Contact: A Novel

A top rating (10) is something that should be reserved and only used for something special and excellent in every respect. Contact deserves a 100. I recommend the book and the movie both. It is hard to imagine anything better!!

I love Carl Sagan, but I struggled to finish this book. Even for someone well-versed in science, this book has far too many unnecessary details and redundancy. Sagan really could've used an editor. The story starts to stagnant about 150 pages in, and from there, for every step forward, it takes 10 steps back, making the narrative move at an aggravatingly slow pace.

I was skeptical of this book at first (major motion picture with Matthew McConaughey? That can't be great literature!), but boy was I wrong. Carl Sagan is a masterful author, and explores deep issues about the relationship of science to religion and government in this novel. The writing is extremely insightful, and the themes Sagan addresses here are surprisingly poignant given our current political climate.

Finally read this classic and it didn't disappoint. Was interesting to compare themes with The Three Body Problem trilogy which I also recommend. Of course there is other life in our universe and these books will help prepare us for the tough questions humanity will face when we inevitably make contact.

The book arrived timely and was in decent condition for pre-owned. And I also enjoyed the little personal note about the previous owner; book lovers know there are stories not just within, but about the books themselves!!! Thanks :-)

The book arrived timely and was in decent condition for pre-owned. And I also enjoyed the little personal note about the previous owner; book lovers know there are stories not just within, but about the books themselves!!! Thanks :-)

My second attempt at rating this dealer and the book I bought. First attempt was incomplete and an average rating, not what I truly feel. Not going to bore the readers with a long story. I am giving the dealer a 5 star rating for excellent packaging, accurate description of book and quick delivery. I would gladly order from him again. Thanks.

What a wonderful book! After having read it I find myself wanting to send a copy to every loved one I've been separated from in my life. Whether it's science, curiosity, or humanism that brings you to read reviews of this book, don't let is pass. Just get it and read it and let it change you. :) Peace

To this day, Contact remains one of my favorite books. I love the fact that Jodie Foster narrates it in this version too. Of course, it's probably better to buy this on CD, or download it these days, but I'd recommend this audio book to anyone who enjoys some light science fiction.

I have always enjoyed the movie Contact with Jodie Foster; I has a copy. When I was in the my church library recently, I discovered a book titles CONTACT with Carl Sagan as the author. Who would have thought? The book ties in well the movie, i.e., some differences but entirely believable.

Fun story. Lots of science imbedded in the framework to make everything plausible. Nonetheless, it's amusing that Carl couldn't resist using this book to make a platform to rail against religion in general if not Christianity in particular. He's gone now, but his depiction of the religious characters in this book appear clueless compared with the advocates for Intelligent Design of today. Darwin's theorists are now being revealed to be more entrenched in theology/philosophy than science.

Till the very last paragraph the book is litterally fantastic.
Unfortunately, and sadly, the last 50 or so rows mess up everything. I'm still wondering why.
I have the feeling like they were added in a later version of the book and not by the author himself, because it's really stupid to waste 420 exeptional pages with only few words when the story is already ended. I would like to know the real reason why that paragraph is there! Maybe the publisher is some religious extremist??

In retrospect, I should have tried the free Kindle sample instead of outright purchasing it, but I leaned heavily on the author’s reputation as a Pulitzer Prize winner. After reading 26% of the book, I have given up and deleted it from my Kindle – the book lacks character development and dialogue, but it goes on and on about not much or gets deep into the technical weeds, really drags, and I caught myself nodding off while reading it. In a nutshell, this book is really bad and is in need of a qualified editor. If science fiction is your genre as it is mine, I would give this one a wide pass!

I started on this book because it was referenced in Richard Dawkins's God Delusion. However, Carl Sagan pulls a Dostoevsky (the act of abandoning the natural ending of the novel plot that the author has so far built up, to foist a spurious religious overtone into the work, even though it is patently artificial and sticks out like a sore thumb). The author seems to not understand that science fiction works when future scientific content is invented within the realm of plausibility, but patent misrepresentation and arm twisting of existing knowledge (the "circle" in the digits of pi) bodes badly for a science fiction work.

Just like Dostoevsky sacrificed a prodigal philosophical debate for the sake of a didactic spiritual pursuit, Sagan sacrificed a smoothly flowing, and reasonably interesting science fiction work, for a pathetic spiritual pursuit.

I am so disappointed I even bothered to read this book :(

On a pet peeve note, if the second line of pi were 3 '1's or more, I can understand an image of a circle. The second line being just a single '1' makes it for a circle about as badly rounded as the book is coherent.

Fermi asked the question: if there are other intelligences out there, where are they? It's a reasonable question, but it sounded a lot like he was implying that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's not. That said, the book is complex and it operates on a multitude of levels: scientific, philosophical, religious, theological, and emotional to name some of the more dominant themes.

