page_title: Arthur C. Clarke
section_title: "The Sentinel"
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur C. Clarke / Science-fiction writer / "The Sentinel"
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of If, May 1953
context_page_description: Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
  He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, an avid populariser of space travel, and a futurist of a distinguished ability. He wrote more than a dozen books and many essays for popular magazines. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a UNESCO award for popularising science. Clarke's science and science-fiction writings earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His science-fiction writings in particular earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership, made him one of the towering figures of the genre. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
  Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system using geostationary orbits.
context_section_description: In 1948, he wrote "The Sentinel" for a BBC competition. Though the story was rejected, it changed the course of Clarke's career. Not only was it the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey, but "The Sentinel" also introduced a more cosmic element to Clarke's work. Many of Clarke's later works feature a technologically advanced but still-prejudiced mankind being confronted by a superior alien intelligence. In the cases of Childhood's End, and the 2001 series, this encounter produces a conceptual breakthrough that accelerates humanity into the next stage of its evolution. This also applies in the far-distant past (but our future) in The City and the Stars (and its original version, Against the Fall of Night).
  In Clarke's authorised biography, Neil McAleer writes: "many readers and critics still consider Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke's best novel." But Clarke did not use ESP in any of his later stories, saying, "I've always been interested in ESP, and of course, Childhood's End was about that. But I've grown disillusioned, partly because after all this time, they're still arguing about whether these things happen. I suspect that telepathy does happen."
  A collection of early essays was published in The View from Serendip (1977), which also included one short piece of fiction, "When the Twerms Came". Clarke also wrote short stories under the pseudonyms of E. G. O'Brien and Charles Willis. Almost all of his short stories can be found in the book The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001).
caption: Clarke's novelette "Jupiter Five" was cover-featured on the May 1953 issue of If.
exif: {}