Book Name : Childhoods
End
Author
: Clarke, Arthur
No. of Pages
: 260
Summary :
(Taken from Wikipedia)
The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character.
Earth and the Overlords
In the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union are competing to launch the first spaceship into orbit, to military ends. However, when vast alien spaceships suddenly position themselves above Earth's principal cities, the space race is halted, forever. After one week, the aliens announce they are assuming supervision of international affairs to prevent humanity's extinction. As the Overlords, they bring peace, and they claim that interference will be limited.
Some humans are suspicious of the Overlords' benign intent, as they never appear in physical form. Overlord Karellen, the "Supervisor for Earth," speaks directly only to Rikki Stormgren, the Finnish UN Secretary-General. Karellen tells Stormgren that the Overlords will reveal themselves in person in 50 years, when humanity will have become used to their presence. Stormgren smuggles a device onto Karellen's ship in an attempt to see Karellen's true form.
The Golden Age
Humankind enters a golden age of prosperity, but at the expense of creativity. As promised, five decades later, the Overlords appear for the first time; they resemble the traditional human folk image of demons — large bipeds with leathery wings, horns and tails.
The Overlords are interested in psychic research; humans suppose this is part of their anthropological study. Rupert Boyce, a prolific book collector on the subject, allows one Overlord, Rashaverak, to study these books at his home. To impress his friends with Rashaverak's presence, Boyce holds a party, during which he makes use of a Ouija board. An astrophysicist, Jan Rodricks, asks the identity of the Overlords' home star. George Greggson's wife, Jean, faints as the Ouija board reveals a star-catalog number confirming the direction in which Overlord supply ships appear and disappear. Jan Rodricks stows away on an Overlord supply ship and travels 40 light-years to their home planet. Due to the time dilation of special relativity at near-light speeds, the elapsed time on the ship is only a few weeks, and he arranges to endure it in drug-induced suspended animation.
The Last Generation
Although humanity and the Overlords have peaceful relations, some believe human innovation is being suppressed and that culture is becoming stagnant. These groups establish "New Athens," an island colony devoted to creative arts. George Greggson and Jean join the colony. The Overlords conceal a special interest in the Greggson children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Anne, even intervening to save Jeffrey's life when a tsunami strikes the island. They have in fact been watching them since the incident with the Ouija board revealed the seed of the coming transformation hidden within Jean.
Sixty years after the Overlords' arrival, human children, including the Greggsons, begin to display telekinetic powers. Karellen finally reveals the Overlords' purpose: They serve the Overmind, a vast cosmic intelligence, born of amalgamated ancient civilizations, and freed from matter's limits. Yet the Overlords themselves are strangely unable to join the Overmind, but serve it as a kind of bridge species, charged with fostering other races' eventual merger with it. Because of this, Karellen expresses envy of humanity. For the transformed children's safety, they are segregated on a continent of their own. As no more human children are born, many parents find their lives stripped of meaning, and die or commit suicide. New Athens is destroyed with a nuclear bomb by its members.
Jan emerges from hibernation on the Overlord supply ship and arrives on their planet. The Overlords permit him a glimpse of how the Overmind communicates with them. When Jan returns to Earth, approximately 80 years later by Earth time, he finds an unexpectedly altered planet. Humanity as he had known it has become extinct, and he is now the last man alive. Hundreds of millions of children – no longer fitting with what Jan defines as "human" – remain on the quarantined continent. Barely moving, with eyes closed and communicating by telepathy, they are the penultimate form of human evolution, having become a single group mind readying themselves to join the Overmind.
Some Overlords remain on Earth to study the children from a safe distance. When the evolved children mentally alter the Moon's rotation and make other planetary manipulations, it becomes too dangerous to remain. The departing Overlords offer Jan the option of leaving with them, but he chooses to stay, witness Earth's end, and transmit a report of what he sees. The Overlords are eager to somehow escape from their own evolutionary dead-end by studying the Overmind, so Rodricks' information is potentially of great value to them.
By radio Rodricks describes a vast burning column ascending from the planet. As the column disappears, Rodricks experiences a sense of profound emptiness: they have gone. Then material objects and the Earth itself begin to dissolve into transparency. Jan reports no fear, but a powerful sense of fulfillment. In a flash of light the Earth evaporates. Karellen looks back at the recedingSolar System and gives a final salute to the human species.
