By Jim Downard
The SciFy Channel just concluded a moving and thoughtful three episode adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 novel “Childhood’s End,” about meddling aliens kidnapping or otherwise strong-arming the locals, all in service of a grand plan to midwife the next stage in human evolution. Such tropes will be familiar to viewers of later science fiction films, from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to Kubrick’s “2001” based on Clarke’s work directly.
In this case, the Overlord aliens (and am I the only one who chafes at any work of fiction that refers to their antagonists so generically?) literally resemble winged demons (knowledge of them and dread about them buried psychically in our collective memory in the story). The obvious biblical parallels are played on, including a not quite lapsing Christian who (not without justification) perceives the Overlords as demonic and takes a shot at one.
The atheist Clarke toyed with such themes on more than one occasion, including the poignant short story, “The Star,” about a priest serving on a deep space exploration mission that comes across the remains of a wonderful civilization, blasted by a nova that the priest realizes, to his horror, was seen on Earth as the star of Bethlehem, prompting his religious disillusionment.
In “Childhood’s End,” the aliens are not malevolent, but their disinterest with the accomplishments of us humans is as disconcerting as the idea of a God that might vaporize a whole civilization in order to put on a light show for some Judean shepherds and wise men. While the aliens help end poverty and injustice to herald a new Golden Age of humanity (which turns out to be stultifyingly boring, with art and science atrophying in this Lotus Land of abundance), they don’t spill the beans as to how short that Age will be: just long enough for the next generation of children to mutate into a collective mind, levitating away to be embodied in one girl, named Jennifer.
The new Star Child (to borrow the term used in “2001”) tears the Earth apart, the novel explaining that this was merely a childish act of amusing itself with a temporary toy. And so ends all the history of Earth, as Jennifer presumably flits off to psychically hobnob with the other Star Children generated on other planets. Whee.
Except as a secular humanist, I don’t like the Overlords or the Overmind they serve at all. Had this new stage of evolution tried to preserve the knowledge and creations of humanity, remembering all even as the physical side of it passes away, that would be one thing. But apparently the Overmind is disinterested in such fiddly bits—or in creating or doing much of anything new or interesting.
The Overlords are casually allowing the destruction of the creative accomplishments of sentient minds, to be replaced by nothing really. They are like a giant ISIS, destroying what they do not value and creating nothing of their own in return. But if we are not remembered, if nothing of Beethoven or Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe or Maya Angelou or “I Love Lucy” or “The Simpsons” is kept for remembrance, what good is that Overmind?
They may be able to do telekinetic things, and shared planets, but they are good for nothings, who fail to see the precious value of the very thing that made our evolution stand out: our creativity and imagination.
So what does an Overmind do for billions of years, if just destroying and never creating? And what do gods do, with similar time on their hands? Clarke didn’t dwell on that in the novel, nor did the television version. And, frankly, neither do all that many theologians.
An oddly appropriate tale for the Holiday Season, as it turned out. What does one do for all of eternity, if you’ve forgotten even the smell of a rose or the joy of Beethoven’s Ninth?
