August 27, 1953

Childhood's End

By WILLIAM DU BOIS

Books of the Times

ost pundits will agree that the noblest theme in all our literature is the destiny of man. Poets and philosophers (and even an occasional politician with an itch for empire building on the side) have wrestled with the riddle since the dawn of recorded history. Inasmuch as man is an ingenious creature, many solutions have been invented down the ages. The empire builders, from Caesar to Hitler, have foundered on the fallacy of the master race. The humanitarians from the ancient prophets to the one-worlders, have foundered just as fatally. Meanwhile, the destiny of man remains clouded by the towering indecisions of the twentieth century, when only the physicists and the Kremlin seem capable of writing tomorrow's headlines in advance. The average reader can hardly be blamed for wondering if man might not be happier if he were transformed into another species altogether—perhaps with a one-way ticket to a more hospitable cosmos. The question is faced squarely and answered with frightening candor in "Childhood's End." Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the twenty-first century—a first rate tour de force that is well worth the attention of every thoughtful citizen in this age of anxiety.

It must be said at the outset that Mr. Clarke's publishers have offered his novel as science-fiction, a label that too many readers still associate with Captain Video, rocket-ship sagas and invasions of super-gremlins from universes other than our own. It is quite true that "Childhood's End" contains some of these standard ingredients, but Mr. Clarke has mixed them with a master's hand.

Compassion for the Modern Man

A fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and chairman of the British Interplanetary Society since 1949, he is the author of "The Exploration of Space," a stimulating examination of the possibilities of space travel. He is equally at home in the outer galaxies and the troubled psyche of modern man. And, if he seems to agree with Norman Cousins that modern man is rather obsolete, his pity for that same homo sapiens never wavers. When he rings his curtain down, man as we know him today is as dead as all man's pathetic schemes for self-destruction. But no one can escape the conviction that the phoenix just risen from the ashes is destined for higher things.

Mr. Clarke's point of departure is a day late in the twentieth century when the United States and the Soviet Union, each racing feverishly against time, are preparing to launch rival rockets on the first voyage to the moon. Each great power, spying shamelessly on the other, is certain of success, since scientific efficiency has made war a meaningless waste of energy, the only possible triumphs now lie in the conquest of space. At this precise moment, the Overlords appear—mystic beings in gigantic space-ships, anchored fifty kilometers above each of the world's capitals, enforcing their will with devices that will never be revealed in this review.

Man is forbidden to explore the universe, and ordered to mend his ways on earth. National rivalries are abolished, trade barriers dissolved. One World is made a reality under the jurisdiction of a truly powerful United Nations. Racial discrimination is outlawed with the same patient efficiency—in South Africa, for example, the black majority on the point of exterminating the white minority in payment for past outrages, is stopped just in time. Even the ancient, all-too-human sport of cruelty to animals is universally outlawed. Utopia and the twenty-first century dawn together. Mankind, thanks to the constant, always-benign presence of the Overlords, has achieved perfection at last. Yet mankind, in its secret heart, is just as uneasy as before. What could be more unsettling than perfection in a world that can no longer be improved?

A Jonah and a Stuffed Whale

What happens thereafter is best left to Mr. Clarke and his readers. A century and a half elapse in all before the transformation is complete. Individuals revolt here and there. A Negro astrophysicist, emulating Jonah in reverse, stows away in a stuffed whale destined for a museum in the Overlords' cosmos, and lives to return to earth with a few of their less important secrets. A TV writer, bored with producing dramas without conflicts, takes his family to the South Seas, to one of several New- Athens communities that are springing up in out-of-the-way corners. These, of course, are evidence of man's protest against a world where production for use has made manual labor quite needless and ambition a word for the history books. It is here, at long last, that George Greggson, who serves as Mr. Clarke's raisonneur, glimpses the first, chilling intimations of the Overlords' larger purpose—and understands that the Overlords themselves are only minions of some distant, all-powerful master.

The astrophysicist, returning to earth when that awful purpose is a reality, is just in time to speak the sober epitaph for man, as well as a hope for man's future.

"In a soundless concussion of light, Earth's core gave up its hoarded energies. For a little while the gravitational waves crossed and recrossed the Solar System, disturbing ever so slightly the orbits of the planets. Then the Sun's remaining children pursued their ancient paths once more, as corks floating on a placid lake ride out the tiny ripples set in motion by a falling stone. There was nothing left of Earth. They had leached away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs toward the Sun."

This review can only hint at the stimulation Mr. Clark's novel offers. Above all, it must be emphasized that this is not a gloomy book, despite its holocausts. It is true that the invaders from outer space manage to steal the big scenes. But homo sapiens fights back to the end with resourcefulness and wit. What's more, he rarely allows himself to be upstaged, even when he is faced with his own extinction.

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