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Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
For anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, "Are we alone?" A brilliant examination of the science behind the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and its pioneer, Jill Tarter, the inspiration for the main character in Carl Sagan's Contact. Jill Tarter is a pioneer, an innovator, an adventurer, and a controversial force. At a time when women weren’t encouraged to do much outside the home, Tarter ventured as far out as she could―into the three-Kelvin cold of deep space. And she hasn’t stopped investigating a subject that takes and takes without giving much back.
Today, her computer's screensaver is just the text “SO…ARE WE ALONE?” This question keeps her up at night. In some ways, this is the question that keep us all up at night. We have all spent dark hours wondering about our place in it all, pondering our "aloneness," both terrestrial and cosmic. Tarter’s life and her work are not just a quest to understand life in the they are a quest to understand our lives within the universe. No one has told that story, her story, until now.
It all began with gazing into the night sky. All those stars were just distant suns―were any of them someone else's sun? Diving into the science, philosophy, and politics of SETI―searching for extraterrestrial intelligence―Sarah Scoles reveals the fascinating figure at the center of the final frontier of scientific investigation. This is the perfect book for anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if we are alone in the universe. 8 pages of color photographs
Today, her computer's screensaver is just the text “SO…ARE WE ALONE?” This question keeps her up at night. In some ways, this is the question that keep us all up at night. We have all spent dark hours wondering about our place in it all, pondering our "aloneness," both terrestrial and cosmic. Tarter’s life and her work are not just a quest to understand life in the they are a quest to understand our lives within the universe. No one has told that story, her story, until now.
It all began with gazing into the night sky. All those stars were just distant suns―were any of them someone else's sun? Diving into the science, philosophy, and politics of SETI―searching for extraterrestrial intelligence―Sarah Scoles reveals the fascinating figure at the center of the final frontier of scientific investigation. This is the perfect book for anyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if we are alone in the universe. 8 pages of color photographs
336 pages, Hardcover
First published July 4, 2017
23 people are currently reading
838 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Scoles
4 books44 followersSarah Scoles is a Colorado-based science journalist, a contributing writer at Popular Science, and a senior contributor at Undark. Her work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, and others. She is also the author of the books Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, and Astronomical Mindfulness. Her forthcoming book is called Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons. Her articles have won the American Geophysical Union's David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Writing (2021) and the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division's Popular Media Award (2019, 2020).
Previously, she was an associate editor at Astronomy and a public education officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.
Previously, she was an associate editor at Astronomy and a public education officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 30, 2017
3.5 STARS
Review soon.
Review soon.
April 23, 2017
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Four stars is a little generous for this competent but somewhat clumsy biography - but I prefer to round up the stars for a book that tries to give an honest and still exciting account of a woman in science of this caliber. Tarter is a fascinating figure not just in her own right, but also as a representative of a certain era of American academic scientists, and of women making their way up through a heavily male-dominated field. The kind of challenges Tarter faced in her early career are (thankfully) almost unimaginable now - but some of the challenges that she and her female colleagues still face are unfortunately not set to disappear any time soon (hi there scientist mothers, don't expect to sleep any time before tenure - and don't even think about your child getting sick and needing to be picked up early).
I have a pet peeve about biographies (and to some extent memoirs) published in the last five years - why do they all believe they need to jump around in the subject's life rather than tell the story chronologically? It seems to originate in some sort of mistaken belief that shifts back and forth will make the narrative more dynamic. To me at least, it really doesn't. But I also understand the difficulty of telling a story like this, which ultimately doesn't lead up to a great "success moment" the way so many biographies do. There's no redemption moment or happy ending awaiting the reader toward the end of Tarter's professional life, because obviously no aliens have been found as of yet. So Scoles has instead tried to make particular moments pop by placing them in an unusual order. I'm not really sure what the answer is to that difficulty, but I still think a straightforward beginning-middle-end structure would've been worth trying.
Four stars is a little generous for this competent but somewhat clumsy biography - but I prefer to round up the stars for a book that tries to give an honest and still exciting account of a woman in science of this caliber. Tarter is a fascinating figure not just in her own right, but also as a representative of a certain era of American academic scientists, and of women making their way up through a heavily male-dominated field. The kind of challenges Tarter faced in her early career are (thankfully) almost unimaginable now - but some of the challenges that she and her female colleagues still face are unfortunately not set to disappear any time soon (hi there scientist mothers, don't expect to sleep any time before tenure - and don't even think about your child getting sick and needing to be picked up early).
