Childhood's End

That is our world, or becoming our world. We want comfort so much that we are willing to let our Overlords institute all kinds of clearly irrational policies, such as masking, shutting down mom-and-pop stores while letting Lowe's stay open, etc.

It is Clarke's mindset that has won. We conservatives are simply arguing over the crumbs...and libertarians are in a state of either delusion or denial – like RINOs, caving to the Leftist culture while pretending otherwise. The Clarke types are setting the agenda. The world-wide almost identical response to KFF exposed this quite clearly.

And given how amazingly brutal much of human history has been, a benevolent Overlord clearly has its appeal. The problem is, their adherence to a Leftist doctrine has almost completely removed any capacity for wisdom, thus they will ruin everything they touch. That they have not ruined our society yet is testament to the sheer force-multiplier of productive man-hours produced by computers and automation. When you can plant a thousand acres of wheat at the cost of what it took to do an acre a hundred years ago, you can set a hundred acres on fire and you'll still make a profit and feed the people. It is the only thing keeping us afloat. But even this factor has its limits. And the way we are spending, we will reach those limits soon.

As I said, I will live to see, from across the expanse of Puget Sound, smoke rising from Seattle for weeks, if not months, on end.

All true. But it is worth pointing out that in the 50's we were that much closer to the horrors of central-control authoritarian Communism (Mao, Stalin) and Socialism (Hitler). Particularly in regards to Communism, the idea of nice-sounding Utopian dreams should have roused due skepticism in anyone.

But it didn't. The cause just moved on, forwarded (at least in this book) by useful idiots such as Clarke.

There would be nary a quibble from Mr. Flu or myself if Clarke had written a book about a visiting Overlord who promised Utopia but was eventually uncovered to be from a species of aliens who had left a trail of colonial enslavement behind them.

Or maybe a visiting Overlord who meant well but in his machinations to bring "world peace" started a nuclear war as Russia hoped to knock out America, paranoid that the Overlord was yet another reactionary who would side with the evil capitalists.

Instead, we get these Leftist tropes that were so self-evidently stale and stupid, even back in the fifties – at least to those who had a sense of history and a sense of wisdom beyond that of a Kindergartner. And then he packages all this childish trope as "Childhood's End." Truly he was ideologically a blinkered loon.

But his normal hard sci-fi stuff was usually pretty good.

The problem with this argument is that, as I wrote in one of my earlier posts, the Utopian leftists have been pursuing this program since the French Revolution, at the very latest. They did their best to get rid of Christianity, they got rid of the Western calendar, they changed the number of days in the week, the number of hours in a day, the number of weeks in a month and more.  They also renamed days and months.  Everyone was "citizen" not Mr. or Mrs. or some other title. I could go on, but believe I have made my point. No, the urge by some to remake and control the many did not originate in the post-war world. 

What is depressing is that "Childhood's End" was written a few months before I was born, and it has taken only 70 years to reach much of what Clarke wished for. 

 

As you wrote this I was thinking, that the main problem I have with the type of science fiction on display in "Childhood's End" it that it is dishonest. It is like a coach encouraging a 5'5" high-school player to drop other things and focus on playing in the NBA. Like a science teacher encouraging a kid with an IQ of 90 to forsake all other ventures and focus on becoming an astrophysicist.  They raise false hopes and can discourage people from pursuing attainable goals, which could lead to a good, but not perfect, life.

This type of thing never happened in the past. It is now happening as you mention above.  We are living in a society which promotes not only lies, but also insanity and misery.

I think both of you are looking for answers that aren't there. Childhood's End reflects the liberal ideas of the the 40s, 50s and part of the 60s. That many of those have grown into our culture today is not Arthur C. Clarks fault. Just as other writers reflect their times. It is what good authors do, tell the story they know most about. For example, Kipling reflects the times and values of 19th century Victorian England. Melvill  reflects the times and values of 18th century New England. Even Shakespeare reflects the values of Elizabethan England. 

It is fair enough to simply say you did not like the story, or you don't like science fiction. Let the judgement rest on that. Don't look for motives that may, or may not exist. Accept that the the story is well written, that there are some inconsistencies and even some trend lines that point to the future we are experiencing today. Perhaps that is what Clark is trying to get readers to understand, that it is his prediction of our future and pretty accurate it is. 

Artler, your words of moderation do you credit. And at least your rationale is "They wrote about the times they lived in." I have no problem with that. But like I said, in Childhood's End, I thought he was writing more about his own political and social opinions than "values of the times." There were plenty of other values he could have written about.

