The Sentinel - a science fiction adventure adapted from a 1951 short story by Arthur C Clarke

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Ай бұрын

The Sentinel was a 1951 science fiction short story by Arthur C Clarke which famously became the main inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece film 2001 A Space Odyssey.
As a long time major fan of that movie I always rated it as the best film ever made, but was aware that nobody had ever tried to make a film of the actual story of The Sentinel.
Just for fun I decided to use some help from the science fiction technology of AI Images to put together a short adaptation of The Sentinel story to share on KZfaq in tribute to my all time favourite sci-fi film.
I do not claim any copyright of the original story "The Sentinel" itself.
Enjoy your trip. 😎
#scifi#sciencefiction#2001aspaceodyssey#stanleykubrick#arthurcclarke#space#astronauts#moonlanding#thesentinel#2001

Пікірлер: 162

@IBM29 Ай бұрын

I remember reading the Sentinel in a collection of his early works decades ago. 2001 benefits from reading the novel BEFORE watching the movie. Then again, I was only 12 at the time...

@devenparghi9214 Ай бұрын

Interestingly, 2001 was written after the film.

@IBM29 Ай бұрын

@@devenparghi9214 Possibly as a result of confused 12 year olds, such as myself... 😁

@tonyjanney1654 Ай бұрын

There are several great collections of Clarke's short stories. I highly recommend "Expedition to Earth". (I think every design engineer or military procurement officer should be required to read and memorize "Superiority".)

@stainlesssteelfox1 Ай бұрын

Superiority is hilarious and thought provoking, but I love Loophole and Hide-and-seek too for their clever solutions. And Second Dawn is up there with Weinbaum's A Marian Odyssey in showing a truly alien species..

@robertreynolds1044 Ай бұрын

This was required reading in my freshman English class, I already was a reader and loved science fiction (Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson) My name is Bicycle Bob and I approved this message and Heinlein and Feynman rule!

@claraallen12 Ай бұрын

humans...if I can't possess it or understand it...I'll destroy it

@markg4459 Ай бұрын

Oh...and what are you? An alien? Stop being such a politically correct snob.

@tedsmith6137 Ай бұрын

Sadly true. We are just barbarians who haven't grown up yet.

@STho205 Ай бұрын

It is fiction since it didn't happen. All the pyramids on Earth are still here and most are now carefully protected. The story was leading to a punch line conclusion of sentinel or tripwire...so they had to do something to arrive at the conclusion. Just postulating that the sentinel noticed them and changed color for instance was not dramatic enough in the authors imagination.

@cartoonraccoon2078 Ай бұрын

Works like that even here on Earth still.

@Demun1649 Ай бұрын

@@cartoonraccoon2078 Especially with other humans.

@chap666ish Ай бұрын

Surely this narration is missing lines from The Sentinel. “Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they are very, very old, and the old are insanely jealous of the young”.

@farrier2708 17 күн бұрын

Oh no I'm not! The young have to work for a living. After retirement it's party time. 🥳

@chuckanziulewicz9926 Ай бұрын

The "Cliffs Notes" version.

@DavidJohnson-of3vh Ай бұрын

I read that in the 60's. pre-movie.

@tiplady44 Ай бұрын

Me 2👍

@fredericksaxton3991 Ай бұрын

@@tiplady44 And me... 🙂

@2painful2watch Ай бұрын

Great story. I like the tinny sounding narration since it reminds me of how sounds would carry in a pressurized cabin of a space ship or lunar land vehicle with the vacuum of space just inches away from the protective ship's hull. Well done!

@MarsFKA Ай бұрын

The Moon doesn't really look like that. All right, okay, when Clarke wrote the story, everyone thought it did,

@ChrisSmith-lo2kp Ай бұрын

Clarke lived in Sri Lanka - perhaps the lunar view from the southern hemisphere is responsible

@MarsFKA Ай бұрын

@@ChrisSmith-lo2kp I was referring to the nature of the geological features shown in the video. For decades, artists represented the lunar surface with steep, unworn craters, hills and mountains because there is no atmosphere on the Moon thick enough to cause erosion and no telescopes on Earth had the resolution to show fine details of the lunar surface. The reality is that there is erosion, but caused by billions of years of impacts by everything from asteroids down to particles from the solar wind. The process is ceaseless and has produced the well-eroded hills and mountains that are seen in photos taken by Apollo astronauts, typically at the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites.

@2painful2watch Ай бұрын

Yeah but some of the illustrations did in fact depict worn out lower hills though. Just like the Apollo lunar landing pics. The other lunar landscapes were probably added by the author to recreate what the landscape might have looked like at the time as rendered and painted by Chesley Bonestell --an alien looking world with sharp mountains and craters everywhere.

@jrkorman Ай бұрын

@@ChrisSmith-lo2kp Except that he wrote the story in 1948 and didn't move to Sri Lanka until the mid 1950s. But he was writing based on the assumptions of the day!