I have a pet peeve about biographies (and to some extent memoirs) published in the last five years - why do they all believe they need to jump around in the subject's life rather than tell the story chronologically? It seems to originate in some sort of mistaken belief that shifts back and forth will make the narrative more dynamic. To me at least, it really doesn't. But I also understand the difficulty of telling a story like this, which ultimately doesn't lead up to a great "success moment" the way so many biographies do. There's no redemption moment or happy ending awaiting the reader toward the end of Tarter's professional life, because obviously no aliens have been found as of yet. So Scoles has instead tried to make particular moments pop by placing them in an unusual order. I'm not really sure what the answer is to that difficulty, but I still think a straightforward beginning-middle-end structure would've been worth trying.
June 29, 2017
[Here's an excerpt from my book review in Nature. Here's the full review: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...]
As a child in the 1950s, Jill Tarter would gaze at the stars and wonder, “Are we alone?” That monumental question has driven the astronomer's lifelong quest to find alien life in the Milky Way.
In Making Contact, science writer Sarah Scoles interweaves a profile of Tarter with the tumultuous, decades-long history of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, where Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver chair. Scoles argues that, without Tarter, telescopes and observing programmes focused on SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), such as the Allen Telescope Array and Breakthrough Listen, might not be around today. Yet hers may be a quixotic mission, having failed to receive a single definitive signal so far.
The book's title references Carl Sagan's best-selling 1985 novel, Contact (Simon & Schuster), adapted into the 1997 film directed by Robert Zemeckis. In them, astronomer Ellie Arroway, partly based on Tarter, succeeds in finding an alien signal. Scoles, inspired by Contact, quotes from it: “The Universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
As a child in the 1950s, Jill Tarter would gaze at the stars and wonder, “Are we alone?” That monumental question has driven the astronomer's lifelong quest to find alien life in the Milky Way.
In Making Contact, science writer Sarah Scoles interweaves a profile of Tarter with the tumultuous, decades-long history of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, where Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver chair. Scoles argues that, without Tarter, telescopes and observing programmes focused on SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), such as the Allen Telescope Array and Breakthrough Listen, might not be around today. Yet hers may be a quixotic mission, having failed to receive a single definitive signal so far.
The book's title references Carl Sagan's best-selling 1985 novel, Contact (Simon & Schuster), adapted into the 1997 film directed by Robert Zemeckis. In them, astronomer Ellie Arroway, partly based on Tarter, succeeds in finding an alien signal. Scoles, inspired by Contact, quotes from it: “The Universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
December 3, 2017
This is just a shortened review; I'll be posting a Q&A with the author on Space.com later this month.
I found this to be an excellent biography of Jill Tarter. If you don't know anything about space, SETI, or astrobiology, then here's the quick intro: Tarter is the real-life person that the Jodie Foster character was based on in Carl Sagan's book and movie Contact. If you don't know who Sagan is, I have no words to help you.
Scoles takes the time to seriously dig into Tarter's life and history. Along the way, she charts the path of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This isn't a comprehensive history of SETI, as she brushes only lightly over Sagan and Drake's contributions, except as far as they inspire, motivate and assist Tarter's journey. But it will give you a good idea of the path both the hunt and the agency has taken.
Jill Tarter is an amazing woman. I knew this going into the book, and I know it even more having read it. I'm amazed and impressed at her life and struggles, as well as how she handles both. Scoles did an excellent job portraying her.
Edited to add: Here is my review on Space.com: https://www.space.com/38678-jill-tart...
I found this to be an excellent biography of Jill Tarter. If you don't know anything about space, SETI, or astrobiology, then here's the quick intro: Tarter is the real-life person that the Jodie Foster character was based on in Carl Sagan's book and movie Contact. If you don't know who Sagan is, I have no words to help you.
Scoles takes the time to seriously dig into Tarter's life and history. Along the way, she charts the path of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This isn't a comprehensive history of SETI, as she brushes only lightly over Sagan and Drake's contributions, except as far as they inspire, motivate and assist Tarter's journey. But it will give you a good idea of the path both the hunt and the agency has taken.
Jill Tarter is an amazing woman. I knew this going into the book, and I know it even more having read it. I'm amazed and impressed at her life and struggles, as well as how she handles both. Scoles did an excellent job portraying her.
Edited to add: Here is my review on Space.com: https://www.space.com/38678-jill-tart...
June 26, 2017
Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. I'm an astronomy teacher, and I have shown the movie Contact to my students in the past. As such, I really loved learning more about Jill Tarter and SETI in general. I absolutely envision sharing information about the real Jill Tarter along with our other SETI related discussions.
October 9, 2017
I'm genuinely interested in the subject matter, but this book is terminally dull, dreadfully organized (it's a biography that skips around in time frequently and often with little warning or signalling), and riddled with editorial errors, including some outright ungrammatical sentences. Also, the author cannot put together a reasonable metaphor to save her life. Blech.
