Contact

Rating:
Summary: Science Fiction as a Religious Experience
Review: CONTACT is a novel about the global reception of a message from space. Radio observatories around the world pick up the length-repeating signal and manage to piece the whole thing together. As the code is broken the signal is revealed to be visual. When put on a screen for the first time the scientists are treated to the image of Adolph Hitler. The images are from the German Olympics which were the subject of the first strong television signal broadcast.

Underneath the picture data is more hidden data. This is eventually deciphered to be the blueprints of a device. As the world reacts to almost indisputable proof that we are not alone the device is built and a team is assembled to test it.

Upon activation the scientists find themselves traveling at unimaginable speeds to a distant location. Each traveler is individually greeted in a form to make them comfortable. One is greeted by a deceased father. After glimpsing the almost miraculous peace of this civilization, the travelers return at the exact moment they departed and all of the records of the trip are blank. Everyone refuses to believe that there actually was a trip except the travelers themselves.

While CONTACT starts out on a firm scientific basis that is gripping and well written, I found the novel as a whole to be disappointing. What starts as good hard-core science fiction quickly transforms into the account of what can only be called a religious experience. At least one bookstore actually shelved the book in the religion section. While I personally have no problem accepting both science and religion I felt that this book did a poor job of joining or reconciling the two. Despite my objections to the plotting I will recommend the book as it is quite well written.

Rating:
Summary: Message from the Heaven? Message from God?
Review: We meet Ellie Arroway as a child whose father dies. She marvels at the wonder of radio, notably the "clear mathematical precision of radio waves." She becomes a radio astronomer, and in time joins, and even leads the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The drama begins to heat up with the detection of a radio signal coming from the Vegan System. Questions abound. How can we capture this message 24/7? We need international cooperation.
After deciphering many layers (good old mathematical precision), the message is clear; it is an instruction manual for building a device. Theories abound„oDoomsday Machine, Trojan Horse, Space Ship. Despite the outcry of the pessimists, two projects are funded and the unit is built in both the Americas and Asia. Both of them get destroyed.
In the end, a Japanese parts supplier has been secretly building a third device on Hokkaido. Ellie is chosen for the crew.
The international project to build the device becomes known as the >Machindo Project< and Machindo comes to be a byword for international cooperation. Besides various bureaucratic wheelings and dealings, religious zealots also take aim at the Machindo Project: They say "If it is a message from the heavens then it's a message from God?" This being so, many zealots reason, and many different responses arise.
How Ellie rails against the imprecision of religion! For instance she determines there can be no God because so many people see God differently (Note-does that mean there is no George W Bush because many people see him differently?). She also considers that if there were a God, then man would know ALL even in the dawn-times of humanity.
For those who've only seen the movie, the journey to meet the senders of the message is a bonus. Five passengers take the trip in the book vs. the one in the movie. And while each spacer believes they are gone for a week, in actual time only 20 minutes passes. The real fun begins when the machindo crew return to Earth. Each are individually cautioned by their countries to deny they ever took the trip! Their reports are dismissed in the crudest fashion. Once again, bureaucratic gamesmanship carries the day. Surreptitiously, Ellie continues to work on the information gained in her space flight. She redirects her Cray computer to work on transcendental numbers and finds THE TRUTH. No, Douglas Adams fans, the truth is not #42! If you like Contact in print, you can also see it rendered in movie and even an audio version narrated by Jodie Foster, who played Ellie in the Warner Brothers movie.

Rating:
Summary: First Half: ok------Second Half: better!
Review: The classic science fiction theme of humanities' first brush with alien intelligence occupies center stage in Sagan's adequate, but not artful, novel.

First the bad: In terms of literary style, "Contact" isn't especially impressive. Indeed, the prose is often awkward and this tends to give the characters a dry, not-quite-believable quality. "Contact" borders on the verbose---I am confident at least 50 pages worth of dialogue and "character development" could easily (and beneficially) been omitted. I'm sorry to say that after about 150 pages I very nearly lost all interest in the book. I'm glad I persevered however, because the last half was worth it. And on that note......

The good: The scientific foundation and superstructure Sagan builds in this book is solid, credible, believable and interesting to read. Sagan has described a perfectly plausible and substantial "real world" scenario for first contact. As already mentioned, the second half of the book is where the real strength lies. Sagan takes themes and characters that were rather boring and predictable in the first half and actually makes them interesting, and thankfully, even thought-provoking. For example, I enjoyed the irony of Dr. Arroway having to defend her experience in the Machine vis a vis her antagonism toward other people's religious experiences. Dr. Arroway became a more believable and interesting character in the second half, some situations in her personal life approaching poignancy were very effective in that regard. The completion of the Machine is interesting enough, as well as its subsequent use. All told, "Contact" finishes strong---read it for yourself and decide!

