The Sentinel

______ ______ ____ ____ ____ _____
Walking on the moon
___ _____ ___ ____ _____ ______
Walking on the moon
____ ______ ____ ____ _____
Walking on the moon
____ ______ _____ __________
Walking on, walking on the moon

_______ ______ _____ ______ _______
Walking on the moon
_______ ______ ______ ______ _______
Walking on the moon
______ ______ _______ _______ ____ ________
Walking on the moon
____ ______ ______ _________ _______ _____ _________
Walking on, walking on the moon

Some may say
___ _________ _______ _______ _______
No way
___ ____ _____ ____ _____ ___ _____
Some say
________ __ _________ _____
You stay
___ _____ ____ ______ _____

Intro:

Aliens:

Aliens

Quizlet:

24 things

Discuss these extracts from the story:

"there are times when a scientist must not be afraid to make a fool of himself."

"You must understand that until this very moment I had been almost completely convinced that there could be nothing strange or unusual for me to find here. Almost, but not quite; it was that haunting doubt that had driven me forward. Well, it was a doubt no longer, but the haunting had scarcely begun."

"the old are often insanely jealous of the young"

Put this sentence in order

on a perhaps a across hundred I plateau was standing feet

Check

I was standing on a plateau perhaps a hundred feet across.

Put this sentence in order

nothing hazardous exploration or  particularly there even is  exciting about lunar 

Check

There is nothing hazardous or even particularly exciting about lunar exploration.

Use the words in the gaps

crust       diameter       turret      moisture       nightfall       crevasses      delta      transfigures   overconfidence

1. Three hundred miles in __________, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent mountains, it had never been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 1996. 

2. Luckily, most of the Mare Crisiurn is very flat. There are none of the great ________ so common and so dangerous elsewhere, and very few craters or mountains of any size.  

3. Over the land which we were crossing, the tideless ocean had once been half a mile deep, and now the only trace of _______ was the hoarfrost one could sometimes find in caves which the searing sunlight never penetrated. 

4. We had begun our journey early in the slow lunar dawn, and still had almost a week of Earth-time before ________. 

5. The whole southern curve of the Mare Crisium is a vast _______ where a score of rivers once found their way into the ocean, fed perhaps by the torrential rains that must have lashed the mountains in the brief volcanic age when the Moon was young.  

6. On the Moon, of course, there is no loss of detail with distance-none of that almost imperceptible haziness which softens and sometimes _______ all far-off things on Earth. 

7. Those mountains were ten thousand feet high, and they climbed steeply out of the plain as if ages ago some subterranean eruption had smashed them skyward through the molten ________.  
 

8. But I was curious to know what kind of rock could be shining so brightly up there, and I climbed into the observation _______ and swung our four inch telescope round to the west. 
 

9. The real danger in lunar mountaineering lies in _________ 

10. __________ I paused and waved to my companion, then I scrambled over the edge and stood upright, staring ahead of me.

Pre listening - read through these terms:

freighter (spaceships for freight)
crevass (deep gaps in the mountains)
skirting the foothills (exploring only the edges of the hills)
stupendous cliffs (very tall)
searing sunlight (very bright)
nightfall (the arrival of night)
pressurized tractors (with oxygen)
rugged landscape (rough hills)
capes and promontories (steep hills stick out over flat areas) 
a vast delta (flat land where water runs)
uplands (hills)
a galley (kitchen)
terrestrial (from Earth)
imperceptible haziness (not easy to see far)
molten crust (hot lava under the ground)
ramparts (steep slopes)
iridescence (brightness)
the observation turret (observation tower)
just enough to tantalize me (make me curious)
elusive (difficult to identify)
enigma (mystery)
presently (soon)
the laughing-stock (a fool)
degenerate ancestors (primitive)
folly (foolishness)
completely unscalable (impossible to climb)
ledge (shelf of rock)
our plan of ascent (plan to climb)
exhilaration (excitement)
had scarcely begun (only just)
many-faceted (with lots of different sides)
moss (grows on rocks etc)
a shrine (sacred structure)
the plateau (flat land high up)
ceaseless bombardment (non-stop hitting)
irrevocably doomed (without any hope)
apparition (ghost, mystery)
a single token of its existence (token = sign)
overexertion (trying too hard)
a sentinel (guardian, watchman)
the emissaries are coming (people on a special mission)

 

1. When and where is the story set?

2. Why was the narrator there?

3. What was the narrator's profession?

4. Who is Louis Garnett? Who is Wilson?

5. What happens while the narrator is cooking sausages?

6. Can you draw the object the narrator discovers?

7. Why did the narrator begin to laugh?

8. What happened in the end?

9. Who were the People of the Dawn?

10. What was the purpose of the Sentinel?




Link to audio book:

The Sentinel

Discussion: 
 
1. Why did the writer spend so much time establishing the scene before describing the ascent of the mountain? 
 
2. Why do you think he chose to set it in the Mare Crisum? 

3. It is often said that science fiction reveals more about the attitudes of the time it was written than it does about the future. Is this true of this story? 
 
4. Why did the writer decide to have Wilson reach the plateau alone, instead of after or at the same time as his colleague? 
 
5. Could this story have been extended into a novel? 
 
6. Does the story have a message? 

 

Language focus - modals 

must have looked         could play        might never come   would have been     must have searched      would be      would be       would be      must have guessed 

Theirs 1_____________ a loneliness we cannot imagine, the loneliness of gods looking out across infinity and finding none to share their thoughts. They 2_____________ the star-clusters as we have searched the planets. Everywhere there  worlds, but they 3____________ empty or peopled with crawling, mindless things. Such was our own Earth, the smoke of the great volcanoes still staining the skies, when that first ship of the peoples of the dawn came sliding in from the abyss beyond Pluto. It passed the frozen outer worlds, knowing that life 4_____________ no part in their destinies. It came to rest among the inner planets, warming themselves around the fire of the Sun and waiting for their stories to begin. Those wanderers 5_________________ on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and _________________ that it was the favorite of the Sun’s children. Here, in the distant future, 6__________ intelligence; but there were countless stars before -them still, and they 7_____________ this way again.  
 

Why are so many modals of deduction used in this section of the story?