July 16, 2017
Three quarters through I put the book down and watched the movie Contact and then continued the book, a very nice combo.
Good job Sarah Scoles, enjoyed the radio interview with you and Jill.
Good job Sarah Scoles, enjoyed the radio interview with you and Jill.
May 22, 2020
Je pense que cette critique sera ma plus rapide de tous les temps, je serais donc brève: une biographie intéressante de Jill Tarter, scientifique au SETI, mais à laquelle je n’ai pas accroché. Ma faute ici, je pensais qu’il allait s’agir d’un livre sur les technologies utilisées par le SETI par exemple (ma vieille habitude de ne me renseigner qu’au minimum sur les livres avant de me lancer dedans). Je ne suis pas fane de biographies ou de mémoires, ce n’est juste pas mon truc. Ceci dit, l’histoire et la carrière de Jill Tarter est très inspirante et son parcours, en tant que femme scientifique née dans les années 40, est louable.
Un petit livre qui plaira je pense à ceux qui veulent en savoir plus sur les grands scientifiques de notre temps !
I think that this critic will be the quickest ever, I will be brief then: an interesting biography about Jill Tarter, director of the SETI, to which I didn’t really click. It’s my fault here, I thought it would be a book about technologies used by the SETI for example (my old habit not to gather information about the books beforehand). I am not a fan of biographies or memoirs, it is just not my thing. That being said, the Jill Tarter’s career and history is very inspiring and her journey, as a scientist woman born in the 40s, is praiseworthy.
A small book which will certainly please those who want to know more about the great scientists of our times !
Un petit livre qui plaira je pense à ceux qui veulent en savoir plus sur les grands scientifiques de notre temps !
I think that this critic will be the quickest ever, I will be brief then: an interesting biography about Jill Tarter, director of the SETI, to which I didn’t really click. It’s my fault here, I thought it would be a book about technologies used by the SETI for example (my old habit not to gather information about the books beforehand). I am not a fan of biographies or memoirs, it is just not my thing. That being said, the Jill Tarter’s career and history is very inspiring and her journey, as a scientist woman born in the 40s, is praiseworthy.
A small book which will certainly please those who want to know more about the great scientists of our times !
May 21, 2018
I picked this up after hearing Tarter speak to the local astronomy club. Her galactic-size worldview and self-assuredness intrigued me, and I wanted to know more.
The book is roughly equal parts biography and history of SETI; well written, though it could have used one more high-level editorial pass to smooth out repetition and some awkward sentences. Tarter herself is an interesting character, an inspiration and role model for many women in the sciences. She came to the end of her career having accomplished many things, but never the one thing that she wanted; dealing with that success/failure is a valuable lesson for any of us.
I also enjoyed the perspective on Contact, both book and movie. I enjoyed them though I never realized what an impact they had on the Ellie Arroways of the world, and how Jill Tarter made it possible.
The book is roughly equal parts biography and history of SETI; well written, though it could have used one more high-level editorial pass to smooth out repetition and some awkward sentences. Tarter herself is an interesting character, an inspiration and role model for many women in the sciences. She came to the end of her career having accomplished many things, but never the one thing that she wanted; dealing with that success/failure is a valuable lesson for any of us.
I also enjoyed the perspective on Contact, both book and movie. I enjoyed them though I never realized what an impact they had on the Ellie Arroways of the world, and how Jill Tarter made it possible.
October 22, 2017
Making Contact is a good biography of an important scientist in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Like a lot of biographies the narration skips around in time a bit, and that can make the timeline of events a bit confusing. There are a a couple of errors that I caught (an incorrect explanation for why we have leap days & the Pioneer probes never photographed Neptune), but all of this doesn't get in the way of the fact that Jill Tarter has been an essential pioneer in the SETI field and an important and unfortunately all too rare role model for women astronomers.
Making Contact does a good job of highlighting the importance of her work and life as a SETI pioneer.
Making Contact does a good job of highlighting the importance of her work and life as a SETI pioneer.
June 24, 2018
This book was quirky, well-researched, and overall delightful. I found the life of Jill Tarter to be inspiring and surprising. I learned a lot about SETI, as someone with very limited previous knowledge. Not having a passion for the subject didn’t make it any less interesting. In fact, I think I just developed a passion for it in the time it took to read this book! Sarah Scoles did a fantastic job bringing this woman’s life and the story of SETI to life. I highly recommend reading it. Now, I think I will go watch Contact...
