The Sentinel

by Arthur C. Clarke

Few masters of science fiction have brought us glimpses of the near future as vividly as Arthur C. Clarke. It is the startling realism of his vision that has made classics of his novels, such as CHILDHOOD'S END and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It has also made Clarke himself one of the genre's most successful writers. The trade paperback was published to commemorate the arrival of the year 2001, one of the most notable dates in science fiction history. THE SENTINEL is a brilliant collection of Clarke's highest calibre short fiction.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections, Speculative Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1983

About the author

Stories, works of noted British writer, scientist, and underwater explorer Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, include 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

This most important and influential figure in 20th century fiction spent the first half of his life in England and served in World War II as a radar operator before migrating to Ceylon in 1956. He co-created his best known novel and movie with the assistance of Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke, a graduate of King's College, London, obtained first class honours in physics and mathematics. He served as past chairman of the interplanetary society and as a member of the academy of astronautics, the royal astronomical society, and many other organizations.

He authored more than fifty books and won his numerous awards: the Kalinga prize of 1961, the American association for the advancement Westinghouse prize, the Bradford Washburn award, and the John W. Campbell award for his novel Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke also won the nebula award of the fiction of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979, the Hugo award of the world fiction convention in 1974 and 1980. In 1986, he stood as grand master of the fiction of America. The queen knighted him as the commander of the British Empire in 1989.

Reviews

[Eloy Cryptkeeper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sentinel/ El Centinela(relato)- 1948 4.5*

"Miré de nuevo la reluciente pirámide, y me pareció más remota que cualquier otra cosa que tuviera algo que ver con la Luna. De pronto, me estremecí con una loca e histérica risa, producto de la excitación y del esfuerzo. Me había imaginado que aquella pequeña pirámide me hablaba y me decía:- Lo siento, pero yo también soy un extraño aquí"

"Pensad en esas civilizaciones, muy alejadas en el tiempo, en el mortecino resplandor que siguió a la Creación, dueños de un Universo tan joven que la vida sólo había llegado a unos cuantos mundos. Debieron hallarse en una soledad que no podemos imaginar, la soledad de los dioses que miran a través del infinito y que no encuentran a nadie con quien compartir sus pensamientos"


Durante Una expedición en la Luna, Un geólogo/ selenólogo (el narrador ), se aparta de la expedición y encuentra un artefacto dejada hace eones por antiguos alienígenas(El Monolito).

Historia precursora a 2001, Que según el propio autor sentó la base de esa posterior historia , modificandola y ampliándola. El Centinela resulta una historia mucho menos ambigua, mas directa y especifica que su sucesora, aunque igual de existencialista y con una prosa exquisita.

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

As part of my Kubrick Oktoberfest, I read The Sentinel to compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey. And this is why short stories make the most satisfying movies; they give indelible frameworks from which the director/screenwriter/crew can embellish, provide a variation on a theme if you will. Clarke cowrote the screenplay with Kubrick. I prefer adaptations that are changelings and not mimics, and Kubrick did a brilliant montage from Clarke's inspiration.

The Sentinel is the discovery of an extraordinary object found on the lunar surface. It is the perfect opening for existential questions and Kubrick takes a fantastical tangent. I heartily agree with the most obvious difference, the change in the object's shape between the story and the movie, adroitly sidesteps hackneyed speculation and focuses the viewers' attention of where Kubrick wants you to look not irrelevancies.

Much shorter than I expected. I feel rating this might be unfair because I came to this after seeing the movie, which is a much more expansive narrative, but I admire the springboard that it provided.

[Daniela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magistral 🤩 Si tenía alguna duda por leer 2001 Odisea del espacio, este maravilloso cuento la ha eliminado. Me ha encantado. Qué bien escribe Arthur C. Clark ❤️

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

En el centinela podemos disfrutar de una serie de relatos de Arthur C. Clarke, uno de los autores de ciencia ficción más importantes del pasado siglo.

La obra más principal de este recopilatorio es la cual le da nombre e incluso se adaptó al cine adquiriendo el nombre de 2001: Odisea en el espacio, aunque también podemos disfrutar de otras que no se quedan atrás.