@carolinehaythornthwaite2965 Ай бұрын

Looking forward to the sequel.

@zhubajie6940 Ай бұрын

50 million years ago? Not primal soup. That's the Eocene Epoch. The Messel pits were roughly formed then with lots of early mammals.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

You'll perhaps be surprised to discover that there was no actual expedition to Mare Crisium, and no pyramid found on the moon either. It's called "fiction" for the reason that it isn't actually real, but thanks for your feedback all the same. 😎

@stainlesssteelfox1 Ай бұрын

I suspect the narrator in universe was being figurative.

@ChrisSmith-lo2kp Ай бұрын

it sounded like 50 billion, which would be before our sun

@chpsilva Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster tbh I kinda thought I misinterpreted what I heard (non-native English speaker here) because is a well known fact - and for a long time - that life on Earth is far older than 50 million years. Oh well.

@derrickcox7761 Ай бұрын

@@chpsilva Just like the Big Bang was fact? Coffeehouse intellectuals think any thought they have is fact. Enough with the brain farts.

@VictorReynolds Ай бұрын

Love your adaptation!

@robertreynolds1044 Ай бұрын

Howdy to another Reynolds! My name is Bicycle Bob and I approved this message and my younger, but bigger brother is named Ryan, after the aircraft company.

@VictorReynolds Ай бұрын

@@robertreynolds1044 Greetings! Such a great surname!

@andrewhanson5942 22 күн бұрын

Well you have to hand it to those science fiction writers for imagining the future and making that imagined scenario seem realistic.

@thejamesasher Ай бұрын

it's a fun story but we would have seen that through telescopes

@derrickcox7761 Ай бұрын

You cannot see the dark side of the moon through a telescope.

@geoffhoutman1557 Ай бұрын

Orbiting telescope

@Astrofrank 28 күн бұрын

@@derrickcox7761Mare Crisium can be seen from earth, as long as there isn't lunar night. During lunar night, there is no sunlight a pyramid could reflect.

@peterkbertinejr Ай бұрын

Wonderful!

@davidlang4442 Ай бұрын

Early humans after development of their space program. After that, much later, they made themselves go back to the caves over a disagreement.

@joelcarson9514 Ай бұрын

Sentinel, or Tripwire? The Arthur C. Clarke text story is much better.

@FurioFiloseta Ай бұрын

Really good.

@tiplady44 Ай бұрын

A damn good story 👍

@NAANsoft Ай бұрын

The adaption is nice and respectful to the original. I would suggest that your add a bit more reverb / bass to your voice - as it is, the recording sounds flat and a bit "dead", like it was done in a small room.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Thanks for your feedback. As it was done with very basic equipment and not in a professional recording studio environment the voice is just what it is and I won't be re-editing it any time soon. It's only a bit of fun anyway, not intended for any particular purpose other than mild entertainment. Thanks again. 😎

@lewisdoherty7621 Ай бұрын

The creature trapped inside it has now gotten out.

@DianSMerry Ай бұрын

I like it 😊

@davidgifford8112 Ай бұрын

Altered and abridged from the original short story. Clarke was always an efficient writer, the cuts made it shorter, but not better.

@Tensquaremetreworkshop Ай бұрын

20 hrs - that is a lot of oxygen to carry on your back- too much. Hang on- I have this handy nuclear device in my toolbox. I thought it would come in handy.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

The story actually makes it clear that there is a time that passes before the attempts to open the box and eventually detonate an explosion to reveal the contents, but it is only a story after all. It's not that important. 😎

@Tensquaremetreworkshop Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster it is the idea that explorers on the moon would have access to nuclear devices- why would that have been hauled from Earth? 'Only a story' - but it should still be logical, consistent and free from gross errors. Unless it is fantasy. Which ACC did not write- he was normally fairly fact based.

@Donleecartoons Ай бұрын

@@Tensquaremetreworkshop Clarke wrote the story during a time when nuclear explosives were being seriously considered as mining tools, among other "peaceful uses of the atom" considerations. So the presence of a mini-nuke on the Moon (a Moon which apparently, in the setting of the story, has an established human presence) would be a matter of course. A later interpretation of the story might certainly be along the lines of "What we cannot understand, we destroy." Whether Clarke intended that at the time, he's no longer around to ask.

@Tensquaremetreworkshop Ай бұрын

@@Donleecartoons Nice try- but no. Even if used for mining purposes, the cost of transport to the moon would mean that any such use would be well planned in advance, a device of the correct yield built, and then sent to the moon for a specific purpose. This is, at best, lazy plotting. Clarke was an engineer, he knew the facts. HE would have sufficed, nuclear was just popular at the time so got inserted. He lost the 'suspension of disbelief' at the 20hr spacesuit support (plus safety margin), which made this step one way too far.

@Donleecartoons Ай бұрын

@@Tensquaremetreworkshop "Nice try"? What did you think I was trying to do?

@davekent8193 Ай бұрын

The biggest danger in the world/moon - us!

