Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End is one of the classics of modern SF, and perhaps justifiably so. It incorporates into some 75,000 words a large measure of the virtues and vices distinctive to SF as a literary art form…. Unfortunately, and this is symptomatic of Clarke's work and of much SF, its vision is far from perfectly realized. The literate reader, especially, may be put off by an imbalance between abstract theme and concrete illustration, by a persistent banality of style, in short, by what may seem a curious inattention to the means by which the author communicates his vision. The experience of the whole may be saved by its general unity of tone, of imagery, and of theme, but not without some strain being put on the contract implicit between author and reader to collaborate in the "willing suspension of disbelief." (p. 196)

From the moon-bound rockets of the "Prologue" to the last stage of the racial metamorphosis of mankind, familiar science fictions guide us gradually if jerkily through Childhood's End. Besides futuristic technological hardware, we are shown three rational utopian societies and mysterious glimpses of extrasensory powers. Reducing all of these, however, practically to the status of leitmotifs, the theme of alien contact is expanded to include something close enough to the infinite, eternal, and unknowable that it could be called God; yet even this being, called the Overmind, is rationalized, and assumed to be subject to natural laws.

Two stages of advanced technology are shown us, one human, one alien [that of the Overlords]. (p. 197)

Technology accounts in part for the utopian social organizations projected in this book, and also for their failings. Technologically enforced law and order, technology-conferred freedom of movement and sexuality, help to establish a worldwide "Golden Age," but the elimination of real suffering and anguish, combined with the humans' sense of inferiority, results in mild anxiety, resentment, and lethargy. To make utopia really utopian, an artists' colony is established, on the traditionally utopian locale of an island…. Besides being unimportant, however, utopia is unreachable; just as technology can not make everyone happy on Earth, so is it insufficient for the supremely rational and scientific Overlords. Their placid orderliness, their long lives, may excite our envy, but they in turn envy those species which can become part of the Overmind.

Thus Childhood's End is not really utopian … so much as it is a critique of utopian goals. Whatever the social machinery, and Clarke is extremely sketchy about how this society is run, peace and prosperity are inadequate; the people of New Athens need something more to strive for. This particular "utopia" is only a temporary stage in man's development. Theoretically, he could go in the direction of enlarging his storehouse of empirical knowledge; this is the way of the Overlords, without whom man could not have defused his own self-destructive tendencies. Yet, paradoxically, the Overlords are present in order to cut man off from entering their "evolutionary cul de sac," to insure that he takes the other road, paralleling the mystical return of the soul to God [what Clarke calls, the Overmind]. (pp. 197-98)

On the surface, [the] inability to understand the Overmind is merely a sign of its strangeness and vastness, which may some day become comprehensible to reason and science—after all, how would a human writer describe something totally alien?—but underneath we feel the tug of the irrational, in familiar terms. The Overmind clearly parallels the Oversoul, the Great Spirit, and various formulations of God, while the children's metamorphosis neatly ties in with mystical beliefs in Nirvana, "cosmic consciousness," and "becoming as little children to enter the Kingdom of God."… [The] interplay between the Overlords and the Overmind may be seen as a reworking of the old morality-play situation of the Devil trying to steal away from God the souls of men. These Devils appear to be devoted servants carrying out God's orders, but the Overlords also never stop trying to bring Him down to their level…. (pp. 200-01)

Clarke seems quite aware of the affinity between alien beings in science fiction and the apocalyptic and demonic imagery of mythological fantasy. By deliberately choosing devil-figures as spokesmen for scientific, or scientistic, thought, he establishes a growing tension between conflicting emotions as the climax of the novel nears, and the reader is almost forced to make a choice between two extreme positions. (p. 202)

In dealing with any theme of larger scope than ironing out the bugs in advanced technological hardware, it may be difficult for an SF writer to avoid mythic structures…. But the critically sensitive reader does have the right to expect the writer of SF to use the myth, rather than be used by it, i.e., to make the whole book work on science-fictional terms. The Universe may or may not be comprehensible to reason, but the mythico-religious presentation of the Overmind and the children's metamorphosis does not seem to me consonant with serious exobiological speculation. It may be probable, as Clarke writes elsewhere, that alien beings superior to us exist, but it seems highly improbable that they are so analogous to the gods and devils of our imagination. (pp. 202-03)

