Elentarri’s Reviews > The Collected Stories > Status Update

The Sentinel ★★★☆☆ This story is the inspiration and beginning of 2001: The Space Odyssey (film & novel). Lunar explorers discover a mysterious, ancient, and indestructible alien artifact on the Moon.

The Road to the Sea ★★★⯪☆ A longish story that explores themes of technological stagnation, the vastness of time, and the inevitable return of a spacefaring humanity to its home planet. The story focuses on the contrast between the stagnant, simple life of those who stayed and the advanced, cosmic destiny of those who left.

Trouble With the Natives ★★★⯪☆ A fun little story about alien first contact gone awry. Two aliens land in a British village and try to make contact with someone in authority. Instead they are treated as a joke because of their strange appearance, awkward disguises and incomprehensible speech.

Silence Please ★★★⯪☆ This is a funny "tall tale" told by Harry Purvis at the White Hart pub, about the unintended consequences of technology. An inventor creates a "silencer" device that cancels sound using inverted pressure waves. When the device is used by a jilted lover to sabotage a symphony orchestra performance, the device is amplified too high, causing a disastrous, silent collapse of the auditorium.

A Walk In the Dark ★★★☆☆ Suspenseful, but slow, horror story. A space technician stranded on a dark, remote planet must hike to the spaceport before his ship leaves, battling intense psychological fear of being stranded and of local legends of an alien creature. The story explores the triumph of irrational fear over logic, as well as the fragility of man and his works.

Time’s Arrow ★★★★☆ A fun little story that begins with a paleontologist and two geologists excavating newly discovered dinosaur footprints. Two physicists in neighbouring valley are experimenting with "something"... The story highlights the paradoxes and unintended consequences of time travel and the "arrow of time" concept.

Guardian Angel ★★★★⯪ Expanded to become Childhood's End. Benevolent, technologically superior aliens, the "Overlords," appear above Earth to impose peace, preventing human self-destruction. The ending is brilliant and ironic. The story examines the trade-off between human freedom and absolute safety.

Nemesis ★★★☆☆ Examines themes of war, technological advancement, and the long-term consequences of violent ideologies. "The Master" is defeated in battle and enters suspended animation in an isolated tomb to await a future time when he can awaken and continue his war. Due to a malfunction, countless eons pass before "the Master" is woken by an exile from a highly advanced, peaceful, and intellectual civilization.