@learemington1700 Ай бұрын

Interesting. 50 million years ago and no immpact marks? Hmmm

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Dude, there's not really a Pyramid on the moon, it's only a fictional story. 🤣

@richardruff8712 Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster Precisely.... Anyone who reads the short story will know the answer... The reason for no obvious impact marks, was because of a semi circular force-field protecting the Sentinel.... In the story, it was made clear, that, it took an atomic bomb to destroy the Sentinel....

@richardmongello579 24 күн бұрын

To PC for me. Flush it.

@MrDubmaster 24 күн бұрын

PC? Do you know what that even means? What's 'PC' about it? 🤔

@emgee44 Ай бұрын

I’m guessing the images are AI generated?

@Dooguk Ай бұрын

If this is the best AI can do we have nothing to fear.

@STho205 Ай бұрын

"AI" KZfaq flix are really just clipart libraries assembled into contrived scenes. The "intelligent robots" are not really doing it, computers are just artist tools. Like early CGI it is faddish and very over hyped

@donaldbadowski6048 Ай бұрын

Google AI no doubt. Look at the girl boss astronauts.

@goilo888 Ай бұрын

Well, it says right in the credits the images are AI generated. So, yeah, good guess. 🥴

@montylc2001 Ай бұрын

Ok, I guess. Not a very accurate depiction of how the lunar surface would look.

@rcnelson Ай бұрын

What, no Latine?

@itsjkforreal Ай бұрын

I enjoyed that; except i want only human-generated art. Art done by artists who were paid.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Well, I enjoy playing around with AI art, and as an artist myself I totally understand your point, but I just see AI as a tool to be used. It would take me probably weeks or months create those images by manual artistry, and this little fun adaptation would never have come into being apart from that I was playing around with AI art and it enabled me to create it. It hasn't taken anything away from anybody, I'm only creating it for fun, not profit, and no artists were harmed in its production.

@mkay6089 Ай бұрын

Very modern adaption.. You got the USA bit right but 2 woman and no white man on the moon wow..Just love how things have to be depicted nowadays to be PC.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Maybe you're overthinking it a bit? It's three human earth creatures on the moon. Do you think an alien intelligence would discriminate about such minor details? 😂

@mkay6089 Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster NO, but the pc world of today will now. I am not racist as i am married to an indian ( i am white) but even my wife says everything now must include and woman and a black person in the advert or tv /proramme at the cost of any white people ..just look for yourself. it is PC. Same as the police not taking white candidates as they have to employ a certain quota of black people, and they were found to have taken people who's qualifications were not as good, simply to meet that quota. again just saying.If the ratios for population was the same as the tvs / adverts i would not have an issue, but it is not. I live in the UK by the way.

@scottwolf8633 Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster You managed it, but then you're not an alien or intelligent. Read, "Racial Differences in Insular Connectivity and Thickness and Related Cognitive Impairment in Hypertension", published in 2017. And, "Recovering signals of ghost archaic introgression in African populations". Your, " Three human earth creatures", post the sequencing of the sub Saharan african genome in the latter, couldn't be more incorrect.

@montylc2001 Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster You missed the point. And I thought the same.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

I didn't miss the point, I ignored it. The original story is very vague about the identity of the astronauts - only the "great buzzing of electric razors" indicates that there were males on the mission, and there is no mention of race or colour whatsoever, so the rest is only in your own imagination. 😎

@gren509 Ай бұрын

He's written some great stories... this isn't one of them 😞

@richardruff8712 Ай бұрын

On the contrary.... I think, as a quick read, this is one of the more ' interesting ' stories... And probably good enough to turn it into a Hollywood film !

@Puzzoozoo Ай бұрын

Why is there a black man and woman and what appears to be a mixed race woman driving in the three person crew?

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Why does that matter to you?

@Puzzoozoo Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster The Sentinel was written in 1948 and published in 1951, long before race swapping to reflect a 'modern audience' as in the illustration.

@MrDubmaster Ай бұрын

Well, there have been mixed race people since the beginning of time, so that's hardly relevant, and the story was set far in the future from when it was written - the year 1997 is mentioned in the story as being a past date, so that's pretty irrelevant too. You're the second person who's commented of the race and gender of the people in that one image. It didn't even occur to me that anyone would even notice.

@Puzzoozoo Ай бұрын

@@MrDubmaster True, but not like in the same level as in modern times in some parts of the west. Well, it was written in 1948, and 2001 was based on the sci-fi story, and done in 1968, and didn't have any POC in the cast either, plus it was supposed to be set 23 years in the past, and only 16 POC have ever gone into space, Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Mendes, being the first one who flew in the Soyuz 38 spacecraft and spent over 7 days in orbit in the Salyut 6 space station, in 1980, nearly three years *before* the USA’s first African-American astronaut Guion Bluford. Go figure as the Americans say. People are observant, and some like me are more observant then others. Peace.

@Donleecartoons Ай бұрын

Why does that bother you?