Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
 The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. 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. They interfere only twice with human affairs: in South Africa, where sometime before their arrival Apartheid had collapsed and was replaced with savage persecution of the white minority; and in Spain, where they put an end to bull fighting. 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 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. He succeeds, is shocked and chooses to keep silent. Humankind enters a golden age of prosperity at the expense of creativity. As promised, five decades after their arrival the Overlords appear for the first time; they resemble the traditional human folk images of demons—large bipeds with leathery wings, horns and tails. The Overlords are interested in psychic research, which humans suppose 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. 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 the creative arts, which George and Jean Greggson join. The Overlords conceal a special interest in the Greggsons' children, Jeffrey and Jennifer Anne, and intervene to save Jeffrey's life when a tsunami strikes the island. The Overlords have been watching them since the incident with the Ouija board, which 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 reveals the Overlords' purpose; they serve the Overmind, a vast cosmic intelligence, born of amalgamated ancient civilizations, and freed from the limitations of material existence. Yet the Overlords themselves are strangely unable to join the Overmind, but serve it as a bridge species, charged with fostering other races' eventual merger with it. Because of this, Karellen expresses his envy of humanity. For the transformed children's safety, they are segregated on a continent of their own. No more human children are born, and many parents find their lives stripped of meaning, and die or commit suicide. New Athens is destroyed by its members with a nuclear bomb. Jan Rodricks 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 has effectively become extinct, and he is now the last man alive. Hundreds of millions of children – no longer fitting with what Rodricks 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 to take Rodricks with them, but he chooses to stay to witness Earth's end, and transmits a report of what he sees. The Overlords are eager to 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 profound sense of emptiness when the Overlords have gone. Then material objects and the Earth itself begin to dissolve into transparency. Jan reports no fear, but a powerful sense of fulfillment. The Earth evaporates in a flash of light. Karellen looks back at the receding Solar System and gives a final salute to the human species.