Beyond the Future

In a previous post, I mentioned working on a science fiction novel. To prepare for that project, I compiled a reading list culled from the great works in the genre, particularly ones that related to the theme of my story. One that I didn’t mention was Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, originally published in 1953. This novel, a lot like Rendezvous with Rama, is ostensibly about humanity’s first contact with an impossibly advanced alien species. And since that’s not directly related to my work, I saved this book for later. But like with Rama, I found it to be one of the most important novels I’ve read thus far. 

Unfortunately, with this particular review, I cannot go into detail about my thoughts without first running through the entire plot of Childhood’s End. Total spoilers ahead.

In that distant future of the late 20th century, humanity discovers that they are not alone in the universe. Massive spaceships--described as “silver bubbles”--appear over several of Earth’s largest cities. They hover there, fifty kilometers straight up, for a week without a peep. And, inevitably, people panic. That’s certainly not a leap of science fiction.

But after that short interval, the aliens--Overlords as they’ll come to be known--announce they are taking over all human affairs to prevent humanity from destroying itself. And, again and inevitably, people panic. One nation goes as far as launching a nuclear missile at the ship. But it doesn’t explode. It doesn’t do anything. It simply vanishes; no explanation. No one dares send a second. 

On the street, people resist, people fight back. At one point, the Secretary General of the UN, also the primary liaison between earth and the Overlords, is kidnapped by anti-alien terrorists (or perhaps insightful rebels?). The Overlords, using their advanced technology, free the government official without bloodshed.

By all accounts, the Overlords are benign entities, almost inert in their reign. In fact, the Earth’s new rulers only directly intervene in human affairs twice. Once is to end Spain’s practice of bullfighting. The Overlords don’t necessarily mind if humans eat animals for food, but they abhor violence as spectacle. 

The second intervention is in South Africa. In the world of the novel, South Africa survived a civil war, one that elevated the majority Black population into power and left the white minority to suffer under a new version of apartheid. To send a message, the Overlords block out the sun for a few minutes, and the South African leadership agrees to grant civil rights to its white citizens.

Just as a brief aside, what in the honest fuck? On its face, this may sound progressive. Clarke certainly recognizes the seemingly inevitable outcome of South African apartheid. It’s a condemnation from outer space: “The supersmart aliens say that apartheid, segregation, and hate are bad.” 

But then to turn around and say that the Black leaders of South Africa will reinstate their own version of apartheid as a kind of cultural vengeance? Certainly, as a prediction, this is way off the mark. This smacks of racially-tinged pandering to a predominately white readership. 

This book was published in the early 50s. In the aftermath of WWII, colonialism was crumbling but it was hardly dead. I’d argue it’s still alive and kicking. But back then, there was a long list of nations suffering under the tyrannical rule of Western powers. Instead of discussing those, Clarke concocted a farfetched hypothetical where whites maybe/might/possibly be oppressed rather than comment on the behavior of heinous contemporary colonial powers or how the Cold War had already divided nations. It’s disappointing, but fiction is always a product of its era so this is no surprise. Still, I’m disinclined to read this charitably due to another passage involving race, but I’ve strayed too far off topic. 

Through the Overlords pronouncements and machinations, they never once reveal their physical appearance, not even to their human liaisons. Half a century rolls by without a single space selfie. The Overlords floating, faceless voices issue decrees and nothing more. We achieve peace in our time. Crimes of greed vanish as everyone’s physiological needs are met. Crimes of passion (passion itself?) plummets as humanity grows more rational under their unseen, paternalistic caretakers. 

But after those fifty years are up, the Overlords finally emerge from their ships and . . . Big reveal: they’re demons. There’s really no other way to describe it. They are your imagination’s version of the word “devil.” Seriously, Google image search “Childhood’s End” and “overlords” and you’ll likely find stills from the SyFy channels 2013 miniseries. Demons. Hellspawn. Fire and brimstone devils.

As I was reading this novel, I had Tim Curry’s exquisite Lord of Darkness from the 1985 film Legend in my mind. But I think, as written, they’re a little less swole. Clarke describes them as bipedal creatures with “leathery wings”, “little horns”, a “barbed tail”, awesome in their “ebon majesty”. 

And, surprisingly, at the sight of demons walking off a spaceship, most people don’t panic (though some do faint). The Overlords expected a strong response to their anatomy, which is why they waited decades for humanity to acclimate to them, to get used to peace, before revealing their shocking visages. But they weren’t just waiting for familiarity; they also expected religious superstition to whither. The Overlord’s leader, Supervisor Karellen, tells the UN Secretary General, “Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets”. This line was, in fact, underlined by the previous owner of my used copy of Childhood’s End. 

Despite the agitation from some religious zealots, everyone ignores the aliens’ demonic appearance and a happy world spins on. Peace reigns, and the Overlords continue their curiously benign watch over earth.

