Mindwebs: The Sentinel
Sep. 11th, 2012 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollThe Sentinel
This is a Clarke, one originally published in 1948; some hint of the age may be seen in the hopelessly outdated geology of the Moon. This story was the starting point for the movie and the book 2001: A Space Odyssey, although only the barest details survived the transformation.
One quibble: when the narrator frets (spoilers)
that humans will not have long to wait until the aliens turn up to see what broke their machine, I think he makes two errors:
The first is there's no evidence the aliens are in fact interested in intelligent life. That's just an idea that comes to the narrator and there is, I think, evidence he and the other astronauts are obsessed with finding intelligent life.
Secondly, these are beings who carry out plans that apparently last billions of years. What is "not long" for them may be very long for us.
This is a Clarke, one originally published in 1948; some hint of the age may be seen in the hopelessly outdated geology of the Moon. This story was the starting point for the movie and the book 2001: A Space Odyssey, although only the barest details survived the transformation.
One quibble: when the narrator frets (spoilers)
that humans will not have long to wait until the aliens turn up to see what broke their machine, I think he makes two errors:
The first is there's no evidence the aliens are in fact interested in intelligent life. That's just an idea that comes to the narrator and there is, I think, evidence he and the other astronauts are obsessed with finding intelligent life.
Secondly, these are beings who carry out plans that apparently last billions of years. What is "not long" for them may be very long for us.
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Date: 2012-09-12 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-12 04:33 am (UTC)