But, as it is, I actually like Contact a lot, so it should not be a problem to stay objective.
Maybe this will sound a bit cold hearted but if I had not liked Contact, I would probably have had to wait a few hours, before I gave it a good trashing. I'm about to write a review of a book by a person, that I just a few minutes ago found out to be dead. Foreign rights: S & S.Contact is the first I have read by Carl Sagan and (shame on me) I don't know anything about him, so I do a search on his name on the web and it takes me about two minutes to find that he has just died, this December (1996)! I find myself in a very strange situation, thanks to the free flow of information. First serial to Discover Magazine BOMC selection. However, his informed and dramatically enacted speculations into the mysteries of the universe, taken to the point where science and religion touch, make his story an exciting intellectual adventure and science fiction of a high order. Sagan's characters, mostly scientists, are credible without being memorable, and he supplies a love interest that is less than compelling.
Then she and fellow members of a small multinational team board the machine, take a startling trip into outer spaceand on their return must convince the scientific community that they are not the perpetrators of a hoax. Ellie is instrumental in decoding the message and building the ``Machine'' for which it gives instructions (despite stiff opposition from religious fundamentalists and those scientists and politicians who fear it may be a Trojan Horse). A worldwide system of radio telescopes, in the charge of brilliant astrophysicist Ellie Arroway, picks up a ""Message'' from outer space. Who could be better qualified than the author of the highly successful Cosmos to turn the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, and humankind's first contact with it, into imaginative reality? This is precisely what Sagan does in this eagerly awaited and, as it turns out, engrossing first novel.
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