The Most Famous Rectangle in Movies
It is one of the most iconic objects in the history of film: the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The iconic status belies the simplicity of its design. Just a thin, tall black rectangle that changed the course of filmmaking. And here is where it where all began, as the titular entity in “The Sentinel” in the original passage of imagery which introduces its existence into pop culture:
“I was turning away when my eye caught a metallic glitter high on the ridge of a great promontory thrusting out into the sea thirty miles to the west. It was a dimensionless point of light as if a star had been clawed from the sky by one of those cruel peaks, and I imagined that some smooth rock-surface was catching the sun- light and heliographing it straight into my eyes…it seemed to have an elusive symmetry, and the summit upon which it rested was curiously flat. I stared for a long time at that glittering enigma”
Opening Lines
Science fiction is particularly open to extensive use of imagery. It is a genre that must rely—more so in the past than now—upon the ability to create in the mind of the reader visual images which often escape the power of simile because there is nothing to compare it to. As a result, the opening paragraph of many of Clarke’s stories commence with imagery, some more than others, such as the opening to “The Wall of Darkness.”
“Many and strange are the universes that drift like bubbles in the foam upon the River of Time. Some—a very few—move against or athwart its current; and fewer still are those that lie forever beyond its reach, knowing nothing of the future or the past. Shervane’s tiny cosmos was not one of these: its strangeness was of a different order. It held one world only—the planet of Shervane’s race—and a single star, the great sun Trilorne that brought it life and light.”
Clarke’s Third Law
Just as Asimov has his rules about robotics, so does Clarke write science fiction which abides by three immutable laws. It is his third law, however, which has become as famous as Asimov’s robot regulation: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The result of adhering to this concept is that various civilizations react to various technological advancements as one would response to magic depending upon their state of evolution:
“The robot will be pure magic to him—but it won’t be any more wonderful than fire and lightning and all the other forces he must already take for granted.”
“far closer in spirit, were the men who had marshalled the great herds of cattle on the American plains, only a few lifetimes ago. They would have understood his work, though his implements would have been magic to them.”
“his horn was no longer the yellow of ivory: some magic had changed it to the most won- derful purple that Jeryl had ever seen.”
The Simplest is Sometimes Best
While Clarke does show a propensity toward engaging imagery as a starting point, his preference for final lines generally shies away from descriptive prose, leaning more heavily toward a final commentary from a character. One of his most famous—and most effective—departures from this convention is the single line which brings “The Nine Billion Names of God” to a climax. It is an example of how sometimes the most effective imagery is the simplest:
“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
