Sagan was a visionary beyond time. He understood the beauty of the universe by the laws of physics and how everything converged for them. And how human beings are part of this vast scenario, perhaps the only ones for whom the cosmos exist? He continues with this idea in Contact, although this is a work of fiction, specifically science fiction. This work is science fiction of a different genre without laser beams or flying saucers, or little green men. Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway is a unique child wh...

I finally finished reading CONTACT and am completely shocked!First of all, the entire novel is very different from the movie (that I love) which is fine. It is still about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and a complex message is received from Vega with instructions to build a machine and take a ride, but the telling is much more scientific, technical, political and religious in nature.While some of the characters are the same, their relationships, for the most part, are surprisingl...

This is an excellent thought experiment by a well-known and respected scientist on how contact with extra-terrestrials could realistically unfold. I say thought experiment because as a novel the book didn’t always work so well.I understand that real science is not like it is portrayed in the movies. It takes a lot of time and hard work to make a discovery, test the hypotheses, confirm the conclusion etc etc so its not really a surprise that this book’s pacing was much slower than most sci fi nov...

I REALLY liked this, but either I’m super dumb or some of the science-y stuff was too advanced for regular people

Read this book in the early nineties. Loved Ellie Arroway and loved this story. Then the movie came out and I loved that too! One of my most favorite female-centric scifi stories written by a male.

I was quite shocked when I saw the movie version, and discovered that they had twisted the message 180 degrees. In the book, the heroine meets the aliens and is told that they have indisputable proof that the Universe was created by a Higher Power. When she returns to Earth, she has no immediate way to support her story - but she has been given enough of a clue that she knows how to find objective evidence, which she duly does. She also makes another surprising discovery.In the movie, she comes

A smart story crafted by a real space science guru WE CAN'T BE ALONE The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.When I read this book, back then in 1997, I did it like a couple of months before of being able to watch the film adaptation. (And I am truly glad that I was able to get the movie in blu-ray, a few months ago in this year, 2014))This is truly great novel and it's written by one of the most respected scientist in the field about science

"Your god is too small." The heroine makes this comment about 2/3 of the way through this novel. She is trying to get across the idea that, if your god cannot encompass the knowlege which humans have so laboriously amassed over the millenia (which is only about two teaspoons worth in comparison to the enormity of the universe!), then there is something wrong with the god you've made for yourself. A lot of what is going on in Sagan's book, it seems to me, is the attempt to explore and express the...

I really hate it when I lose reviews. Okay, take two.I was just reminiscing on my younger self's condemnation (or at least his valid annoyances at the plot holes and some of the straight story elements), or the fact that I was trying to compare this classic SF work with other classic SF works that I was making my way through at the time and comparing them unfavorably because I wanted a lot more of the psychedelic naked singularity stuff and aliens, not just a long-winded optimistic synthesis of

A couple of weeks ago, on June 25, the Pentagon did something rather unusual: It released a report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), a subject that has long been associated with alien spacecraft. This was the culmination of the public and political interest piqued by the 2017 release of videos, taken by the United States Navy, of strange flying objects. The content of these videos was not especially groundbreaking—indeed, like all the amateur UFO videos before them, they feature grainy blo...

This book is all about Vegans.... Just not the kind you're thinking about!(3.5) Interesting first contact with aliens but the writing was quite dry.

Review tomorrow 😬Well tomorrow has been and gone a couple of days ago, and with family visiting I never had the chance to write my thoughts.I have the DVD of this book, and know that I have seen it at least once, as my reading of this book was accompanied by visual snippets of Jodie Foster as Dr Arroway.Visual snippets apart this is a wonderful "First Contact" novel, and I have to say it always leaves me positive about the future of the human race. It (view spoiler)[ may not turn out as positive...

As far as I know Contact is Carl Sagan's only novel. This makes him almost the Harper Lee of sci-fi (though he did write boatloads of sci-fact books). Not being much of a nonfiction reader this is my first encounter with Carl Sagan's writing, I already feel like it is a shame that he only wrote the one novel; though I am sure the world is more than compensated by his other output.Contact piqued my interest immediately with a vivid portrayal of Ellie Arrowway, a two years old genius, figuring ou...

J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar) all published one novel each. Another member of the First Novel/ Last Novel club is astronomer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Cosmos and science communicator Carl Sagan, whose foray into fiction was Contact, published in 1985. I gave the book a lot of latitude, not only for Sagan's potential shortcomings with character and dialogue, but for hopes that the novel could live up to the engag...

Tonight, after two days of heavy rain, I looked up and smiled at the stars dotting the night sky.I'm somewhat of a hard critic, but I had to give CONTACT five stars because it did something truly amazing~it helped me again embrace the wonder and awe I once felt for the universe as the geeky kid that adored science. This book is thought-provoking, and absolutely beautiful to read. What can I say? It made my heart and soul sing.As a child I was fascinated by the stars and universe, and even asked

Contact! Contact? No…To make a long story short: this is probably an excellent book, but I failed to make contact, to connect to the characters. Feeling sorry about that, I decided to read Sagan’s nonfiction instead, to give him another chance.The problem I had with the novel was similar to my experience with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but on a bigger scale. I have no doubt that Sagan’s visions and ideas on extraterrestrial lifeforms are much more erudite than other science fiction I have read, wher...

Sagan was a lucid and impassioned defender of rationality and clear thought. Unfortunately, his foray into fiction did little to increase the understanding of his philosophies, and much to muddy the waters of once clear thought. Inspired by Asimov and Heinlein, he decided that fiction was as good a place as any to explore his ideas on science, belief, and wonder.While we expect long, in-depth explanations from non-fiction, fiction readers want more than just a lecture from the author. They expec...

Contact is not only one of the most religious science fiction books I’ve ever read but also one of the most religious books I’ve ever read, period. In Carl Sagan’s only work of fiction, the story is a mere backbone, a structure upon which Sagan can explore what he truly wants to explore, that is, the deepest questions of our existence.What is our purpose here?Can humans live without institutionalized religion?What are the dangers of extraterrestrial contact?How did we come to exist?Can science a...

The word "mind blowing" should be redefined as Carl Sagan's territory. This book is a story about extra-terrestrial life; however, it is both realistic and scientific, which makes it seem tantalizingly within reach! It also offers some deep insights about humanity...“You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found...

Following on the footsteps of many other scientists like Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan wrote a novel: Contact. Contact is an interesting mix of hard science and the exploration of the nature of faith and truth, that does an excellent job at showing us how politics can mess everything up. It’s also a favorite of mine.Dr. Ellie Arroway, an astronomer on a quest to find extra-terrestrial life, is the director of a group of scientists searching for out-of-planet signals. When a computer pi...