Childhood's End and Remembering Arthur C. Clarke

Last night was the premiere of Childhood's End on SyFy. The reviewers haven't been kind  but I think it's been very faithful to the source novel. We'll be watching part two tonight.

December 16 would have been Arthur C. Clarke’s 98^th birthday. Arthur (who called me a colleague and friend, despite our only having corresponded by mail) passed on in 2008, after ninety years of a life that could only have happened in the century and civilization that he helped to shape.

Clarke has long and deservedly been called one of the finest “hard” science fiction authors, for good reason. From the beginning of his career as a writer, he explored frontiers of human knowledge, pondering the implications of everything from cetacean intelligence to planetology. From the logic of John Von Neumann’s universal self-replicator to the possible motives of beings far in advance of ourselves.

And yet, what most intrigues me about Arthur’s work is something else – his ongoing fascination with human destiny – a term seemingly at odds with the scientific worldview.

True, a great many of his stories have focused on problem-solving, in the face of some intractable riddle. His characters, confronted with something mysterious, aren’t daunted. They gather resources, pool knowledge, argue, experiment, and then – often – transform the enigmatic into something that’s wondrously known. This part of the human adventure has always shown us at our best. Peeling away layers. Penetrating darkness. Looking back at the wizard, standing behind the curtain.

But there is another Arthur C. Clarke. The one who sent David Bowman through the monolith in his great classic, 2001. The author who gave us Childhood’s End. One who frets that we may not be wise enough to survive the next few generations of tense immaturity, let alone become worthy of joining more advanced communities of mind.

And so, we have a recurring theme of intervention – quasi-divine -- receiving outside help to achieve our potential. It was Clarke’s Law that a sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. What few have pointed out is how often he brought in Supertech/magic to save humanity from itself.

In this mix of both fizzing optimism and dour worry, Arthur always struck me as similar to two other giants, both Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, who also surveyed very wide horizons, from alluring to disquieting. Indeed, Isaac spent a very long span exploring extensively a topic beloved to Arthur, the notion of humanity needing guidance from supertech outsiders -- in his case robots -- leading to a similar conclusion.  That fractious individualism must give way to a more-mature level of unitary uber-mind. A conclusion that Isaac started to back away-from, in the years before he died, leaving hints that I wove into Foundation's Triumph.

In contrast, the other "BACH" authors -- Bradbury and Heinlein -- always believed that human beings -- as individuals and then arguing among ourselves -- can and will figure things out. (Side note: in EARTH I explore a different possibility, that humanity might be able to participate in higher levels of mind without losing individuality.)

What none of them ever did – and especially not Arthur – was give in to despair. The notion of change never lost its fascination. Clarke's works appear always to say, “what was will not always be, so get ready.” Yes, the past deserves honor – it got us here – but the future is what draws us forward. As it has always drawn Arthur C. Clarke.

Here’s Arthur Clarke on the challenges of predicting the future: 

“The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I have failed completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable, have we any chance of visualizing the future as it will really happen.”

Indeed, Clarke’s Three Laws of prediction summarize his views on the future and our ability to look forward to tomorrow:

1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Today, Clarke's work is honored and remembered with the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, founded by professor Sheldon Brown at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) -- where researchers investigate the underpinnings of creativity and imagination, key elements in how we will shape and create a bold future .... 

...one that would have made Arthur proud.