Sagan was a visionary beyond time. He understood the beauty of the universe through the laws of physics and how everything converged for them. And how are human beings part of this vast scenario, perhaps the only ones for whom the cosmos exists? 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, flying saucers, or little green men. Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway is a unique chil...

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 may not turn out as positive as it could h...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

"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...