Ya sabeis que no me gusta spoilear y trato de hablar lo mínimo posible de los libros para que seais vosotros quienes disfruteis de primera mano de lo que tengan que ofrecer así que puedo decir, a grosso modo, que con El centinela viajaremos por varias partes del universo con distintos personajes y situaciones, que hará disfrutar a los mayores amantes de la ciencia ficción, enamorados del espacio esterior y las infinitas posibilidades que ofrece a la imaginación humana de una manera amena e interesante que en ningún momento se llega a hacer pesada.

[Patrick Sprunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arthur C. Clarke defines "science fiction" and "fantasy" in remarkably simple terms. "Fantasy" is any story that is physically impossible, as measured by our understanding of science. "Science fiction" is any story that is at least theoretically possible, given applicable technology.

Both genres are prolific and - I think it's fair to say - often silly. Arthur C. Clarke is sometimes as silly as it gets, but he has an uncanny knack for making the reader momentarily forget that humans have not yet achieved interplanetary, manned spaceflight; colonized the solar system; or discovered extraterrestrial life. I do not believe many people momentarily forget that Hogwarts's magic isn't real and assume they can walk out the door and turn the mailbox into a catfish. Yet it is oddly frequent to put down an Arthur C. Clark book and have to force the mind to accept that one cannot board a commercial flight to Mars.

This sensation is even more acute when Clarke's format is the short story. Keeping certain motifs in common throughout the anthology contributes to the pervasiveness of the effect. The short story - much more than the long-form novel - permits the author to merge his style with other familiar genres and show how far his influences go beyond science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke's mid-century short stories are as similar to Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Jack London, and Rudyard Kipling as they are to his own later epics (or the work of Asimov and Heinlein). There's a swashbuckling characteristic to the stories that make them feel like stories intended for boys, until you remember that the action is happening aboard spacecraft and not sailing ships - and thus can't be real... at least not at the present.

Also uncanny is how conveniently open Clarke describes future technology. Clarke did not foresee certain aspects of modern computing, but he wrote in such a way that very few of his mistaken predictions get in the way. Clarke understood that technology becomes smaller as it develops. The computers on board his spacecraft do not sprawl like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. But he didn't forsee digital preeminence. His computers still require physical media. Audio communications have to be stored to tape and photographs have to be captured on film. There's a limit to how much data a party can collect and carry. Solid state technology takes a back seat to vacuum tubes.*

But these are small mistakes one can forgive. In fact, they're more forgivable for the brisk and swashbuckling stories he tells here. Verne's mistakes are even more myriad than Clarke's and we remember Nemo through the ages. I think it's fitting that Clarke tells such timeless stories in the context of a yet unrealized future. When we do carry live astronauts from planet to planet and find microbial life elsewhere in the solar system, "Breaking Strain" and "Jupiter X" will be at least as enjoyable reading for boys as Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson was for my grandfathers. "A Meeting With Medusa" is as much like Poe's Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, "Into the Maelstrom," and "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal" as anything else I've come across and will perhaps be as timeless, if not as literary.

Alas, it's the lack of literary polish that keeps Clarke bound by our prejudices concerning science fiction. His adventures are conceptually as compelling as the fiction of Jack London or the real life drama of Ernest Shackleton. But they are stylistically bankrupt when compared against Daniel DeFoe or Herman Melville. This is a fact that all science fiction fans have grudgingly made peace with. Our zeal to proselytize others and covert them to the genre makes us hungry for tales such as these, which have more than an ounce of general interest. Thus, "The Sentinel" is a great jumping-in point for anyone interested in reading Clarke. One simply has to understand that it is - to borrow a phrase coined by someone else on GoodReads - of the "straight to the hips" variety of adventure, genre fiction and not sophisticated literary work.

..........................

*I don't have any experience with steam punk. In fact, I have a prejudice against it based on the perceived type of people who get into it. But Arthur C. Clarke reminds me that all science fiction will become steam punk if given enough time. Taking film on board spaceships that think via vacuum tubes is only a few steps beyond the premise of robots running on steam and trenchcoat-clad private detectives in derigibles. The difference is that one is intentionally wrongheaded and the other is naive. Nevertheless the results resemble one another. Interesting.

