| "The Sentinel" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Arthur C. Clarke | |
 First appearance, in 10 Story Fantasy | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | 10 Story Fantasy |
| Publisher | Avon Periodicals |
| Publication date | Spring 1951 |
"The Sentinel" is a science fiction short story by British author Arthur C. Clarke, written in 1948 and first published in 1951. Its plot and ideas influenced the development of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and its corresponding novel.
"The Sentinel" was written in 1948 for a BBC competition in which it failed to place. It was first published in the magazine 10 Story Fantasy , in the Spring 1951 issue, under the title "Sentinel of Eternity". Despite the story's initial failure, it ultimately changed the course of Clarke's career. It appears in the short story collections Expedition to Earth (1953), The Nine Billion Names of God (1967), and The Sentinel (1982), as well as in The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972).
The story is set in 1996 (at the time of writing, several decades in the future). The narrator, Wilson, is a veteran selenologist on an expedition to explore the lunar surface. He comes across a mysterious pyramidal structure, surrounded by an "invisible shield" which blocks all attempts to approach. The structure is found to have been placed on the Moon several billion years earlier, and it is not the product of any terrestrial or lunar civilization.
Twenty years pass before the invisible shield is successfully breached, using atomic energy. The structure is destroyed in the process, and its fragments are found to be incomprehensible, being far more advanced than any human technology. Wilson realizes that the structure was created and placed on the Moon by technologically advanced aliens from outside the solar system.
Wilson presents his guess as to the structure's purpose: it was a "sentinel" which for billions of years had been transmitting signals into space. The sentinel's destruction—which humans could only accomplish by mastering space travel and atomic energy—will have caused its signals to cease, thereby alerting its creators to intelligent life having discovered it. Wilson expresses his belief that the aliens will soon be "turning their gaze upon the Earth".
Algis Budrys found "The Sentinel" to be infuriating, saying that "one can raise a formidable reputation for profundity by repeating, over and over again, that the universe is wide and man is very small... while our instruments show that the universe is wide, they are our instruments and we managed somehow to build them. There is no evidence whatsoever that Man is that goddamned small." [1]
Singer-songwriter Roger McGuinn wrote and performed the song "Space Odyssey", whose subject is “The Sentinel”. It is the closing track on the 1968 album by the Byrds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers , and consists mostly of a Moog synthesizer and minimal instrumental accompaniment. The vocals are delivered in a "sea shanty" cadence.
The story's plot and ideas were a significant influence on the development of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick and on the novel. Clarke and Kubrick adapted the short story and fused it with many other concepts. Clarke later expressed impatience with "The Sentinel" being described as the basis for the film:
I am continually annoyed by careless references to "The Sentinel" as "the story on which 2001 is based"; it bears about as much relation to the movie as an acorn to the resultant full-grown oak. (Considerably less, in fact, because ideas from several other stories were also incorporated.) Even the elements that Stanley Kubrick and I did actually use were considerably modified. Thus the 'glittering, roughly pyramidal structure... set in the rock like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel' became—after several modifications—the famous black monolith. And the locale was moved from the Mare Crisium to the most spectacular of all lunar craters, Tycho—easily visible to the naked eye from Earth at Full Moon. [2]
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel illustrates and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the Moon.
Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier. In 1960, he authored Rogue Moon, a novel.
The Space Odyssey series is a series of science fiction novels by the writer Arthur C. Clarke. The first novel was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. The second was made into a feature film, released in 1984, respectively. Two of Clarke's early short stories have ties to the series.
The concept of self-replicating spacecraft, as envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann, has been described by futurists and has been discussed across a wide breadth of hard science fiction novels and stories. Self-replicating probes are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes. Self-replicating spacecraft would in some ways either mimic or echo the features of living organisms or viruses.
The Past Through Tomorrow is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1967, all part of his Future History.
In Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, Monoliths are machines in black cuboids whose sides extend in the precise ratio of 1 : 4 : 9 (12 : 22 : 32) built by an unseen extraterrestrial species whom Clarke dubbed the Firstborn and who he suggests are the earliest highly intelligent species to evolve in the Milky Way. In the series of novels (and the films based on these), three Monoliths are discovered in the Solar System by australopithecines and their human descendants. The characters' responses to their discoveries drives the plot of the series and influences its fictional history, particularly by encouraging humanity to progress with technological development.
The Big Time is a short science fiction novel by American writer Fritz Leiber. Awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel or Novelette in 1958, The Big Time was published originally in two parts in Galaxy Magazine's March and April 1958 issues, illustrated by Virgil Finlay. It was subsequently reprinted in book form several times. The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.
Time and Stars is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Poul Anderson, published in 1964.
The Sands of Mars is a science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground. The Sands of Mars was Clarke's first published novel.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel". By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide. An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in the 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001.
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the December, 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine with illustration by Lutjens.
"The Gentle Vultures" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the December 1957 issue of Super-Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows.
"Sunjammer" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, originally published in the March 1964 issue of Boys' Life. The story has also been published under the title "The Wind from the Sun" in Clarke's 1972 collection of short stories with this title. It depicts a yacht race between solar sail spacecraft.
"Jupiter Five" is a science fiction short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in the magazine If in 1953. It appeared again in Clarke's collection of short stories Reach for Tomorrow, in 1956, and deals with the detection and exploration of an old spaceship from outside the Solar System.
Since its premiere in 1968, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey has been analysed and interpreted by numerous people, ranging from professional movie critics to amateur writers and science fiction fans. The director of the film, Stanley Kubrick, and the writer, Arthur C. Clarke, wanted to leave the film open to philosophical and allegorical interpretation, purposely presenting the final sequences of the film without the underlying thread being apparent; a concept illustrated by the final shot of the film, which contains the image of the embryonic "Starchild". Nonetheless, in July 2018, Kubrick's interpretation of the ending scene was presented after being newly found in an early interview.
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was a British science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" and other of his short stories. Clarke also published a novelisation of the film, in part written concurrently with the screenplay, after the film's release. The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists, and the sentient supercomputer HAL to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) wrote a considerable number of short stories in the science fiction genre.
