Hours have passed. I still haven’t reached the ground. The creaking of these ancient, rusted scaffolds echoes in the endless expanse, pressing in on me as I climb ever downward. The haunted light beneath me grows ever brighter, and in my fear I wish for darkness to save me from whatever horrors I may soon see. Legend says that when the world fell, the people’s spirits were trapped beneath its surface, and their walking skeletons now stand as sentinels, guarding the world below.

THE SENTINEL Arthur C. Clarke 1951 Avon Periodicals Inc. The next time you see the full moon high in the south, look carefully at its right-hand edge and let your eye. The Sentinel a short story original story Sentinel from Eternity short story The Sentinel' (short story) 'The Sentinel' is a science fiction short.

My heart pounds. What ghastly horrors await me? My arms shake as I climb down, down, down...I sweat, and my fingers fail to grip the next hold—I slip, I scream, I fall—
“Oof!” I groan. I lay in a bruised heap on the cold floor, the sound of my impact still echoing throughout the chamber. I peer about in the dim light, watching the dust plume and settle with each puff of shaking breath that escapes my mouth. Suddenly, I hear a loud “click” followed by a low whirring sound. I am blinded as bright white beams ignite in sections, illuminating the vast space around me.
And is that... music?
I stand up. Strange writing and symbols glow on the walls. Empty chairs and tables surround me. The music grows louder, and I hear voices, singing in a foreign tongue.
A bead of sweat falls from my face. “The Sentinels,” I whisper.
And there, from a dark corner, emerges a bony, armored figure. It glides toward me, cool light glinting off its chromatic frame. My heart races, but I ball my fists and stand my ground.
The figure stops three feet in front of me. With its steel, motionless mouth, it speaks in an inhuman tone, “Welcome to HappyDale Mall, the place to suit all your wildest consumer fantasies!' It pauses, staring at me with glowing red eyes. 'How may I direct your purchases today, miss?”

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

'The Sentinel'
Author	Arthur C. Clarke
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Published in	Ten Story Fantasy
Publisher	Avon Periodicals
Publication date	Spring 1951

'The Sentinel' is a science fictionshort story by British author Arthur C. Clarke, written in 1948 and first published in 1951 as 'Sentinel of Eternity', which was used as a starting point for the 1968 novel and film2001: A Space Odyssey.

Publication history[edit]

'The Sentinel' 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 its Spring 1951 issue, under the title 'Sentinel of Eternity'. It was subsequently published as part of the short story collections Expedition to Earth (1953), The Nine Billion Names of God (1967), and The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972). Despite the story's initial failure, it changed the course of Clarke's career.

Anthology[edit]

The Sentinel (published 1982) is also the title of a collection of Arthur C. Clarke short stories, which includes the eponymous 'The Sentinel', 'Guardian Angel' (the inspiration for his 1953 novel Childhood's End), 'The Songs of Distant Earth', and 'Breaking Strain'.

Story[edit]

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, is tetrahedral in shape, and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield. The 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.'

The narrator speculates that for millions of years (evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield) the artifact has been transmitting signals into deep space, but it ceases to transmit when, sometime later, it is destroyed 'with the savage might of atomic power'. The narrator hypothesizes that this 'sentinel' was left on the Moon as a 'warning beacon' for possible intelligent and spacefaring species that might develop on Earth.

Reception[edit]

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]

Film[edit]

The story was adapted and expanded upon in the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, made by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick and Clarke modified and fused the story with other ideas. Clarke expressed impatience with its common description as the story on which the novel and movie are based. He explained

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 film was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars in 1969.

References[edit]

^Budrys, Algis (October 1967). 'Galaxy Bookshelf'. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 188–194.
^Clarke, Arthur C. (10 January 1984). 'The Sentinel'. Heavy Metal. Vol. 7 no. 10. p. 57. Retrieved 26 February 2018.

External links[edit]

'The Sentinel' title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
'Sentinel of Eternity' at the Internet Archive

The Sentinel Short Story Characters

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