[Marie Segares · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sentinel is a collection of short stories by Arthur C. Clarke. I've read several of Clarke's novels (and loved them), but I wasn't sure how I would feel about his short stories. I shouldn't have been concerned because Clarke, like most sci fi writers of his generation, cut his teeth writing short stories for magazines.

Each story successfully creates its own internal world, and while the stories are actually quite different in tone, the main themes are space travel and what I would call the psychology of space explorers. Most of the protagonists are pioneers of space, and enjoy the combination of the solitary life and the excitement and freedom of exploration. By reading the stories, you get to feel the sense of wonder and exhilaration along with them.

For this collection, Clarke wrote introductions to each story (as well as to the book) which provide some insight into his inspiration as well as updates on the science presented in the stories. In one of these intros, he notes that "Fantasy is something that couldn't happen in the real world (though often you wish it would); Science Fiction is something that really could happen (though often you'd be sorry if it did.)" This pretty well sums up Clarke's writing - if you don't like the science part of science fiction, you might not be as interested in some of his descriptions of the technology as I was.

While I loved the book and give it five stars without reservation, I wasn't pleased with the Kindle version. There were formatting issues throughout - mainly, the absence of periods at the end of sentences and the occasional missing letter at the beginning of a word (e.g., instead of "There is..." it would read "[Space]here is..."). While the formatting was troublesome, it didn't prevent me from enjoying the stories or from understanding the content. I just wish that the publisher would take more care in converting the book to an e-format.

[Cheryl Marren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say that I wasn't quite sure what to expect because (to my shame as it's a genre I adore in the movies) I haven't actually ever read any "real" sci-fi before... I was obviously aware of Clarke's popularity in this genre but, as we all know, popularity is not always a guarantee of quality. In this case, though, certainly it is! I was completely delighted by the style of Clarke's writing and found myself able to really get deeply into the characters and the worlds they inhabit... I was able understand and identify with their dilemmas and situations and even felt like I understood the more technical side of what was going on - this technical content was threaded into the stories so skilfully and in just the correct amounts that it added to my layman's understanding without bogging the pace of the stories down at all - genius!
reading this collection of short stories has definitely left me wanting to read more by this most esteemed of authors...

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Partiamo col dire che non l'ho concluso purtroppo, mi son fermato a pagina 166 di 287, quindi poco dopo la metà libro, a metà di un racconto che proprio non mi stava coinvolgendo.
Dopo aver letto 2001: Odissea nello spazio ed avendolo trovato discreto, ma niente di eccezionale, mi ero ripromesso di riprovarci con altro di suo e così arriviamo alla raccolta di racconti, tra i migliori, cito la copertina, dell'autore. L'edizione è molto carina con illustrazioni ed una introduzione dell'autore con la genesi di ogni racconto e poi il racconto vero e proprio. Il primo racconto non è stato male, discretamente coinvolgente, ma già dal secondo ho iniziato a rilevare una certa dose di noia e di distaccamento dai fatti narrati.
Peccato, ma non mi ha proprio affascinato come mi sarei aspettato!

[Repix Pix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarke era un dios.

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buena selección de cuentos (incluyendo el titular que dio origen a 2001) los personajes son flojos (intercambiables, realmente) pero las historias son imaginativas y rebosan de ideas interesantes.

[Babbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of short stories includes the basis for Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End, but in general it was a mixed bag. I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, but it took a hit for ratings because I was looking forward to finally being finished and moving on.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the short story ~ The Sentinel.
This is the starting point of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Always a pleasure to read anything written by Arthur C. Clarke!

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Working through my backlog of books I’ve read recently but not written my thoughts on. I talked about The Sentinel a while back in my review of The Medusa Chronicles, if that’s what you’d call a review.

This is a collection of short stores and novellas from the Clarke. These go back to the 40’s and 50’s for the most part, although The Meeting With Medusa is from the 70’s, I think.

In all, I feel like some of these hold up pretty well. I think that’s saying a lot for a hard SF author writing back in the 40’s. Hard SF doesn’t usually age well. There was that hard SF book I read a couple of years ago written in the 70’s that takes place, more or less, today, and the paragraphs long exposition & dialog on how to print a page of paper from a computer are hilarious to read. But as far as a story goes, yeah, doesn’t do that any favors.

