The Sentinel (short story)

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The Sentinel ( English for The Guardian or The Guard Post ) is a short story by the British science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke from 1948. Although The Sentinel initially received no attention, the story marked Clarke's literary breakthrough a few years later. It was groundbreaking and style-forming for the literary genre of science fiction . Again, a few years later served The Sentinel the US filmmaker Stanley Kubrick as a template for its 1968 appeared also pioneering and style- science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001: A Space Odyssey) , together for Clarke and Kubrick wrote the script .

History of origin

Clarke had written The Sentinel over Christmas 1948 for a writing competition for the British broadcaster BBC and submitted it, but without success. The story was first published in 1951 under the title Sentinel of Eternity ( Guardian of Forever or eternity sentinels ) in the science fiction magazine 10 Story Fantasy and the same year in the US magazine Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader . Then the story was published under its original title in the anthologies Banished to the future ( Expedition to Earth , 1953), the nine billion names of God ( The Nine trillion Names of God , 1967) and The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972).

content

Mare Crisium , place of discovery

Wilson, the first-person narrator , former senior selenologist and astronaut, tells of a discovery he made decades earlier, in the late summer of 1996, on the moon . 1996 (Clarke's story was written in 1948) space travel (to the moon) and working on the moon were almost routine. Wilson describes how he was on a large expedition with other astronauts to explore the unexplored Mare Crisium , which means sea ​​of ​​crises or sea ​​of ​​dangers . The story begins with a working day when he is on kitchen duty and when he looks out of the window he notices a strange twinkle about 50 km away. It is immediately clear to him that this sparkle cannot have a natural cause. The other crew members make fun of him and his "discovery" because they all know that there was never life on the moon. Wilson sets out in a vehicle with a colleague to investigate the phenomenon.

When he arrives at the foot of a mountain, he is the first to climb the summit and, to his great surprise, finds a level platform so flat that it cannot possibly be of natural origin. At its center is a pyramid that sparkles like a jewel , about twice as high as a person.

He suddenly realizes that this object cannot be made by human hands. He speculates that mankind's dream of a civilization on the moon must have come true after all. However, this lunar civilization had already perished several 100 million years ago, he suspects. He also wonders what it could be: a shrine , a temple or something for which mankind has not yet had a name. Who had the technology and the skills to create something so flawless? In order to investigate the object further, Wilson unconsciously approaches him cautiously, only to finally discover something that sends cold showers down his spine: Although the dust and meteorite impacts of millions of years can be seen on the platform , these traces can be heard from some distance away around the pyramid. There is no dust or impact crater within this circle . Wilson takes a stone and tosses it gently towards the pyramid to see what happens: The stone hits an invisible hemisphere and slowly slides to the ground. Obviously the object is surrounded by a protective force field. The narrator realizes that it is not a matter of a building, but of a machine that was created by beings whose intellect and technology were far more developed than humans, and that this must have happened an extremely long time ago.

20 years later, people finally manage to overcome the force field, but all attempts to open the pyramid fail because people do not understand them. Finally, they use the brute force of a nuclear explosion ("the savage might of atomic power"), which does not open the pyramid, but destroys it without understanding the technology or the purpose of the pyramid.

It becomes clear that - after humanity had reached all other planets and realized that intelligent life had only originated on earth - the pyramid could not have been built by any earthly civilization, because research had shown that the meteorite dust around the Force field was so old that the object was erected before life even evolved on earth .

Wilson ponders: Beings with unimaginable intelligence and technology must have roamed the universe millions of years ago in search of life. Wherever they assumed that intelligent life could develop, they left a guard “nearby” in the form of a beacon that would report when it was “ready”. The beacon in the story was placed on the moon because the beings only wanted to be informed about life on earth when it was able to build spaceships .

After the beacon was destroyed, Wilson ended his report with the resigned and laconic words:

“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. I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so common place a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long. "

“Now their signals have stopped and those whose duty it is will now turn to earth. Maybe they want to help our young civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are often insanely jealous of the young. Every time I look at the Milky Way now, I wonder which cluster of stars the ambassadors will come from. If you will allow me to make this banal comparison, we have triggered the fire alarm and now only need to wait. I don't think we'll have to wait long. "

reception

Although The Sentinel received no attention when it was first written in 1948, the short story was, within a few years, essential to Clarke's breakthrough as a serious science fiction writer. Not least because between 1964 and 1968 in collaboration with the then already through films such as Paths to Fame (1957) or Dr. Strange or: How I learned to love the bomb (1964) famous US director Stanley Kubrick made the epoch-making film 2001: A Space Odyssey , for which Clarke developed his short story into a novel and then worked with Kubrick on the script for 2001 to write.

expenditure

English original editions (selection)

  • 1951: Sentinel of Eternity in 10 Story Fantasy
  • 1951: Sentinel of Eternity in Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader
  • 1953: The Sentinel in Exiled to the Future (Expedition to Earth)
  • 1970: The Sentinel in Jerome Agel (Ed.): The Making of Kubrick's 2001
  • 1972: The Sentinel in Arthur C. Clarke: The Lost Worlds of 2001.

German translations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arthur C. Clarke: The Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke. New York 2000, ISBN 978-0795329-04-3 .
  2. ↑ The Sentinel (short story) on central.gutenberg.org (English)
  3. ↑ John Clute: Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Science-fiction writer best known for '2001: A Space Odyssey' In: The Independent of March 20, 2008.
  4. ↑ Gerald Jonas: Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 In: The New York Times, March 18, 2008.
  5. ↑ The Sentry In: Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  6. ↑ The Cosmic Guardian In: Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  7. ↑ The Guardian In: Internet Speculative Fiction Database