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Obligations. The overlord was bound to protect his tenant, a valuable right for the latter in the days before the existence of police forces and universal access to royal justice, and when armed bands of robbers roamed the countryside.
Oct 11, 2016 · Feudalism represented a system in which the occupants and users of the land they lived and worked on were not the owners; they were “tenants” of the “sovereign” – the Lord of the Manor – who legitimized his authority by claiming to offer protection to the occupants in the form of military service.
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Life in the fifties
“We have arrived at the point … where there is just no real alternative to peace” (Constable, p. 25). With this one brief phrase, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower summarized the prevailing mood of the fifties. Despite an exterior of unprecedented material bliss, beneath the surface lay the fear of impending doom at the hands of the Soviet Union. In the closing days of World War II, many longed for a return to the peaceful stature of prewar society. But as early as the Yalta Confer...
The birth of the United Nations
One of the most intriguing characters in Clarke’s novel is Rikki Stormgren, the sixty-year-old Secretary General of the United Nationswho serves as the human mediator with the Overlords when they first arrive on Earth. It is primarily through Stor-mgren’s conversations with Karellen, an Overlord, that the reader gains several insights into the Overlords’ actions. At the writing of the novel, the United Nations was still a fledgling organization, less than a decade old. The world officially ga...
The space age
Historians hesitate to attach an exact date to the start of the space age. But its three founding fathers can be named with more certainty. From the first father of the space age, Robert Goddard (1882-1945) of the United States, came contributions to rocket theory that were rivaled only by his launching of the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. The second, Kon-stantin E. Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) of Russia, solved theoretically the problem of escaping the Earth’s atmosphere and introduced the...
The plot
Childhood’s End is a novel told in three separate parts: “Earth and the Overlords,” “The Golden Age,” and “The Last Generation.” Before these parts begin, a brief prologue introduces the reader to two ex-German rocket scientists, Kon-rad Schneider and Reinhold Hoffman. The year is 1975 and both men are vying for the opportunity to be the first to launch a rocket into space. As Clarke cuts from one man to the other, providing the reader with glimpses of how close each truly is to reaching his...
THE OVERLORDS AS DEVILS
Scholars tie the concept of the devil, or Satan, as the embodiment of pure evil almost entirely to the Hebrew and Christian faiths. In various other religions, good and evil have been regarded not as two contrary forces but rather as polar opposites of a larger divinity. This affects how one views the devilish-looking Overlords in the novel. By the time they show themselves in the story, all religions have disappeared, except for Buddhism, a faith that subscribes to the notion of a larger div...
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
Clarke’s father died prematurely when Clarke was only thirteen years old (of lung complications resulting from poison gas inhalation suffered in World War I). Some scholars believe that the impact the tragedy had on Clarke is evident in his writings, citing in particular the scene in Childhood’s Endin which George Greggson imparts a silent farewell to his son Jeff. Meanwhile, several light years from the earth, Jan Rodricks awakens from his self-induced slumber, his dream of making it aboard...
Clareson, Thomas D. Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction. Columbia: University of South CarolinaPress, 1990. Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End. New York: Ballantine, 1953. Constable, George, ed. This Fabulous Century: 1950- 1960.Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1970. Hollow, John. Against the Night, the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur...
vassal, in feudal society, one invested with a fief in return for services to an overlord. Some vassals did not have fiefs and lived at their lord’s court as his household knights. Certain vassals who held their fiefs directly from the crown were tenants in chief and formed the most important feudal group, the barons.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Essentially, the major orders came to resemble armed merchant houses as much as monasteries, and there is no question that many of their members did a very poor job of living up to their vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity.
The Overlords, as the proverbial devils, both protect humanity from self-destruction and offer it a utopian Earth to live on, and yet, by the stagnation that comes with utopia, rob humanity of its soul.
Barons and lords held authority over baronies or manorial estates. These estates were often self-sufficient, serving as economic units with peasants working the land and producing goods. The hierarchy of nobles in medieval times was a multi-tiered system that cemented the foundation of feudal society.
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