Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Arthur C. Clarke

Genre:   Fiction, Science Fiction

234 pages, published August 1953

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Written in 1952, Childhood’s End describes a world in which a group of beings from outer space appear in spaceships over every city on earth.  Called the Overlords, the extraterrestrial beings are intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind and exert their benevolent will to unify the planet, eliminate poverty, end war and improve life. With only a few pockets of resistance, humankind agreed and a golden age began.  However, it was not to last.

Quotes 

“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.”

 

“Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.”

 

“Science is the only religion of mankind.”

 

“Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom.”

 

“In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. […] 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.”

 

“man’s beliefs were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty of others.”

 

“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.”

 

“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!”

 

“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.”

My Take

Prior to Childhood’s End, I had never read anything by Arthur C. Clarke.  My favorite science fiction writer has always been Isaac Asimov.  It turned out to be a real treat to read this fascinating tale by one of the genre’s master storytellers.  Although written in 1952, Childhood’s End holds up well.  I had a hard time putting it down and recommend you check it out.