the Overmind is trying to grow, to extend its powers and its awareness of the universe. By now it must be the sum of many races, and long ago it left the tyranny of matter behind.

He understood, now, why the Overlords had sealed Earth from the stars. Humanity still had very far to go before it could play any part in the civilization he had glimpsed. It might be—though this he refused to accept—that mankind could never be more than an inferior species, preserved in an out-of-the-way zoo with the Overlords as keepers.