Rating:
Summary: very disimilar to the movie!
Review: rating 3.5

I have to admit that I enjoyed the movie. I think it is a quite provactive work, from anything more than a simplistic analysis anyway. That probably explains why it didn't make billions of dollars: it wasn't obvious enough nor had enough kill-em-all action.

Anyway, the book. The main character Arroway is the same. However she is compelled by far different motivations in the book. She is also not hounded by Drumlin for pursuing a percieved marginal science such as SETI (reflects the time in which the book was written: 1985, when science, especially astronomy was still blessed with the charm to do pure research on the taxpayer dollar and follow such things as SETI- challenger hadn't crashed yet!). The movie obvious takes a different tack, reflecting the harsher realities of now: justifiable science, where dollars must produce results (whether this is right or wrong is never explored in the book, because it isn't an issue). This has skewed the movie in different direction, along with greater knowledge of physics.

The book does develop the apprent conflict of science and religion as managified by the message (yes the psychology, philopsophy and the symbolism is reasonably obvious -> more so in the book than movie). In fact this is something the book does delve deeply into. Possibly a little too deeply because it becomes a little preachy in an issue that all of us must decide for ourselves. I can respect however the need to develop this aspect of the story because christianity and science basically underpin (to an ever diminishing extent) western civilization. And provides fertile soil for the battle between them. Yet tangible and active zealotry on both sides is not explored to any great extent, particularly from the religious camp (unlike the movie).

The actual physics of the machine and the journey aren't as strong as they could be (the machine, because we're not supposed to understand it anyway...however???). And the interpersonal relationships between the key characters are fairly restrained (reflecting reality). Also the decryption of the message could have been more interesting (compensated by the pi idea however).

The main protagonist from the movie, Drumlin doesn't get much of a run here and whatever contact there is between him and Arroway is nothing like the movie. Nor is the backstabbing!

I guess you could say that there is a grinding inevitability about the book. There isn't too much in the way of suspence because the plot, though arching and fluctuating like a dampened sine curve, never deviates that much from it's linear path and becomes more supressed toward the linear as the story progresses. It felt obvious at time. Inevitable. You just know what is going to happen (having seen the movie didn't help).

I really wanted to like this book. And at times it was wonderful. But it also left me dissastisfied as well. I don't think it reached the heights or depths it could have. But this perhaps reflects the time it was written? However, if you're looking for a deeper version of the movie's plot...you won't get it. They are very dissimilar.

Ultimately, I think you have to make a choice: either like the movie and the book or the book or the movie. Accept their differences and avoid comparing the two if you can, thereby enjoying both...if you can't, pick one of the other and completely avoid the one you didn't pick. And enjoy the one you did pick.

Prose-wise the book is very well written.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest SF Novel ever written
Review: If you haven't yet read this novel by Carl Sagan, then immediately PUT DOWN what you are doing and start reading one of the greatest books I've ever read. In any case, you have probably seen the movie, which I thought was ok, but the book provides a much deeper and important experience. Let me just go through a few of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much.

First, any book worth reading should be both entertaining and thought provoking, and hopefully at the end it will have changed or added to how you think about the universe and your life. Well, this book is undoubtably entertaining and is hard to put down, but more importantly there is much to learn and ruminate over within. Whether there is intelligent life out there in the universe is one of the most important unanswered questions left for humanity. Here Sagan explores the implications of finding an intelligent message: how it unites humanity for a common cause and how it changes our view of our place in the universe. On another level, Sagan's book is about one person's quest for meaning. Ellie Arroway travels across the galaxy to find answers, but in the end she finds even more surprising revelations from her step-father back on earth. On yet another level, there is the issue of religion in our society. The characters are very rich in Contact, and each voices their unique opinion on these issues. Here is a book that can be read many times over with new insights each time.

Some highlights of this book are the great writing and dialogue as well as the depth of the characters - a rarity in a SF novel. Also, the science is very well presented. In particular, the chapter on Hadden's final departure is near perfect. Sagan also included many future predictions for 1999 and many of them hit quite close to home.

There are a few downsides as well, but they don't really detract from the overall experience. One is Sagan's prediction of the continuing Cold War gets a little tiresome. Another is why would Hadden (who helped decipher the primer) choose to leave for space rather than waiting to see what happened to the crew? If he was really looking for immortality, wouldn't he be curious to see what the aliens had said?

