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Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" vs. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" vs. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey

Introduction

The movie of Stanley Kubrick: A Space Odyssey base on Clarke's short story “The Sentinel”. The core theme of the movie was fiction and the story of Clarke reflects the same.  “The Sentinel” provided the original basis for Kubrick's film version and the story itself published after the film's release. “A Space Odyssey” book reviews discuss the plot, characters and themes found in the story. One can learn more about the different literary elements that should be examined in the story. According to the plot of the movie the space navigators David Bowman and Frank Poole, along with three frozen hibernauts and a talkative computer named Hal, are aboard the spaceship Discovery on a mission to Saturn. They told that the purpose of the mission is to enter and explore the atmosphere of the planet. Trouble arises, however, when Hal announces that the computer's Fault Prediction Center indicates failure of one of the units within seventy-two hours (Angelo, 2003).

Although the faulty part, that is not the end of the astronauts' problems. Hal still insists there is trouble ahead. Faced with an increasingly frustrating and odd-behaving Hal, Bowman threatens to turn the computer off. Before long, navigator Poole, working outside the ship, disconnected from his safety lines and drifts off into space. The sleeping hibernauts also disconnected from the pods that maintain their bodies and die. Bowman left alone with Hal (Angelo, 2003). Realizing that the computer killed the others to protect itself, Bowman disconnects all of Hal's circuits and is truly alone in space.

Plot, Theme and Core Characters

The film's premise is that some unknown but benevolent extraterrestrial race has shepherded humanity's progress from primeval ignorance through space travel to eventual transformation into the “Star Child.” Another strong theme of 2001 is man's relationship with machines and the inherent dangers, although some commentators suggest that Clarke posits the machine as an intermediary along mankind's route to becoming entirely free of “the tyranny of matter.” In any case, both Kubrick's film and Clarke's book captured the public's imagination, and both will remain science fiction classics.

The central character in the story's first section is Moon-Watcher, the leader of a group of prehistoric man-apes chosen by the monolith to receive its knowledge (Otten, 1982). Before the arrival of the monolith, Moon-Watcher's group is close to starvation and too preoccupied with individual survival to understand the advantage of communal values. The monolith imparts information about how to survive (also, somewhat ominously, about how to kill one's fellow creatures) and thus allows Moon-Watcher and his companions to experience the benefits of quiet family living. In this way, the monolith serves as a guide and guardian to the developing human race. Clarke has been praised for his convincing portrayal of the rough but recognizably human emotions of Moon-Watcher, whose name refers to his lifelong wish to find a tree tall enough to allow him to touch ...