[SFRA-L] SFRA-L Digest, Vol 13, Issue 24

[Gunn, James E]

The pedagogic value of the ending is its ambiguity.   It is easy to feel a swell of pride that humanity is among the Elect while at the same time despising the inhumanity of the children, who destroy the Earth and everyone on it to serve as fuel for their transition, all of it apparently compulsory and without (perhaps obviously) definition.   And to leave behind the Overlords, who display the best of humanity’s virtues (a scientific mind and the curiosity to go with it, as well as an indomitable will to pursue their own vision).   I think Arthur identified with the Overlords more than he did the Children, if the poetry of the last page (“And in that service they would not lose their souls,” or something much like that) is allowed to persuade us.   Jim

From: sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu [mailto:sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Rabkin, Eric
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 12:55 PM
To: sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] SFRA-L Digest, Vol 13, Issue 24

Dear Betty,

I agree completely that the ending of CE shows the sense of loss of not being part of a greater whole.  I think that ACC’s intention and his production are not identical.  Total Breakthrough is total loss of self; despite what ACC has written about his debt to Stapledon, there is no individuality in the community in CE, as opposed to Last and First Men or Star Maker, where the “symbiosis” of the arachnoids and ichthyoids is the moral exemplum for the universe.  The Overlords, who claim to worship the Overmind--but ancient Hawaiians also saw a god in a volcano; that doesn’t demonstrate that god’s existence--really are in this helping-humanity business for themselves.  In one sense they are the devil because they usher in the end of humanity.  Maybe humanity as we know it isn’t such a wonderful thing, maybe it is only the childhood of something else; however, deep down, I don’t believe that and I think ACC did only, if at all, desperately.  When children “mature” and become “mature” they enter the world of “adult content.”  In CE, puberty prevents Total Breakthrough.  Whatever H. sapiens becomes at the end of CE, it is not an adult form that engages in sexual—or any other kind of individual—intercourse.  When that pillar of fire withdraws (shrivels?) from the consumed Mother Earth, not only is childhood gone but human joy is over.  ACC may have intended this as wonderful, like a Tīrthaṅkara joining with the cosmic spirit, but in the context of the Christian West that CE presents, we are now consumed eternally in the fire.  And that, of course, is loss of a quite different kind.

Best to you as always,

Eric

-------------------------------------------------------
Eric S. Rabkin
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and
  Professor of English Language and Literature
Univ of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003
www.umich.edu/~esrabkin<http://www.umich.edu/~esrabkin>

From: Elizabeth Hull [mailto:ehull at harpercollege.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 12:06 PM
To: Rabkin, Eric; sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: RE: [SFRA-L] SFRA-L Digest, Vol 13, Issue 24

I have frequently used the question of whether the ending of CE is happy or not as a final exam question, stressing that there isn't a right or wrong answer, but that the student would be judged on his/her arguments and evidence in support of the chosen position.  I also warn students that don't allow for mugwumps!  I've gotten good answers defending both positions.

Myself, I think the reason Clarke focused at the end on the Overlords is that they are stuck evolution-wise with their own isolation, being able to see greater-ness, but not achieve it, which seems to be an essential part of the human condition.  For although we may yet evolve into something greater than ourselves and we may yet join in a union with others to form a greater being, in our very short lifetimes we are born alone and die alone and always yearn for union, like the corporate polyp in The City and the Stars and the aliens species of "Rescue Party,"  who figure out how to save the spaceship and its varied species crew.  It is a position very much opposed to American individuality, but it is in the traditions of American history which show that Bradford's colonists would not have survived without mutual support from each other and from the indigenous people.

Betty Hull

________________________________
From: sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu<mailto:sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu> on behalf of Rabkin, Eric
Sent: Sun 8/28/2011 5:22 PM
To: sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu<mailto:sfra-l at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] SFRA-L Digest, Vol 13, Issue 24
IMO most of Clarke's works indulge a magical homocentrism. Childhood's End--WE can wonderfully evolve but the Overlords just can't--exemplifies this.  This humanity-is-the-best-and-essential-no-matter-what attitude can be very appealing to readers, especially the young.   But it leads ACC, one of the "deans of hard SF" and a person well and truly educated in modern science, to scientifically preposterous positions, as exemplified by his know-nothing "Additional Note" to Imperial Earth in which he borrows what he calls the "Bradbury Defense" against someone who points out a basic scientific error (in IE, utterly ignoring modern genetics): "So I hit him."

To my mind, then, Rendezvours with Rama, with in its comparative omission of magical homocentricism, is the least typical of ACC, yet his best book.  The hard SF produces awe and the fact that the universe ignores homo sapiens is as sobering as the visit to 30,000,000 in The Time Machine.

Nonetheless, in my SF course, which takes an historical approach, I use CE because it is captivating, provocative, and typical of this crucial writer when he was making his mark on the field.  Also, it's always fun to wonder if ACC did or didn't intend the ending to be "happy," whether or not it is "happy," and what difference our sense of authorial intention makes in our reading.

In short, the book (even with the new opening) seems to work well for the course and for my students.

"'Enjoy them while you may….'"

Eric

-------------------------------------------------------
Eric S. Rabkin
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and
  Professor of English Language and Literature
Univ of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003
www.umich.edu/~esrabkin<http://www.umich.edu/~esrabkin>


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Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2011 12:00 PM
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Subject: SFRA-L Digest, Vol 13, Issue 24

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