Clarke doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes that I can see. He is more or less is telling a story first (Um, that story may be about something very scientific, but it's still a story). Thinking back on what I can still recall about this collection, he has the short story that inspired Childhood’s End (it was almost exactly like the novel – just missing the second half) and the short story that inspired 2001 (It was WAY different, almost unrecognizably so) and the aforementioned Meeting with Medusa, which I did like quite a bit, there was one where they discovered that a small moon of Jupiter was actually an alien artifact (sort of the same idea of Rendezvous with Rama, which is fine, I love that as a concept, it should be reused even more – even if it’s been used so much that a whole trope has developed around it – the BDO {Big Dumb Object} and even most of my own unpublished fiction are stories built around alien artifacts, both mega-scale constructs and small mystery devices)

So, yeah, I liked this. I don’t think much about the stories in this book are groundbreaking when compared to the bulk of literature that’s come since these were written, but that’s understandable. He’s responsible for creating so many of the tropes we think of as overused nowadays. You honestly have to step back and realize that most of these were coming out of a vacuum at the time they were written.

Oh, a side-note, the collection ends with an outline for a movie he sorta pitched. That one was interesting. As it wasn’t a story at all, and wasn’t meant to be, it was a movie pitch that he’d been asked (and paid, I think) to provide. Then when the movie never went to production he sold it as a short story.

That’s weird, as it clearly wasn’t a story. It was an idea to build a story around. And that idea was published as a short story. Seriously, that’s weird. It doesn’t read like a narrative. It reads like an outline, which it is, and so I scratched my head that anyone would want to read that for pleasure. Really, it was strange.

As an aside, my kitchen is now fully functioning. As the past 3 months have had me living without one, I’ve been sad. I’ve been eating out virtually every meal, and have been living in a construction zone.

Remodeling is stupid. I never want to do it again. I’m still not done, but we can at least cook again, well, except that we got a super modern cooktop and only last night discovered that our existing cookware won’t work on it. So it looks like we’re off to spend another $300-$400 on pots and pans we weren’t expecting to.

Stupid remodel.

[Rainb0warri0r · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una raccolta imprescindibile, un gioiello di fantascienza da esibire sullo scaffale insieme ad altre raccolte, come Il meglio di Asimov. Questa raccolta, in effetti, potrebbe esser chiamata Il meglio di Clarke, per le affinità evidenti con la raccolta asimoviana: un insieme di racconti in ordine cronologico, ognuno scelto dall'autore, accompagnati da prefazioni, che riescono nell'impresa di restituire una summa di tutta l'opera dello scrittore.
A cominciare dal famosissimo La sentinella, che ha dato a Kubrick l'ispirazione per la sua Odissea, i racconti toccano tutti i temi dell'autore. Già il primo racconto colpisce il lettore con un forte straniamento: il gusto, tutto clarkiano, di rappresentare un punto di vista alieno, diversamente umano (con l'effetto collaterale di un ripensamento dell'umanità). I tratti della fantascienza hard in Clarke si traducono in un'ambientazione spaziale, spesso claustrofobica, accompagnata sempre dall'assoluto rigore tecnico: dall'uomo che per primo ha pensato e progettato i satelliti artificiali, non ci si può che aspettare che ogni racconto scritto sia stato preceduto da interminabili ma precisi calcoli tecnici. Il rigore tecnico però non rischia mai di appiattire la narrazione, né tantomeno lo stile, che è sempre quello di un grande e dotato scrittore; ogni racconto ha la sua pesata carica riflessiva, e per quanto la pagina possa esser densa di dettagli tecnici, si scivola sempre verso le riflessioni esistenziali e filosofiche. Così, la difficile convivenza di due astronauti rimasti senza ossigeno si rivela ricca di spunti psicologici, con un gusto che si ritrova in Solaris di Lem. La space opera, evocata nei viaggi verso Giove, il pianeta alieno per eccellenza in Clarke (che non a caso sarà il termine dell'Odissea nello spazio), diviene narrazione di un'indagine dei limiti dell'umanità e della realtà fenomenica, oltrepassati i limiti si sprofonda nel regno metafisico dell'ignoto. Elemento centrale è però il contatto con forme superiori e antiche di intelligenza aliena: dalla piramide di cristallo di La sentinella alle statue di Giove Quinto, passando per i più celebri monoliti dell'Odissea, è un tema che attraversa tutta la produzione di Clarke, tornando pure nelle sue ultime opere.
Oggi risuona ancora l'eco di quanto ha compiuto Clarke cinquant'anni fa, e questo rivela la grandezza immortale di questa antologia. Clarke ha squarciato il velo, ha portato l'uomo ai confini massimi della sua esistenza - non ci resta che andare oltre.