An intelligent and honest treatment of "values of the times" can be surprisingly found in the 19th episode of season 2 of Star Trek, the original series: "A Private Little War". This was written by Gene Roddenberry and Don Ingalls.

This episode mirrors the West's resistance to Communism in the guise of the Federation aiding a tribe of people that Kirk had visited once before, including making friends with one of the leaders, Tyree. This tribe was a peaceful people. But the Klingons had armed another tribe with superior weapons and thus the peaceful tribe were sitting ducks.

Interestingly, Dr. McCoy plays the role of the libtard in this while Kirk has to explain the facts of life to this rube:



Nothing like this could have come from the mind of Clarke. Now, of course it is completely legitimate to disagree with what Kirk is saying. Or maybe someone like Biden is your leader fighting the good fight (against Russia) while leaving our back door open to invasion. But the recipe for gaining peace against aggressors has always been either resistance or surrender.

And in this episode, Roddenberry is having no part in advocating suicide as a means for peace. He thinks evil should be resisted, not apologized for. And I commend him for a difficult and riveting episode that deals with these hard realities. He was definitely not in his Jane Fonda mode, assuming he even had one. Unlike Fonda, Roddenberry seemingly truly did love his country.

So, yeah, the world is full of fools and libtard writers. I have a friend (I'm not sure he's still a friend) who was university-educated but generally not a useful idiot. But he was very sensitive to any criticism of literature, for in his mind it was what led to the burning of books. For him, it was like Frank Sinatra sang: All or Nothing at All. One led inexorably to the other.

His type of blind acceptance of any garbage – without discussion or criticism – is what has led to where we are now. His view of "free speech" (that is, freedom from criticism or restraint) was so absolutist that he even believed that pornography should not be banned from public schools, even elementary schools.

And I don't mention this in order to ridicule my old friend but to point out how powerful university programming can be. I wouldn't ban Childhood's End from the libraries. But I would, if I assigned it in my class as a reading assignment, have a thorough and frank discussion of these issues. And that is what is lacking in a university education and just about everywhere else now. But we do that here. Thorough and frank.

I think that's a good distinction. And writers often write things (especially these days) as a form of propaganda. The question I'm not 100% satisfied with is whether or not Clarke believed all the garbage he wrote in Childhood's End. I think he did.

Regarding Clarke's reported pedophilia, his subversive attitudes make sense in regards to the novel. Apparently the old sci-fi masters have taken some PR hits of late, including Asimov and Heinlein. One commenter writes:

I have no doubt that there is a positive correlation between artists and "scumbaggedness." I am likewise convinced that this correlation increases when dealing with writers who traffic in science fiction and other genres which take leave of reality.  Their writings can represent projections of their desires.

I cannot put a percentage on either. I believe it is simply higher than one would find in the general population. 

I rest part of the above belief on personal experience, part on gut-feeling about people and their motives, which has perhaps arisen from personal experience and the study of history. And part is the result of my gut-feeling compelling me to look into this or that artist or writer, trying to learn more about them, and whether my gut-feeling was right or wrong. Too often it is right. 

The reason the Overlords came to earth was to keep the human race from damaging the rest of the universe. Not through the use of nuclear weapons but through some psychic potential which lay in mankind. The Overlords had no such potential. This had to be controlled and then channeled in a way that allowed a big evolutionary step in mankind to come about.

The first step in this evolution was made by a child who had powers to see far into/across the universe, and it was followed by his baby sister who could manipulate matter around her. Baby rattles floating in the air etc. These two kids' powers grow and then other youngsters get "infected" so to speak. The change doesn't happen to adults. In the end the children become something other than human, they cannot relate to mankind. The rest of the human race dies off and the children (some 300 million humans 2.0) romp around the world in some cosmic dance seemingly oblivious to everything else. 

This is observed by the Overlords, who don't quite understand what is happening, although they have seen this type of thing before, and a human who stowed away on one of the Overlord supply ships and was returned to the earth some eighty years later after the change had started.

In the end, the whole earth, as matter, including the children, begins to break apart and zoom away. I had a very clear picture of what this looked like as I have seen computer graphics which show this type of disintegration/breaking/stretching apart. Somehow, the children become part of a greater entity, perhaps part of the Overmind. 

Maybe I should point out that this is a very Buddhist type of idea. Not surprising since Buddhism was the only religion that Clarke had a semi-good word for in the book.