The Sentinel (short story)

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For other works called The Sentinel, see Sentinel.

"The Sentinel" is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, famous for being expanded (and extensively modified) into the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke actually expressed impatience with the common description of it as "the story on which 2001 is based." He was quoted as saying, it is like comparing "an acorn to the resulting oak-tree". ^[1]

It was written in 1948 for a BBC competition (in which it failed to place) and was first published in the magazine 10 Story Fantasy in 1951, under the title "Sentinel of Eternity". It first appeared in the USA in The Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader published by Avon Periodicals, Inc. in 1951. Despite the failure of the story, it changed the course of Clarke's career.

[edit] Anthology

The Sentinel (published 1982) is also the title of a collection of Arthur C. Clarke short stories, including the eponymous The Sentinel, Guardian Angel (the inspiration for his Childhood's End), The Songs of Distant Earth, and Breaking Strain (the inspiration for Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime).

[edit] Story

The story deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth's Moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens. The object is made of a polished mineral and tetrahedral in shape, and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield. The first-person narrator speculates at one point that the mysterious aliens who left this structure on the Moon may have used mechanisms belonging "to a technology that lies beyond our horizons, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces."

For millennia (evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield) the artifact has transmitted signals into deep space, but it ceases to transmit when the astronauts who discover it breach the forcefield. The narrator hypothesises that this "sentinel" was left on the moon as a "warning beacon" for the possible intelligent and spacefaring life that might develop on Earth.

This quotation illustrates the idea, and its ramifications:

"It was only a matter of time before we found the pyramid and forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those whose duty it is will be turning their minds upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are often insanely jealous of the young."

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operation of the sentinel is reversed. It is the energy of the sun, falling for the first time on the uncovered artifact, that triggers the signal that creatures from the Earth had taken the first step into space.

[edit] References

1. ^ Arthur C. Clarke's quote was obtained from the compilation The Sentinel: Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Berkley Books, 1983