Reading 1001 discussion

Rating: 5 Stars
Read: September 2016

This book reminds me that I need to read more sci-fi, my original first love in literature. This book is brilliant, fascinating, and very thought-provoking. It is the story of first contact with extraterrestrial life. I watched the movie many years ago and enjoyed it. Since it was so long ago I can't say how much the movie adhered to the book. The book is definitely better. Unfortunately, this is Sagan's only novel. The rest of his books are scientific non-fiction books on astronomy. A sequel would have been great.

I think it is definitely worthy of its spot on the list.

Diane wrote: "Rating: 5 Stars
Read: September 2016

This book reminds me that I need to read more sci-fi, my original first love in literature. This book is brilliant, fascinating, and very thought-provoking. It..."

I keep meaning to get to this book. I'm happy to see your review and thinking I should bump it up on my TBR.

Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: March 2020 for my TBR challenge

Had I not picked up this book just at the same time as the COVID-19 outbreak, I am positive I would have enjoyed it more and rated it higher. Because it was good, but my mind was elsewhere, and I was not able to pay fully attention to all the details, which there were a lot of. It also didn't help that the narrator (I heard it as an audio from Audible) clearly had a cold during large parts of the book.

However, to be clear, I did enjoy it. Not so much for the prose or the character development, but the ideas and the story were great. Sagan did a good job in explaining the physics behind, so that it was understandable for us that don't have extensive knowledge in science.

Basically what I took from the book was the following; be curious, ask questions and learn - but also remember to tend to your heart.

I was surprised to actually enjoy this book. This is a book by the scientist/TV star Carl Sagan. He wrote this for TV and it was published in 1985. A book that addressed many issues still present; the struggle of science, politics, religion and equity. The book addresses issues between religion and science s well as other items of globalism. The whole experience of traveling via machine through various passages, talking with someone she had loved in life and then not being able to prove any of it when she returns all parallels a religious experience of wonder. The book reveals a scientist (Sagan) to not be as hard cored atheist as his reputation affirmed. As a novel, it may have been a bit dry, lacking somewhat in the amount of anxiety, fear and tension that would have resulted from a message from space. With that said, I now think about The Three-Body Problem which also is about receiving a message from space.

I gave this book Contact 4 stars for its broad look at the scientific possibilities of the nature of the universe and our place in it, coupled with some very intimate human verbal investigations into religion and what exactly informs our beliefs and our faith. This dual dynamic I thought was well balanced. I liked the main character Dr. Ellie Arroway and thought she represented someone quite human in her faith in scientific method which is based on skepticism and data, while she was still able to feel strong emotions and straight forward awe when viewing the stars. I thought it was an interesting science fiction in that the world did not tumble into terror filled chaos and economic disaster in the face of a message from aliens, and I liked that it was not full of monsters but rather aliens more advanced than us but still displaying some frailty in that they didn't have all the answers.

I found this book absolutely fascinating. Sagan talks about numinosity and how wonder at the universe does not have to be coupled with religion. His characters discuss the big issues without pontificating. The biggest issue of the moment now, is how so many apparently well educated people distrust science. This theme is thoroughly and satisfyingly discussed. Sagan wrote this book 35 years ago and was amazingly prescient on many things. Sadly, the U.S.A. has not yet elected a female president, and the mention of the lifts in the World Trade Centre had me skip a heartbeat. But his story of tentative exploration of signals from another planet was feasible and entertaining. I have not read any of his non-ficton, seen his television programs nor watched the movie of this book, but I was pleased to have read it.

I have just found Amanda's questions.