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Title: The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke ISBN: 0-7434-7975-0 Publisher: I Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't Bother, But Get Collected Stories Instead
Comment: Being a Clarke fan since childhood, my first book was literally Childhood's End. I was looking forward to the re-release of this title, but I won't pay for a new intro when I have all these short stories elsewhere (The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke). I recommend Collected Stories to everyone contemplating buying The Sentinel. Collected Stories covers nearly every worthwhile short story that Clarke has published or you can buy a dozen or so shorter volumes with a lot of overlap. This single omnibus is a much better deal.
Rating: 5
Summary: the seeds of 2001
Comment: In 1948, Arthur C. Clarke submitted a short story, The Sentinel, to a BBC contest; which he did not win. However, the story was published in the Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader in 1951, and in 1964 he returned to the story and began expanding it into a novel. He and the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick used this as the basis for a movie script which, in 1968, became 2001 : A Space Odyssey; for which both received Oscar nominations.
Especially considering the opacity for which the movie is notorious, the story is remarkably spare and straightforward. The narrator, a lunar geologist, recalls cooking sausage one morning at a research base on the Moon, when the rising sun revealed a metallic glimmer on the rock wall of Mare Crisium. He and a compatriot climbed the crater rim and found :
[A] roughly pyramidal structure, twice as high as a man, that was set in the rock like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel.
Though they initially believed it to be a relic of a lost lunar civilization (notice it is much different than the black obelisks which were eventually used in the movie), they soon realized that it must have been placed there billions of years ago by an advanced race from another planet. It took twenty years, but finally they were able to penetrate a protective shield around the crystal by using atomic upon it. Now they understand the structure to have been a kind of sentinel, waiting to alert the beings who placed it there that finally the human race has achieved a sufficient level of development to be worthy of their notice.
I particularly like the way that this tale, written by a renowned futurist at the dawn of the space age, actually resonates with age old religious concerns. The simple idea at its core is that it is by increasing our knowledge and developing our technological prowess that we will become superior beings, even gods. The geologist sagely worries, as must anyone who recalls the Fall of Man and the Tower of Babel, that the beings who left behind this early warning signal may even be jealous of our advances and may not be all that happy to find that they finally have company. Like all of the best tales of the fantastic, The Sentinel, though ostensibly about the future, illuminates the very mundane concerns we've always had about the nature of our being and our role in the order of things.
GRADE : A
Rating: 5
Summary: A collection of some of Clarke's best short stories.
Comment: This book contains some of my favourite short stories by Clarke. The book contains the following stories -
* Rescue Party - I havent read this story before, and found it a bit disappointing. Actually a bit pointless - just an ode to the human race.
* Guardian Angel - this story 'gave birth' to childhood's end. I havent read the book (yet), and have enjoyed the story a lot - especially the little surprise at the end and those parts of the story that show Clarke's scientific background.
* Breaking Strain - this story takes a known theme (which I'll not tell even in short so as not to spoil to those who havent read the story) into space, and the fact that it's somewhat predictable made it too long for my taste.
* The Sentinel - this story gave the inspiration to '2001: A Space Odyssey'. For some strange reason, I've never found a copy of this story in Israel in any stories collection or translation to Hebrew (though 2001 was translated to Hebrew). Though I allready new the plot, I enjoyed this story a lot.
* Jupiter V - I recommend this book just for this story. It's very interesting, and I just couldnt let the book out of my hand till I finished this story.
* Refugee.
* The Wind from the Sun - the idea of ships that sail by solar-wind race each other really caught me.
* A Neeting with Medusa.
* The Songs of Distant Earth - actually, I didnt like this one. I've read the 'none-original' version, and liked it a lot better.
Now that I take regular 1-hour trips by train twice a week and have returned to reading short stories, I'm glad I've found this book - it's very interesting reading, and shows all the good sides of short stories.
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Title: Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke ISBN: 0345322401 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke ISBN: 0446677949 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke ISBN: 0345303067 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1984 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Rama Revealed (Bantam Spectra Book) by Arthur C. Clarke ISBN: 0553569473 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Clarke ISBN: 0743459024 Publisher: I Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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