Contact (original 1985; edition 1997)

I've read several of Sagan's non-fiction books prior to this novel, and I strangely found him to be much less engaging here. The first half of Contact reads more like non-fiction than a story, but it's lacking the voice that made his non-fiction so good. The second half of the book, though, once the Machine gets built, suddenly has a lot more heart to it than I was expecting. Now that I'm done with it, I'm finding myself appreciating the whole thing a lot more than I thought I was going to in the beginning.

The main character, Ellie Arroway, is basically a voice for Sagan. She has his same sense of wonder balanced by a skeptic's strict requirement for evidence. I liked the vision that Sagan had of a world whose international conflicts died down once we learned we weren't alone in the universe. ( )

Carl Sagan is a Pulizer-prize winning author from a scientific standpoint, and here he ventures into the world of literary fiction. I can tell by his writing style that Sagan wasn't a novelist at heart, but damn if Contact isn't one fine novel.

The story finds its footing in the first part, then finds its voice in the second, and by the third part I'm reading passages so sublime that I thought I was dreaming. ( )

I adore Carl Sagan. I came to this adoration rather late, through Symphony of Science. So I've intended to pick up Contact for a while, and I'm glad I finally did. It did take me quite a while to get into it -- the level of scientific detail is what was difficult for me, but there were some great scenes: the one that springs to mind is the one where they're lying in bed quoting in the encyclopaedia at each other.

Another thing I loved is that he had a female scientist as his protagonist, and a female president, but he didn't pretend he was writing a work set in a utopian world: Ellie still has to deal with people's prejudices against a female scientist. She wasn't a figure of total wish fulfilment, in any sense.

The sense of wonder at the universe is something Carl Sagan always seems to convey, and it's here as well. One of the very good reasons for reading his work and watching his tv series (and now song videos!).

I might reread this during the summer, when I'm less busy, and can just kick back with it. Because I read it over the course of a few weeks, and while I was reading several other books, I can't quite hold the whole of it in my head, which I'm sure took away some of the pleasure of it. ( )

Sagan's foray into fiction is a solid home run. Who says scientists can't write? Not me. ( )

I should go back and try this again! It's Adam's favorite book. I just wasn't into it - I remember trying to read multiple things at the same time so perhaps I was distracted. ( )