[Roxanne Tan]

“The Sentinel” short story written by Arthur Clarke was published in 1951 by Avon Periodicals Inc. The story started with such details describing where they are and how close they are to the moon. The author described how challenging their expedition was and how they were able to go across. He described how the ocean was once deep and now it is only deep about half mile. The view was beautiful; you can see the mountains, the rocks, and the sun’s reflection.
They had lived outside of Earth for quite some time and they get food deliveries often. Their cabin feels like home where they have regular meals like sausages. While she was cooking breakfast, she saw the view from the horizon, a place where no one has dared to explore and she took that as a challenge to try and find out what is on the other side of where they are living. The mountain seems very high to climb but with the gravity is only a sixth of their normal value, they were able to climb easily. The suits they wore were pretty impressive because they were able to release heat from their body. Garnett and her were able to climb up and see what was above. They initially thought there was nothing but there was something unique they saw.
They discovered an artifact from the moon, a pyramid-like shaped and they were in awe. It meant someone else was there before him or her and probably knew they also exist. It ended with it’s only a matter of time prior to finding each other.
It took me a few times to read the short story to understand the moral of the story, and I am still unsure. For someone that is unfamiliar with science fiction, it is a challenge to break down a story. Science fiction involves thinking and reflecting about what the author wants the readers to know. From what I gather, the take away of the story is we are never alone. There is someone out there watching us and we should always be careful about what we do. For Wilson, the challenge to keep looking what is out there, see for yourself, and not to settle for less.
It reminds me of the novel, The Martian, it is similar where he was left in another planet and was forced to live there alone and learn how to survive prior to his team rescuing him back. It’s similar in a way where he was living there and building his own garden so he can supply his own food.

[Chris Greensmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Probably no emotion at all filled my mind in those first few seconds. Then I felt a great lifting of my heart, and a strange, in-expressible joy. For I loved the Moon, and now I knew that the creeping moss of Aristarchus and Eratosthenes was not the only life she had brought forth in her youth. The old, discredited dream of the first explorers was true. There had, after all, been a lunar civilization-and I was the first to find it. That I had come perhaps a hundred million years too late did not distress me; it was enough to have come at all. My mind was beginning to function normally, to analyze and to ask questions. Was this a building, a shrine - or something for which my language had no name? If building, then why was it erected in so uniquely inaccessible a spot? I wondered if it might be a temple, and I could picture the adepts of some strange priest-hood calling on their gods to preserve them as the life of the Moon ebbed with the dying oceans, and calling on their gods in vain.

[Asghar Abbas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella became the movie 2001 : a space odyssey. Which it self became a precursor and inspiration for great sf movies to come including Star Wars.

[Karla Acuña · Rating 4 out of 5]

El terror cósmico siempre me pondrá los pelitos de punta. Me parece interesante de leer por ser la inspiración de Odisea en el Espacio

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes Arthur C. CLARKE'S science fiction so vital?? He served in the army, during WWII:

"Do you know what this reminds me of?"
"Yes," said Stormgen promptly, "the time you were building illegal radio sets during the German occupation."
Duval looked disappointed.
"Well, I suppose I have mentioned that once or twice before."

Also, like any science fiction writer worth their salt -- Delany, Ballard, and Philip K. DICK come to mind -- Clarke knows that the outer reaches of space are, for one thing, a good way to introduce people to the vagaries of life on this planet:

"I'm convinced—but still baffled."
"I don't blame you. The full explanation wasn't worked out until late in the twentieth century. It seems that these luminous wheels are the results of submarine earthquakes, and always occur in shallow waters where the shock waves can be reflected and cause standing wave patterns. Sometimes bars, sometimes rotating wheels—the 'Wheels of Poseidon,' they've been called. The theory was finally proved by making underwater explosions and photographing the results from a satellite. No wonder sailors used to be superstitious. Who would have believed a thing like this?"

