Transcendence And The Next Step In Humanity's Evolution

Mr. Chumly says: we may be the gods we seek.

Childhood's End:

Childhood's End deals with the transformation and integration of humanity into an interplanetary hive mind. The book also touches on the issues of the Occult, man's inablility to live in a utopian society, cruelty to animals, as well as the cliché of being the last man on Earth.

The book opens with enormous alien spaceships appearing one day over all of Earth's major cities. The aliens, who become known as the Overlords, quickly make radio contact and announce their benign intentions and desire to help mankind. The Overlords quickly end the arms race and colonialism. They also arrange person-to-person (though not face-to-face) meetings to be conducted between Secretary General of the United Nations Stormgren and the Overlord leader Karellen, albeit through a one-way mirror so that Stormgren cannot see Karellen. They promise to reveal themselves in fifty years, after which mankind will have lost its prejudice and become comfortable in their presence.

Mankind enters a golden age of the greatest peace and prosperity ever known, but at some expense of creativity and freedom, and not all people on Earth are content with the bargain, nor accept the longterm benign intentions of the Overlords. Although Stormgren survives a plot by some subversives suspicious of the Overlords, Stormgren secretly harbours lingering doubts about the real nature of the Overlords. So he smuggles a device onboard Karellen's vessel to glimpse behind the screen, but the device apparently fails to work, although there are indications that Stormgren merely agrees with the Overlords that mankind was not yet ready for what it revealed.

True to their word, fifty years after their arrival, they appear in person. They have all the classical appearance of devils - dark skin, leathery wings, pointed tails, horns, etc.

The Overlords, after a hundred years on Earth, reveal their true purpose. They are in service to a corporate being of pure energy known as the Overmind. It is their purpose to nursemaid humanity's emergence into a higher plane of existence that would become part of the Overmind. The fact that their appearance is associated with devils is explained by developing the concept of a racial memory that is not limited by humanity's concept of linear time, hence the apprehension to these creatures is based on a instinctive foreknowledge that their coming would herald the end of our species.

One day, Humanity's children start displaying telepathic and telekinetic abilities. These children soon become distant from their parents, and the Overlords quarantine all of them to the continent of Australia. Following the quarantine, no more normal children are born. Humanity ages and dies off; all the while their children change more and more in their evolution to become part of the Overmind.

Jan Rodricks is the last living human being, and he will witness the final transformation. He had stowed away on an Overlord supply ship in an attempt to travel to the Overworld home planet, which he has correctly guessed orbits a star located in the Carina constellation. Due to the relativistic nature of time, by the time has has completed the 40-lightyear round trip, he has lived longer than any other human. Upon his return to Earth from the Overlords' homeworld, Humanity has died out. He stays behind to witness the final transformation while the Overlords depart and Earth itself dissolves away. Humanity's offspring have evolved to a higher plane of existence, and the childhood of mankind has come to an end.