Home · Book Reports · 2018 · Childhood's End

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Thoughts

Technical

Spoilers ahead.

There seemed to be only 2 or 3 chapters, but that might have been my digital copy. Either way, it felt like it jumped around quite a bit. The story covers something like 100 years or so, spanning several generations, but that isn’t what I mean when I say it jumped around.

There will be a scene and when it is over, the jump to the next scene is abrupt and doesn’t flow gently. I have been noticing this the more carefully I look at how (fiction) books are written instead of focusing only on the story.

This is no criticism, and it might be obvious, but I am only now really noticing.

There was not a lot of lengthy dialog, with a few long monologues here and there. There was tension throughout the whole book; the tension shifted focus several times. At first there is a somewhat disjointed introduction of the USA/USSR space race interrupted by the arrival of the Overlords that is never looked at again. All the characters that were introduced are discarded after only a few pages for a whole new cast. This happens several times throughout.

What I thought was the main plot, the revelation of the Overlords, was actually sorted out about halfway through and a whole new plot came about.

There are many sub plots, including a kidnapping, the attempt to look behind the one-way glass, the Freedom League versus the Overlords, the stowaway, New Athens, and the change in the children. Maybe even more.

It felt a little too busy sometimes, but it was engaging none-the-less. I didn’t ever feel bored nor did I want to put it down. I was compelled to read on, to find out what was going to happen next, though I can’t say I identified with any of the characters.

Theme

One theme I couldn’t help but notice was how, and I don’t think I simply projecting here, the Overlords and/or Overmind is synonymous with the oligarchy. Clarke had a military background and was no fool. He mentions the use of social engineering and what we would today call soft power on several occasions.

He specifically mentions Norbert Weiner and how mathematics was used to determine how New Athens was set up and run, from production to population, was determined by ‘mathematical sociologists’. It was interesting that, for no apparent reason, Clarke mentions that the founder of New Athens, with all of its central planning was a Jew.

“We’re ruled by a Council of eight directors, representing Production, Power, Social Engineering, Art, Economics, Science, Sport, and Philosophy. There’s no permanent chairman or president. The chair’s held by each of the directors in rotation for a year at a time.

In the end, the children are taken away from their parents when the children evolve.

I see the similarities between this story and the indoctrination of children through compulsory education and removing them from their parents, something I written about for a while now.

I would not be surprised to find out Clarke was carrying water for the oligarchy when he wrote this (and other) books. The same way movies are used today to predictively program us for the future (see: LBGT and artificial intelligence) these golden age science fiction authors, like Heinlein, Asimov, Dick, etc, were used to sow the seeds we see blossoming today.

Exceptional Excepts

• Pages numbers from the pdf.

page 7:

• “To the Overlords,” replied Stormgren sarcastically, “the Earth is probably a great deal smaller than Europe seemed to our fathers-and their outlook, I submit, is more mature than ours.”

page 9:

• Within those silent, unmoving ships, master psychologists were studying humanity’s reactions.

page 42:

• “In fifty years,” he said bitterly, “the damage will be done. Those who remembered our independence will be dead: humanity will have forgotten its heritage.”

page 44:

• “There is no need for you or your successor to worry unduly about the Freedom League, even when it has recovered from its present despondency. It has been very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again it will not be a danger for some years. Indeed, since it is always valuable to know what your opponents are doing, the League is a very useful institution. Should it ever get into financial difficulties I might even have to subsidize it."

page 45:

• the change will be so imperceptible that few will notice it when it comes. After that there will be a period of slow consolidation while your race becomes prepared for us.

• “On that day,” continued Karellen, “the human race will experience what can only be called a psychological discontinuity. But no permanent harm will be done: the men of that age will be more stable than their grandfathers. We will always have been part of their lives,

page 50:

• Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal-and power.

page 54:

• Of the faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overlords, only a form of purified Buddhism- perhaps the most austere of all religions-still survived.

page 108:

• “But back to Athens. The idea of the Colony, as you’ve gathered, is to build up an independent, stable cultural group with its own artistic traditions. I should point out that a vast amount of research took place before we started this enterprise. It’s really a piece of applied social engineering, based on some exceedingly complex mathematics which I wouldn’t pretend to understand. All I know is that the mathematical sociologists have computed how large the Colony should be, how many types of people it should contain- and, above all, what constitution it should have for long-term stability.

• “We’re ruled by a Council of eight directors, representing Production, Power, Social Engineering, Art, Economics, Science, Sport, and Philosophy. There’s no permanent chairman or president. The chair’s held by each of the directors in rotation for a year at a time.

page 109:

• 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!

page 112:

• New Athens was not a natural and spontaneous growth like the city whose name it bore. Everything about the Colony was deliberately planned, as the result of many years of study by a group of very remarkable men. It had begun as an open conspiracy against the Overlords, an implicit challenge to their policy if not to their power.

• The man who had been the driving force behind New Athens was a Jew.

page 113:

• Salomon’s task would have been impossible had he not been able to convince a handful of the world’s most famous artists that his plan was sound. They had sympathized because it appealed to their egos, not because it was important for the race. But, once convinced, the world had listened to them and given both moral and material support. Behind this spectacular façade of temperamental talent the real architects of the Colony had laid their plans.

• There are other, subtler laws, first glimpsed in the early twentieth century by mathematicians such as Weiner and Rashavesky. They had argued that such events as economic depressions, the results of armament races, the stability of social groups, political elections, and so on could be analysed by the correct mathematical techniques.