If there's anything Clarke might be accused of, on the other hand, it's "Jupiter WORSHIP":

"Look at India [on the 'large globe in the corner of Webster's office']—how small it seems. Well, if you skinned Earth and spread it out on the surface of Jupiter, it would look about as big as India does here."
There was a long silence while Webster contemplated the equation: Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India. Falcon had—deliberately, of course—chosen the best possible example . . .

The trend is, you might say, pervasive in this collection — how could something, composed of such mass, not compel our attention?? It seems to Clarke that, as the largest thing in our galaxy, it necessarily must suck all the attention devoted in it, to it, and he reflects this by having his characters act this way — in more than one story, it's the "archeological find of the Century," and such.

(But still, you gotta know people to write science fiction — or any fiction, of course, so why not:)

For once, neither Mitchell nor Chambers rose to the challenge. Indeed, they maintained a somewhat frigid silence. That's torn it, thought Saunders. I should have kept my big mouth shut; now I've hurt their feelings. I should have remembered that advice I read somewhere: "The British have two religions—cricket and the royal family. Never attempt to criticize either.

Of course this sort of thing goes on in J.G. Ballard's Millennium PEOPLE — and is lost in film adaptations. It's one of the reasons you need to read things, and voraciously at that — there's so much packed in there, it'd be easy to skip it, in a writer of quality.

(And that's the thing with Arthur C. Clarke — to write fiction like this, one would imagine you'd have to live well all year, and it makes you want to, it makes you tend to keep up if you can and have as a desire the need to make a world where such fiction is possible, the given, the way we go about things, not a virtue or two thrown in there.)

I'd hope . . .

[Paul Manytravels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote the absolute best science fiction. Generally, I love his work and have read many of his novels as well as a few collections of short stories. In this collection, a half dozen novellas are gathered, unified by a thin thread of a central character common to all of the books. What is best about this collection is that it shows Clarke's development as a writer. The quality just keeps improving throughout the book.
One story in the book shares the name of the title of the bookThe Sentinel. This story posits that an intelligence greater than Mankind's has traveled through space seeking proof of other life. In the story, Clarke imaginatively writes about receding waters in the various 'seas' of the moon even though Clarke, an educated astrophysicist, knows that there was never any water on the moon.
Nevertheless, the most amazing attribute of the book is how accurate Clarke's descriptions of space travel and space travel vehicles proved to be. While the movie 2001: A Space Oddyssey was produced in 1968, the scenes inside its spacecraft could easily have been taken in today's actual spacecraft.
In this book, Clarke points out the difference between science fiction and fantasy and points out that he does not care for fantasy. Sci-Fi, he says, consists of fictional scientific elements that could actually occur, while Fantasy includes some scientific elements that cannot occur. Fantasy disregards the physics of 'the speed of light,' for example, when scientifically it is known that the speed of light is absolute and cannot be violated or exceeded. (Einstein proves is in the Theory of Relativity).
Sci-Fi lovers already read Clarke and will for the next hundreds of years. If you are not one of the people to have read Clarke, this is a good place to start.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ho un unico commento per questa raccolta: la buona fantascienza è dura a morire.

Non avevo mai letto nulla di Clarke e, a essere del tutto onesta, la mia conoscenza di 2001: Odissea nello Spazio si limita alla recensione molto stringata fatta da mio padre sul film di Kubrick – ovvero, una grandissima schifezza che più lenta di così si muore. Memore di queste sagge parole, non ero del tutto convinta che questi racconti mi potessero piacere, cosa che mi ha portato a rimandare la lettura per dei mesi – da brava pirla quale sono. Per fortuna mi sono convinta, perché almeno in quest’ultima parte dell’anno ho avuto modo di leggere un ottimo libro.