July 13, 2021
This was an interesting look at Jill Tarter’s career with SETI, one that started at a time when women weren’t encouraged to have careers, let alone in the sciences. I definitely got lost in the scientific weeds at times. At other times I felt like the author jumped too abruptly between decades- going forward in time and then back again. But what I really loved was how at the heart of it all is the idea that humans are curious, and our curiosities are worth exploring, even if we don’t get answers in our own lifetimes.
August 21, 2017
This book was interesting -- especially as a female science consultant inspired by the movie Contact and Jill Tarter's work. The details of Jill's educational and occupational struggles resonated with me, and I was fascinated by the details on the SETI program and its history. However, the book jumped around a bit much and went into what seemed like extraneous detail on many occasions. Overall, a good read, but lengthy in some places (which is why it took so long to read).
November 27, 2017
a very good story about a woman who wanted to find out if we were alone in the Universe or were there others out there in the universe besides us. If you ask yourself the same question this is a good book to read.
February 10, 2019
An interesting read about an impressive woman in science-- something we need far more of.
The timeline was a bit erratic, however, and I found it difficult to understand where we were in the grand scheme of things.
The timeline was a bit erratic, however, and I found it difficult to understand where we were in the grand scheme of things.
February 13, 2021
I probably read this book because I'm interested in women scientists. It is a tribute to a woman astronomer who was/is very serious about extra terrestrials and whom the character Jodie Foster plays in Contact was modeled on. The book was not very well written and not easy to follow.
January 13, 2018
Loved the subject matter, but the writing was hard to read. The timeline skipped around a lot and was hard to follow.
July 4, 2019
Read this book in anticipation of interviewing Dr. Jill Tarter for an indie documentary. Felt as if I already knew her going into it. Great biography.
August 3, 2023
Ms Scoles is a great writer who captures Jill Tarter admirably. If you want an "easy" science read about a ground breaking woman scientist, this book is for you.
December 28, 2017
Not only is this a wonderful, lyrically written book about Jill Tarter’s epic quest to make contact with ET, it’s also a “how to” manual: a guide to best practices for scientific management (and, sadly, mismanagement). It’s easy to make Jill’s life interesting...Carl Sagan took care of that decades ago. It’s much harder to make the former subject matter entertaining and engaging, but Scoles does just that.
Her insight into the challenges and the personalities involved in big science, from government officials, to junior and senior scientists, to temperamental donors provide a guide to the perplexed for those scientists who reach for the stars despite knowing they may never quite be able to grasp them.
Her insight into the challenges and the personalities involved in big science, from government officials, to junior and senior scientists, to temperamental donors provide a guide to the perplexed for those scientists who reach for the stars despite knowing they may never quite be able to grasp them.
August 19, 2018
This is a biography of Jill Tarter, a radio astronomer who dedicated her life to searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life by scanning the radio spectrum for any signals the extraterrestrials might beam at the Solar System. Tarter was made semi-famous as the model for the protagonist of Carl Sagan's novel Contact and the film version starring Jodie Foster. Note that we do not have a good grasp of what life is. Imagine a zoologist who tries to study mammals by studying wolves. Now, the wolf is a fine mammal, but a zoologist who only studies wolves will not know anything about giraffes, manatees, orcas, rhinoceroses, vampire bats or porcupines. Likewise, we only have one example of life, Earth life, which has common biochemistry and genetic code, with very minor variations. No one knows what other biochemistries and genetic codes are possible, and their implications for beings complicated enough to build interstellar radio transmitters. Nor do we have a good definition of intelligent life. If intelligent life means life capable of building interstellar radio transmitters, then humans have only been intelligent for 60 years out of our 200,000 years as a species.
So far, Tarter and her team have not found any signals from intelligent extraterrestrials. We have discovered that we do not live in a Star Trek universe where just about every planet has a civilization at roughly the mid-20th century technological level with corresponding radio emissions. Well, we already know that we do not live in a Star Trek universe where beings less related to humans than spirochetes look like humans with funny ears. It is not even clear whether aliens who want to send a signal to the Solar System would use a radio transmitter, as opposed to a giant laser. So was Tarter's life a waste?
So far, Tarter and her team have not found any signals from intelligent extraterrestrials. We have discovered that we do not live in a Star Trek universe where just about every planet has a civilization at roughly the mid-20th century technological level with corresponding radio emissions. Well, we already know that we do not live in a Star Trek universe where beings less related to humans than spirochetes look like humans with funny ears. It is not even clear whether aliens who want to send a signal to the Solar System would use a radio transmitter, as opposed to a giant laser. So was Tarter's life a waste?
April 7, 2020
Half biography of Jill Tarter and half primer on SETI and astrobiology. The author's admiration for her subject is obvious. I found it very interesting and inspiring.
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December 22, 2017Biog T194s 2017
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