It’s here in the story that I started to think about a Twilight Episode called, “To Serve Man.” If you’re looking for it on Netflix, it’s season 3, episode 24. It initially aired in 1962, so Rod Serling may have read Childhood’s End. The episode starts with alien ships landing all over the planet, with one eventually touching down near the UN headquarters in New York City. The aliens are Kamamits, 9 foot, 350 pound, bulbous-headed telepaths. Their beefy ambassador is played by Richard Kiel, who famously portrayed the steel-toothed henchman Jaws in Moonraker. In one of his asides, Serling calls him a, “Christopher Columbus from another galaxy.” 

This is particularly accurate given a contemporary reading of Columbus’ genocidal behavior in the New World.

The Kamamit promise humanity all sorts of wonders: cheap power, forcefield technology, an end to world hunger. Everyone buys it. And it works. There’s peace and prosperity. Humans start traveling to the Kamamit home world in droves. It’s playing out to be a return to Eden until a team of decoders cracks one of the Kamamit’s books. It’s titled How to Serve Man, initially warmly received by earth’s warmongering generals. But at the end of the episode, we learn that it’s actually a human cookbook. The promise to end world hunger, to fatten us up, no longer appears so altruistic.

Back to Childhood’s End. Supervisor Karellen and his fellow Overlords are prepping humanity, just not quite for the slaughter like the Kamamit. All around the world, human children begin to develop “telepathy” and “precognition”. They move objects with their minds, astrally project themselves vast distances across the galaxy, all sorts of eerie things. The Overlords scoop them up--by the millions--into their silver clouds and deliver them to a quiet continent where they will be kept safe from the rest of humanity.

At last, the Overlords reveal that they are actually the galactic servants of something called the Overmind, an ancient, incomprehensible cosmic psychic force that has “left the tyranny of matter behind”. It scours the universe for species with whom to merge, and uses the Overlords, who exist at a genetic dead end, as a go-between to protect and prepare these species until they’re ripe for psychic harvest. 

We come to understand that the Overlords appear demonic not because they visited earth long ago, but because their arrival harkens the end of humanity. And this deep mental wound created a psychic ripple effect that traveled backward in time, infecting the minds of theologians throughout the ages and gave us images (warnings?) of the devils coming to end the world.

The final generation of humanity lives out its last days engulfed in an orgy of self-destruction. A commune of artists vaporizes itself with an atomic bomb. Others go to war with their neighbors in a frenzied rush toward suicide. Humanity’s children, now lost in a cosmic psychic malaise, eventually devour the planet, using its matter as a kind of mental rocket fuel. They abandon their bodies and a column of unified living energy blasts off toward their unfathomable destiny. Earth’s last human occupant watches them go, proud as humanity takes its place in the stars, just not in spaceships like we always dreamed.

Again, I picked up a book by Clarke, expecting it to be Team Human vs. Team Alien, pew pew pew, and I ended up with a novel that questions the very direction of humanity’s growth, offering a completely unique option that I had never considered. 

Clarke’s view of a future for humanity is clearly inspired by Christian ideology. Perhaps the demon-skinned aliens gave it away. The devils are angels, the Overmind is god, and it has called to humanity’s children, summoning them in a psychic rapture.

I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t see that turn coming. In a follow-up post, I’d like to discuss my feelings on this particular version of humanity’s future, but more narrowly, I think it’s worth considering how starkly insignificant my own consideration of humanity’s future feels in comparison to our destiny in Childhood’s End.

My own approach might be better understood as an exploration of posthumanism or transhumanism. When I consider evolution, I think about that chart showing a fish with legs crawling out of a puddle, then turning into a little furry creature slowly losing hair and eventually walking upright until it reaches our species, homo sapiens. Evolution, in my mind, is a question mark to the right of that last bearded guy holding the spear.

This is a visceral, corporeal approach to the evolution of humanity: what shape will our bodies take in the future? It is an important question that takes a lot of forms in our modern world. Is a human with a pacemaker a cyborg? Are smartphones or the internet extensions of our brains? Now that we can, should we use gene editing techniques to create a “perfect” human? What are the parameters of perfection? 

These are all important questions, issues that we’re grappling with in our present, so I have no qualms working through them in my novel, but Clarke’s book showed me that science fiction isn’t just thinking about the next blank in the progression. For starters, Clarke attacks humanity’s [read: my] hubris. In Childhood’s End, the universe decided what direction our future would take, just like nature pushes evolution here on earth. For all of our lauded intellect and technology, it is important to remember that we may not have the final say in what we become.

But whether humans are in the driver’s seat or not, science fiction has the ability to jump several blanks ahead. It challenges the inevitability or the necessity of this corporeal evolutionary progression. It can throw any sense of progress right out the window. Science fiction gives us the opportunity to truly expand our perspective and wonder what lies ahead of us, just beyond the curvature of the horizon. Science fiction has the awesome and terrible responsibility of guessing at the future of the future. It’s a dare, both daunting and exhilarating, to expand beyond the superficial trappings of sci-fi imagery and really examine what might happen to us, to our world, given near infinite possibilities. It’s a big ask, but sci-fi is, at its core, about making the impossible possible.