Non farò come mi è capitato di fare per altre raccolte, sia perché non ho preso note specifiche man mano che leggevo, sia perché onestamente non ne ho voglia, quindi mi limiterò a dire che:

- tutti i racconti sono molto interessanti, improntati su vari aspetti della fantascienza classica e con dietro uno studio e un’attenzione ai dettagli scientifici da lasciarmi senza fiato

- le parole ad apertura di ogni racconto dell’autore sono la cosa più bella e sincera che mi sia capitato di leggere da un bel po’. Se lo avessi davanti, penso che lo abbraccerei

- ci sono tante riflessioni interessanti legate al mondo contemporaneo, che rendono i racconti ancora attuali e stimolanti

- ogni racconto fa venire voglia di buttare ogni studio fatto fino ad ora per lanciarsi su ingegneria aereospaziale e andare a fare l’astronauta

- La Sentinella vi farà venire il magone e Giove Quinto sognare a occhi aperti (i miei preferiti di poco, visto che tutti sono dei gioielli assoluti)

E niente, leggete Clarke, che vi fa bene.

5/5 ⭐

[Teemu Öhman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is The Sentinel the best of Clarke's short story collections? Might be. It's not quite as good as it could be, though.

As I've read quite a lot of Clarke's short stories fairly recently, I only read now the stories that I hadn't read before, as well his brief intros to every story, and naturally the eight-page Introduction: Of Sand and Stars.

The roughly 50-page Guardian Angel is the beginning of what became Childhood's End. As I recall, I liked the beginning of Childhood's End more than the latter half of the novel. I did some checks, and at least the beginning of the Guardian Angel is the same as Childhood's End. One word changed here, another there, but it's the same. And it's all of course very, very good.

The Wind from the Sun was an interesting solar sailing competition story. I'm a big fan of solar sails (isn't everybody?), so I enjoyed it, although the ending was a bit flat.

A Meeting with Medusa is the longest story in the book, something like 55 pages, and a fairly rare example of Clarke's later short fiction output. The title is a bit of a spoiler, and I'm not entirely convinced I liked the ending that much, but as I'm a fan of airships (isn't everyone?), I truly enjoyed most of the story.

I've read the novel The Songs of Distant Earth a long time ago, and I recently read the short story version in The Other Side of the Sky. I liked them both. But why is this movie outline included in The Sentinel I cannot understand (other than it was among Clarke's own favourites). The three-page introduction is much more interesting than the four-and-a-half page outline. If the book needed a short short story, Clarke would have had several good ones to choose from. This is one for the completists, not for the casual older scifi fan, to whom The Sentinel is otherwise aimed at.

Overall, this is a great book, and would work well as an introduction to Clarke's shorter fiction.

The version I read was a 1991 Grafton Books paperback edition, with a gorgeous cover of a massive lunar lander, a lone astronaut, and a background of lunar mountains drawn like Nasmyth and Carpenter imagined them in the 1800s, with something sparkling in the mountains. The cover artist Chris Moore had clearly read The Sentinel. Beautiful.

4.75/5

[Max Ampuero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Después de leer estos cuentos, es bastante fácil ver que ciertos pasajes de la trilogía de los tres cuerpos encuentran su inspiración en relatos de Clarke. Cuentos como el cometa y la estrella son claros en este sentido.

[Brid Baas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me encantó 🤩 me dieron muchas ganas de leer Odisea Espacial. Entré con muchas expectativas y curiosidad pero también con temor. Se entiende con claridad la idea general del cuento. Lo disfruté bastante!

[Teige Bisnought · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.50 Stars.
Great short stories that at times were vivid but due to the shortness they lacked any substantial depth. Still I’m left with an awe for space and a childish desire for interstellar travel.

[Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Matthew Tyas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mostly excellent collection of short stories. Clouds of Jupiter stands above the rest but nearly all are excellent.

[Karen K - Ohio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1948, twenty years before his classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, this story is called the seed for the novel. In his introduction to the story he notes “…now that the focus of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) debate has changed from “Where’s Everyone?” to the even more puzzling “Where Are Their Artifacts?”

[Viri Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me gustó este cuento corto, cómo pone en contexto qué podría no ser tan la búsqueda y encuentro fortuito de los restos de una civilización extraterrestre.