Book Thoughts - Childhood's End
A Question of Legacy
Book Thoughts is me rambling and reviewing about a book a read recently. This week’s book:
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clark
A Question of Legacy
Published: 1953
Read: March 9 2024 - April 2 2024
What does one do when they know that their purpose is gone?
What is a being's purpose?
If it is procreation, legacy, something beyond self and beyond time, then what do you do when time is taken away?
This is the question I took from Childhood's End. The final part of the book, specifically. Spoilers about to be abound. If you do not wish to be spoiled, read the book. Its short. It’s not quite sweet. It is seminal and beyond its time. This is my first Clark, but it shall not be my last.
Spoiler warning over, let's dive into it.
The Overlords, a species stuck in their lot in the universe. They will never evolve beyond their bodies, beyond the shackles of the Overmind, the psychic being which humanity is working towards as we speak, in a short future from now, guided by the visitors from space, we will evolve beyond our physical shackles into the spiritual and psychic world of what is next.
We won't though.
Our children will.
Our children will leave us behind.
What does humanity do then? Those already born, those unevolved, the parents of the next species of earth. In Clark's interpretation, we die in a fury and a whimper. Some die by self-immolation via nuclear means, and many die in silence without so much as a word from their author. We skip past their final moments, their lives lived in the knowledge of their termination. Clark moves us onwards, past them and to the last remaining man, who, along with the overlords (who we will get to) watches the next stage of humanity leave the earth, destroying it in the process and growing beyond the humanity that they left behind.
But what of those humans? And what of the overlords?
These aliens, who visit our planet as stewards for an unmet consciousness. I care not for that consciousness. I care for the Overlords.
They cannot evolve beyond their place in the world. They know this. They are but stewards, watching and caring for the species of the universe who are int hat tenuous adolescence between the physical life and the next.
They choose to be stewards, parents. Karellen, the overlord we are most familiar with, explains that his species has chosen this path. They are saddened by it, but it remains their choice. Relegated to service under the greater species.
What does one do without a legacy?
They choose to work. They choose to serve. But they do not take joy in this.
Humanity chose to die.
But what did humanity do in their last moments? What did they do in those decades that they lived. Were they really so different as those years before? Death was coming for us all no matter. It does not care what our legacy, it simply appears for us all. What then, does it change for these people to know that they do not have anything beyond their death?
What does this mean for those who choose not to have children? What is their legacy?
Is it nothing? I think it may be.
But life is not about legacy.
This is what the overlords do not see, or what they choose to ignore. They stay in there sadness, work without want, for the Overmind.
None of us have a legacy. We may procreate. We may create works that live beyond us. But what is the purpose therein? For a life after death that we do not get to enjoy? We do not see what comes after our expiration from this planet. What is the purpose of this legacy anyway?
The humans of Childhood’s End did not change. Their children were different than them, but they did not change. Their death was always there. Their time was always limited. Our time is always limited.
The life of our children does not supplant our own. There may be life to our works beyond our own, but there is no life for us after that terminal point of death. Enjoy the life you have. If those children or those works are fulfilling to you, follow them, live with them and work for them. But the Overlords resigned to work without life. That may be there path, but I do not wish it to be mine.
There is a gap in Childhood's End, brushed over, where humanity was resigned to the knowledge of its finality. What did people do with that time? Novels could be filled answering that question. I don't think this book is weaker for omitting that time, but it is what was on my mind during the third part of the novel.
A superb book. A great piece of science fiction. A book that answers some questions, but makes one think by asking questions still.
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Love ya!
Max