The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [1]
Young readers of today, born into a world when science fiction magazines, books and movies are part of everyday life, cannot possibly imagine the impact of such garish pulps as that old Amazing and its colleagues Astounding and Wonder. Of course, the literary standards were usually abysmal—but the stories brimmed with ideas, and amply evoked that “sense of wonder” which is (or should be) one of the goals of the best fiction. No less a critic than C.S. Lewis has described the ravenous addiction that these magazines inspired; the same phenomenon has led me to call science fiction the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug.
During my lunch hour from school I used to haunt the local Woolworth’s in search of my fix, which cost threepence a shot—roughly a quarter, at today’s prices. Much of the hard-earned money my widowed mother had saved for my food went on these magazines, and I set myself the goal of acquiring complete runs. By 1940 I had almost succeeded—but, alas, all my beloved pulps disappeared during the war years. That collection would now be worth thousands of dollars.
In 1930 I came under the spell of a considerably more literate influence, when I discovered W. Olaf Stapledon’s just-published Last and First Men in the Minehead Public Library. No book before or since ever had such an impact on my imagination; the Stapledonian vistas of millions and hundreds of millions of years, the rise and fall of civilizations and entire races of men, changed my whole outlook on the universe and has influenced much of my writing ever since. Twenty years later, as Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, I persuaded Stapledon to give us an address on the social and biological aspects of space exploration, which he entitled “Interplanetary Man.” His was the noblest and most civilized mind I have ever encountered; I am delighted to see a revival of interest in his work, and have just contributed a preface to a new collection of his writings.
By the time I encountered Stapledon I had begun my secondary (U.S.: high school) education in the nearby town of Taunton, making the ten-mile round trip by bicycle every day after sorting the local mail in the small hours of the morning and then delivering it (another five or so miles). It was at Huish’s Grammar School—now Richard Huish College—that I began to write sketches and short stories for the school magazine.
I can still recall those editorial sessions, fifty years ago. About once a week, after class, our English master, Captain E.B. Mitford (who was actually a fiery Welshman), would gather his schoolboy staff together, and we would all sit around a table on which there was a large bag of assorted toffees. Bright ideas were rewarded instantly; “Mitty” invented positive reinforcement years before B.F. Skinner. He also employed a heavy meter rule for negative reinforcement, but this was used only in class—never, so far as I recall, at editorial conferences.
My very first printed words thus appeared in the Huish Magazine and from the beginning my science-fictional tendencies were obvious. Although this Christmas 1933 message purports to come from “Ex-Sixth Former” stationed at a torrid and high-altitude Outpost of Empire (Vrying Pan, British Malaria) its true locale is at least a quarter of a million miles further away:
The precautions we have to take to preserve our lives are extraordinary. Our houses are built on the principle of the Dewar vacuum flask, to keep out the heat, and the outsides are silvered to reflect the sunlight . . . We have to take