The Sentinel By Arthur C Clarke 1983 Berkley Books HC/DJ BCE VG+

The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke " The Sentinel " is a by British author , written in 1948 and first published in 1951. Its plot and ideas influenced the development of the 1968 film and its . Publication history [ ] "The Sentinel" was written in 1948 for a competition in which it failed to place. It was first published in the magazine , in the Spring 1951 issue, under the title "Sentinel of Eternity". Despite the story's initial failure, it ultimately changed the course of Clarke's career. It appears in the short story collections (1953), (1967), and (1982), as well as in (1972). Plot [ ] The story is set in 1996 (at the time of writing, several decades in the future). The narrator, Wilson, is a veteran on an expedition to explore the surface. He comes across a mysterious pyramidal structure, surrounded by an " " which blocks all attempts to approach. The structure is found to have been placed on the Moon several billion years earlier, and it is not the product of any terrestrial or lunar civilization. Twenty years pass before the invisible shield is successfully breached, using . The structure is destroyed in the process, and its fragments are found to be incomprehensible, being far more advanced than any human technology. Wilson realizes that the structure was created and placed on the Moon by technologically-advanced from outside the solar system. Wilson presents his guess as to the structure's purpose: it was a "sentinel" which for billions of years had been transmitting signals into space. The sentinel's destruction - which humans could only accomplish by mastering space travel and atomic energy - will have caused its signals to cease, thereby alerting its creators to intelligent life having discovered it. Wilson expresses his belief that the aliens will soon be "turning their gaze upon the Earth".

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