Why does Clarke even attempt this explanation of mythology? Why, in an SF novel, does he fill several pages with a spiritualistic seance? Neither was necessary to the theme it would appear, or to the book as a whole. The Overlords' parallel with the Christian Devil could have been left unexplained, without impairing them as alien beings or as literary symbols: the explanation given is worse than none at all…. The problem which seems to exist on an SF level is essentially a literary one: not fully in control of his materials, Clarke has attempted more than he can fulfill. (pp. 204-05)

[Childhood's End also suffers from] a disproportionate emphasis on the large, "significant" effects, at the expense of the parts of which they are composed. (p. 205)

Either a unified plot or a more carefully developed poetic structure might have been preferable to the awkward misfit of this particular essay in counterpoint. But Clarke is apparently unable to imagine a plot adequate to the scope of his framework; his "predictive" novels are equally plotless and even his tale of the far future is made up of a series of accidental occurrences, set into motion almost haphazardly by the adolescent hero's desire for change and adventure. So the counterpoint structure was attempted for Childhood's End, and the result is a hodgepodge of pretentious chronicle, apologetic melodrama, and superficial sketches of static unrelated, individual scenes. Even if we regard the book as an elegy for mankind, for the end of personal and racial "childhood," the elegiac tone is inconsistent, and insufficient to maintain unity over 75,000 words without a more carefully wrought "poetic structure," and the lame, pedestrian style of the novel seems particularly incongruous for a poem.

As it is practically plotless, the novel is also almost characterless. Against the ambitious theme and tremendous scope, individuals and their merely personal problems are bound to look somewhat insignificant. (p. 206)

Stormgren, George, Jan, and Karellen are the only major characters; one of them is involved in every episode we are shown, not merely told about. All males, actively questing for knowledge, they all appear confident and rational, unless belief in rationality in the face of the incomprehensible is itself irrational. Even their mental processes are shown to us in formal, grammatical sentences, with no trace of irrational stream of consciousness. Given little to do, however, they seem no more than marionettes in this cosmic puppet show. (p. 207)

A resigned acceptance, common to all four characters, is largely responsible for the elegiac tone pervading the book. Stormgren knows he will never see the Overlords, George knows man has lost his future as man, Jan knows he can not survive cut off from human kind, and Karellen knows he will never find the kind of answers that he seeks. It is the reader's knowledge of impending doom that makes the characters' inconsequential behavior and sunny dispositions seem ironic; juxtaposition, a "cinematic" technique, accomplishes what style does not. Although Clarke sometimes stumbles over awkward circumlocutions, trite sententiae, pedantic speechmaking, and labored humor, the pedestrian lucidity and uncomplicated vocabulary of his style seldom draw the reader's attention away from the events being described. I feel the author's presence only toward the end, where his style does manage to impart a sense of melancholic majesty to the spectacle. His attempt at generating a "sense of wonder," which ranges from "gee-whiz" impressions of the Overlords to awed contemplation of man's fate, is most successful as the children grow more confident in the testing of their powers, and it culminates in the cataclysmic shock…. (pp. 207-08)

If Childhood's End is not a fully satisfying literary experience, it does illustrate certain characteristics of SF at its best, and it does exhibit literary virtues. Respect for rational thought, construction of a cosmic perspective, relentless pursuit of extrapolative hypotheses, and a genuine evocation of the sense of wonder are each positive achievements, on their own terms. (p. 209)

If Childhood's End is a classic, it is partly because it is a hybrid, a respectable representative of that period during which SF magazine writers were first trying to reach out to a literary audience, as well as to their more habitual readers. An ambitious effort, better than people outside the pulp field thought it capable of achieving, it is also an abortive effort, an impressive failure, the flaws of which are indicative of the problems frequently attendant upon the literary domestication of SF. It has a high seriousness that sets it apart from the ordinary pulp science fiction novel of any generation, but it barely lives up to its name. An attempt at maturity, Childhood's End is no more than a median stage of adolescence. (p. 210)