Evolution and Extinction

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953/This revised edition 1990): Arthur C. Clarke's most famous novel still seems impressive more than 60 years after its initial publication. It's a novel about guided evolution, and evolution as a 'progressive' system, that yields a conclusion that's simultaneously depressing as all Hell and lyrically triumphant.

It's an early image in the novel that stays with people, and has been intentionally or unintentionally copied in such TV and movie works as the original V miniseries, Independence Day, and Skyline. Absolutely enormous alien spacecraft show up one day over the major cities of the Earth. And then the aliens start to talk to us, though they refuse to show themselves to anyone.

The aliens are soon known as the Overlords. With their guidance and technological expertise, Earth soon enters a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, though there are a few growing pains. The first section of the book explores these early stages through the person of the United Nations President who becomes the only liaison with the Overlords allowed to enter their ships. But even he doesn't know what an Overlord looks like. When he finds out, he keeps the secret. But even that secret will turn out not to be what it seems.

Once the Overlords finally start mingling with humanity, 50 years after their arrival, they continue to help run the Earth. And while they're at it, they keep humanity from pursuing anything like a space program. Why? Are the stars really not meant for Man, as one character opines? And why are the Overlords so curious about tales of psychic phenomena?

Well, eventually we'll learn. Some very cold winds begin to blow as the novel approaches its end. One of the oddities of the original publication, Clarke notes in his afterword to this revised 1990 version, was that Clarke put a disclaimer at the front to note that he didn't agree with one of the book's central tenets (The stars are not meant for man). And he also notes that by 1990 he no longer really believed that evolution would feature some of the paranormal powers shown here. Clarke had been hoaxed by that great hoaxing spoon-bender Uri Geller in the interim, and subsequently learned how he had been hoaxed.

When people talk of cosmic science fiction, this novel would be one of those things they'd be talking about. It's a novel about the fate of humanity and the fate of the Earth. It's also a novel about evolution and extinction -- including the extinction of the individual consciousness. And watching over it all, those enigmatic Overlords, who have become by the end peculiarly sympathetic and perhaps even heroic in the face of their own insignificance. Highly recommended.

'V'

The original 'V' miniseries was an interesting but severely flawed bit of sci-fi paranoia that lifted its central, defining image (a massive flying saucer hovering over a city) from Arthur C. Clarke's chilly evolution-is-progressive classic novel Childhood's End. By the time the second miniseries came around, humans on horseback were outrunning spaceships, and the short-lived series just made things worse -- and diluted creator Ken Johnson's 'aliens as Nazis/Soviets' central metaphor.

The new 'V' gets one thing very right -- it's got a terrific cast, led by Elizabeth Mitchell as a Visitor-fighting FBI agent, Morris Chestnut as a good, rogue alien, Morena Baccharin as alien High Commander 'Anna' and Scott Wolf as a smarmy but smarter than he looks TV anchorman. The rest of it is compromised by a couple of dumb ideas that scientists in the universe of the show would have immediately jumped on, chief among them the ridiculous premise that aliens with gigantic interstellar spaceships would need to go to a planet to pick up water, a bit of idiocy that's also showed up on Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe and Star Trek: Voyager, to name just three. Obviously the aliens aren't really here to drink our water, but the show should at least address the fact that a billion scientists would call 'bullshit' on this pretext.

Other problems? Well, are we really going to believe that aliens, even aliens that look exactly like us, are going to have names like 'Anna' and 'Lisa'? Or that aliens going to break up a resistance cell are going to follow up their nifty little floating bomb with...crowbars and knives? Who are these guys, Vinnie and the Jets? The attack on the resistance cell is a good scene in the pilot, though I enjoyed it more when it was a scene in Stephen King's "The Ten O'Clock People."

A lot of the problems of the show can be ironed out. My overarching complaint is that the show revealed the perfidy of the aliens way, way, way too early -- about 35 minutes into the pilot. That pretty much eliminated any suspense attached to 'are they or aren't they?' and dumped it all on 'what are they up to and how do we stop it?' It's as if the X-Files series finale was its pilot.