Finally it is interesting to realize that 1999 has come and gone and there has been no messages received by SETI. What would the implications be of Earth being the only planet in the universe with intelligent life? I recommend this great article if you are interested in reading more about this topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/88aug/easterbr.htm.

Go read Contact!

Rating:
Summary: both mind bending and moving
Review: I have been a fan of the movie since it came out in 1997, but everyone who has read the book told me that it is far better than the film. And I agree. As good as the movie is - it is a joke compared to the book! There is far more detail here, which is understandable - if the filmmakers put all the detail that was in the book into the movie, the movie would end up being twelve hours long! For anyone who thinks they dont need to read the book because they've seen the movie: THINK AGAIN! The endings are a lot different. The end of the book has to do with Ellie's mother, stepfather and an idea the aliens gave her, none of which were even in the film.

Rating:
Summary: Make Your Universe Bigger
Review: If you thought the movie was great, do yourself a giant favor and put this at the top of your reading list. Sagan's novel is light years better than its film counterpart.

The writing, concepts, and characters are so wonderful I forgot this was Science Fiction I was reading. Even though I thought I knew the story from the movie (there are some big differences), I got wholly caught up in the excitement and possibilities. I really didn't want this one to end.

An excellent touch presented by Sagan is the inclusion of quotations from a multitude of diverse sources at the beginning of each chapter. The persons and characters quoted are a well rounded group and really give a terrific perspective to the ideas presented in the novel.

Perspective is what this novel is about. Though written more than 15 years ago, Contact is still very contemporary--especially during a time when it's difficult and even painful to see hope in our world. In this novel you can take delight again in being human. You come away feeling like a kid again.

Highest accolades to this work--one of the best novels I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Great character, enhanced in the motion picture...
Review: ... and rendered fantastic by Jodie Foster. Elanor Anne Arroway (what a historical name too!) is a brilliant scientist who has devoted her life to locating evidence of extra terrestrial intelligence. When that evidence finally arrives (after a seemingly endless and gripping, gruelling search), the effects it has on Elanor and the world are truly profound.

The book does a fantastic job of demonstrating what those very effects would be like and how their ramifications would truly leave a mark on our world. Carl Sagan seemed well ahead when thinking that one day a candidate signal could and probably would be detected and we would be forever changed. The emotion of Elanor's journey is heightened even more as it feels like Carl wrote himself into the character. His search was always for intelligence other than that which exists on our planet and it was found through this character.

A great read, and although the writing is somewhat technical and very laden with scientific information, I wouldn't let this deter you from such a wonderful experience. The film is even better.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Tie Ins
Review: I hesitate to give 5 stars as it seems to suggest perfection. My 5 stars are to indicate my overwhelming satisfaction with Sagan's book. It ties in the following areas neatly into one sci-fi genre book: physics theories and findings, social science, political science, human behavior, and religion. Now, anyone who can put these categories together in one book is pretty good, anyone who does it seamless is great, anyone who does it seamlessly and keeps you entertained and has a clear point is great - Carl Sagan was great.

First of all, this is a sci-fi book. What differs this from thousands of others is that everything physics related in Contact is either a proven or a proposed theory. Sagan is a phycist by practice.

Secondly, Sagan humanizes the plot line. You are confronted not just a bunch of science jargon or some romantic story but rather a combination of the two which allows both an everyday reader and an astronomy enthusiast enjoy the book equally.

Thirdly, it incorporates our current world beatifully. It is rather mind boggling to think about the kind of research that Sagan had to do in order to write this book. He wrote about many different cultures and fairly protrayed each. Sagan also did a great job portraying power play within and among the governemnts

Finally, Sagan remembered his audience and never forgot to be entertaining and ever so gripping.

Just as a personal note, for a physicist Sagan writes elegantly and descriptively - a rare gem really.

Have fun with the book.

Rating:
Summary: An ok novel, but not great
Review: I saw the movie before reading the novel. In the novel, Ellie Arroway isn't as annoying as the movie's Ellie Arroway: she is not constantly criticizing religion. The movie spent too much time focusing on the question of religion versus science. It is a theme in the novel, but the theme is not as in-your-face as in the movie (for example, Hadden and his Preachnix device).

Unfortunately, the novel is very awkward at introducing backstory: a character is introduced and then the next few paragraphs give a quick biographical sketch of the character. Personally, I'd rather have the backstory of a character introduced in pieces and in surprises. For example, Palmer Joss could have been a much more interesting character if his backstory were introduced much slowly. These sketches should have been editted out.

The last chapter of the novel, was much better than the movie's end. It would've been nice to see what Ellie did with that information from her mother's letter.