And she has to struggle to maintain a position of control, as many other people are trying to muscle in on the glory. She sends out the information to scientific installations around the world, which attracts the ire of the American government. Once she is in charge of her own SETI project, she finds a signal coming from the star system Vega (in a scene that is fairly dull - this is definitely one scene that the movie does better). The first two chapters recapitulate Ellie's life for us, as a precocious child and then fighting her way through male-dominated scientific fields. Eleanor Arroway (Ellie) is an astronomer who is obsessed with SETI. Contact can be a bit dry at times, due to the burden of all these themes, but it's also a decent read. It's not surprise that the book is about many of Sagan's key concerns: how science is done, how scientific findings can be communicated to non-scientists, the relationship between science and religion, the strange and interesting personalities of scientists, SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), and what a breakthrough discovery in SETI might be like. Contact, Carl Sagan, Pocket, 1985, 434 pp.Ĭontact is the only novel by the noted science writer and astronomer, Carl Sagan.
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