I don't get it.

[rivka]

I decided - and we'll see how long this lasts - to read this year's Hugo and Retro-Hugo nominees for Best Novel. The Retro-Hugo, for those of you not following along at home, applies to novels first published in 1953. I've never had much interest in Golden Age SF - I bounced pretty hard off several books that are supposed to be classics, and eventually I gave up. But I'm eligible to vote for the Hugoes this year, and so I figured what the hell, I'll give the Golden Age another try.

So I read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, and I don't get it.

I mean, I followed the plot, and all, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Setting aside the woo-woo parapsychology stuff, about which I'm willing to suspend my disbelief:

Why the strange passivity of humanity, from the moment the ships appear? I get that creativity is supposed to cease because of the end of conflict, but I don't buy that human conflict and suffering have ended just because humanity no longer makes war or suffers material want. And why would all of humanity suddenly agree that efforts to make scientific progress are pointless, merely because of the arrival of a species that knows much more than we do and refuses to share their knowledge? Why would religious impulses vanish in an instant, simply because of an ability to see into the past - are all world religions (except for a stripped-down version of Buddhism, apparently) supposed to be based solely on an interpretation of historical fact? Why aren't the stars for man? Just because we can't comprehend all of them, all cultures and worlds, at once, why should that prevent us from slow exposure to nearby worlds?

I see with a Google Groups search that someone has provided a passable gloss of the novel as a Christian allegory, and although I'm pretty sure it doesn't meet the strict literary definition of "allegory," I can sort of see how the book works on that level. Okay, I guess, but still...

I know that there are people out there who love this book, who see it as a Great SF Classic Of The Ages. Explain it to me, please. Help me see what you see. Am I just too young for this book? Am I missing the point completely? Or what?

Comments

[popefelix.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I didn't get it either when I read it. Of course, that was ten years and more ago. I have little desire to re-read it, however - I'm not interested in a book where humanity just passively lays down and fades away.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

You just described my reaction to most science fiction, actually.

-J

[snippy]

I thought the implication was that our creativity is tied in some way to our violence. That they are both responses to challenges in the environment; take away the challenges and you take away the violence and creativity.

I'm not one of the people who loves the book, though.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I imagine Clarke, a Zen Buddhist, would be amused by the Christian interpretation.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

When I read it, I didn't care much for the deeper issues of humanity - I was utterly entranced with the aliens. For me, the story was about them more than us. :] So I enjoyed it very much on that level.

Looking back at it... I dunno; most Golden Age SF doesn't do much for me. I liked it, I'd re-read it, but it didn't change my worldview or anything.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I adored the book when I read it, but I think I was nine years old, so on the one hand, I'm afraid I can't remember enough to explain it, and on the other hand, I may not have had a ton of useful insight even at the time.

[ororo.livejournal.com]

I think I was twelve or thirteen when I read it and loved it. Reading your comment makes me want to read it again, but I didn't see it at the library today.

[dedoc.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that you're missing Clarke's talking points; it's that you've identified Clarke's abiding fault:

He sells his verbiage for a pot of message.

Clarke is so certain he's right that he simply heaves his favored ideas (the irrationality of Christians, the economic dogma... ahem, theory... of human history, etc, et tedious cetera) onto the page, secure in the belief that their mere exposition will convince the reader. Niceties like plot and characterization aren't of great import. That leaves you with agnostic/Buddhist/rationalist tracts, being sold as fiction.

No; I don't have much use for Clarke's fiction. Why do you ask? *wry grin*

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If you want to understand the things that puzzle you about Childhood's End, perhaps a few books about the reactions of Amerinds and other such peoples on their first encounters with more learned and technologically-advanced races might be enlightening. Just a suggestion. Clarke isn't making this up out of whole cloth.