Childhood’s End Themes

In Childhood’s End, a benevolent race of aliens comes to govern Earth. The Overlords, as humanity names them, initiate a century of utopia on Earth, which ends with all human children transcending into the Overmind, an immaterial, universal collective consciousness. In doing so, the children advance the human race into the next stage of their evolutionary development, though they destroy the Earth and the non-transcendent humans in the process. The Overlords want…

The leader of the Overlords states, “All political problems can be solved through the correct application of power […] for it’s the application of the power, not its amount, that matters.” Through the Overlords, Clarke envisions an ideal use of power to govern a stable, efficient society that provides for all of its people. Such a power is empathetic, non-invasive, and nurturing, becoming largely invisible in everyday life and maintaining order from a distance. However…

The utopian society that the Overlords have initiated has gone to great lengths to unify the masses of humanity. Every person on Earth has become proficient in English—since that is the language that the Overlords use to communicate with the humans—travelling the world has become a common pastime, and loosened sexual mores have eliminated many of the boundaries of the family unit. The world, in effect, is becoming more homogenous and interconnected, appearing more and…

In much of Clarke’s other writing, as well as the majority of science fiction written in his era, there is a humanistic optimism, a conviction that through science, technology, and determination, humanity can reach the stars. With the possibility of space travel approaching more rapidly than any dare dream (Clarke himself admitted to being blown away by how quickly the first humans landed on the moon) the possibilities seemed endless. Mankind would soon be pioneering…