Why haven't we seen and little green men? In medicine, we talk about differential diagnosis--an exhaustive list of possible explanations for what we see in a patient. In this case, the list includes 1) we really are alone, 2) we aren't, but everyone else is afraid of showing their hands lest a more advanced civilization invade, dominate, and/or kill them, 3) we're limited by the speed of light, space warps make good sic fi, but it's always fi, and 4) other. I doubt that the answer is #1, but I see possibilities 2 and 3 being about equally likely. Who knows about 4? So much of the scientific/philosophical realm.

Sagan surprised me with the religious twist. Without spoiling the novel, suffice it to say that he posits something being uncovered that, if it--or something like it--were really found, it would lay to rest the question of existence of a higher being. It's elegantly stated, and done without explanation of implication. But the implication is so clear as to make discussion more or less pointless. I had always assumed that Sagan would have been an atheist. After reading the book, I was a lot less sure of that. My guess is that he either was trying to find something along the lines of the convincing occurrence, or he already had, but wanted not to show his hand. Can't ask him any more.

Character-wise, development was good, but only Ellie's character was fully developed; it had to be for some of the things in the book to happen as they did. Other characters were mostly cut-outs, but they were done well enough. There were heroes and villains, as one comes to expect. And pretty much everything in between.

Few novels operate successfully on this many levels. In fact, about the only other ones I can think of off the top of my head that do it are by Neal Stephenson and Ken Follett. A rare gem.

The book follows Ellie Arroway from girlhood to tell about how she became a scientist working on the SETI project. With most of the book taking place between (I'm guessing as there wasn't much for dates listed in the book) 1985(ish) to 2000, the book is told as though it's something that could just happen tomorrow, we could pick up a signal from space, an alien race reaching out to us. The book deals with all the baggage that comes with that; fear of invasion, hope for peace and advancement, prophesies of Gods and devils. The one who discovers the signal, Ellie is an important factor as the message is received, decoded and beyond.

I was, first, floored by how understanding Carl Sagan was of what it was like to be a woman in a male dominated field, how she had to act, the kind casual sexism she had to brush off as normal, being treated as a secretary or as though she just didn't belong there. Ellie's thoughts, ridiculing these men and herself for not speaking out, are genuinely what we think when these things happen to us. This was published in 1985; women were more quiet about this behavior back then, so for Sagan to have picked up on it was quite amazing.

After I picked up my jaw from that one, I was shocked once again to find how deeply religious this book was. it comes across, in the first half, being very anti-religious, but as the story progresses, something changes. (In a vague sort of way, the rest of this paragraph is kind of a spoiler without giving exact details) Not religious in the traditional sense of praising one god or another, but more in a spiritual, something did create the cosmos (sorry, I had to say it) and everything in it kind of way. There is this strong pervasive hope that one day we could understand that entity and evolve to a point to be like it and to fully understand and share it's capabilities. This book is the ultimate mingling of science and religion.

Now no book is without faults and despite my obvious gushing nature with Sagan tonight, this book is no exception. There is a habit of going off onto tangents when introducing a new character, going on at length describing their pasts. I kind of accept this, because it's interesting, but, strictly speaking, a lot of it wasn't relevant to the story and didn't necessarily enhance it in any way. There were a few points where I did get a bit lost in these side stories, confused as to how they fit in, but they weren't, as a whole, too distracting, but it could have been a shorter book.

I suppose now, I should go see the movie.

As for science fiction, this book really drags. It is more about the main character and the conflicts she encounters in a man’s world throughout her life than it is about science. I found that surprising for a book billed as being Hard Science Fiction.

Given some of the blatant obvious errors I can't even believe this was written by Carl Sagan. I basically quit reading the book when the author had Ellie driving through New Mexico looking up at Alpha Centauri over Mexico. Excuse me, was this really written by a professor of Astronomy at Cornell University? Even a simple non-scientist like me knows that Alpha Centauri is only visible from the southern hemisphere. With a declination of over -60 degrees it is way south in the southern skies and just can't be seen from up here. It's right down there with the Southern Cross. This struck me like a bad B SciFi movie. You know -- the ones that like to depict gravity as mysteriously disappearing exactly 100 miles over the Earth's surface. That ruined it for me. I mean, what other errors are in there that I’m not smart enough to realize?

Be forewarned that Sagan did not care for organized religions and uses this book to create strawman arguments against them. This wasn't done very well, so no matter what side of the religion debate you fall on, you aren't going to be satisfied with the presentation here.

If you want a book about the difficulty of minorities punching through the glass ceiling read it. If you want good science fiction find something else.