Customer Reviews

Contact: Film Tie-in

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is proof enough that one of the world's greatest space scientists can also write great SF!
It is a super SF novel, but it's more than that. Throughout the book, Carl Sagan's love and hope for the human race shine through.
Eleanora Arroway, a woman who has known her fair share of bad times in her life, eventually becomes the head of a space center which listens for messages from intelligent extraterrestrials. Against all the odds, a message is discovered and deciphered. Instead of being a message telling us how to create the perfect society, or a religious revelation, it turns out to be a blueprint for a highly-advanced machine.
Do they dare build it? And if they do, what will the machine do? Religious fundamentalists battle with governments and scientists to destroy the project. For the machine, chillingly, is clearly designed to carry a team of people...
If the machine is built, who will ride in it, and where will it take them? You will have to read it to find out!
This book has been made into a movie, but, although it's good, I felt that it did not really do justice to the book. This is one of the finest SF novels I've read - great characters, a gripping plot, high adventure, and to cap it all, a wonderful ending (which is not the same as the movie). An uplifting book which I recommend to one and all. Simply fab!

This book is simply brilliant,it flowlessly combines science, science fiction, and a deeply moving story. What would happen if an alien civilization much more advanced than us made contact with us? What would they think about us? How would we feel when we knew that we're no so special as we thought, that there are people more intelligent, more advanced and above all, more civilliced than us? Sagan brilliantly played with these questions along the story, wich tells us about the life of Ellie Arroway, the most deeply involved astronomer in the whole affair of finding a message from allien beings, decoding it, and finally make contact. Through Ellie's point of view, we witness the whole story: Team work of scientist around the globe, political affairs (deep criticism of virtually every political system is descreetly included in Ellie's conversations with her coleages), religious affairs, the achievement of the goal, the hipocrisy and cruelty of politicians, and private aspects of Ellie's life as the death of her father, her relation with her mother and stepfather, her love affairs; this may seem beside the point in this story, but, are scientific questions and doubts such as the existence of extra terrestrial intelligence more important than "simple" personal questions and doubts about our lives? Sagan also played brillantly with this question, and when I finished the book, I started to ponder a few things, as the scientific I am, and as the human being I am. As I said, a deeply moving and exciting story.

Having seen the movie first, and loved it, my expectations were high.

I was not in the least disappointed.

This is a conciousness altering book that provides food for the soul.

Inspiring, deeply moving and full of a wonder that makes you feel young again.

Immediately after finishing Contact I went outside and gazed up at the stars. And smiled.

I'm a huge fan of Carl Sagan, but found this particular foray into fiction the only book of his to be well, a bit boring.

Don't get me wrong, it was really good in places, but for a story it was a little over-technical (ironic from a writer who usually managed to make the most complex and technical things very easy to understand and poetic)

I saw the novel through to the end out of respect to the author (who from his other work I consider one of the greatest thinkers of our time), but have to say, read all of his other books first ('Cosmos' is the best intro to Sagan world in fact) as only a fan will have the loyalty to enjoy this one fully

If you liked the film read the book.
To be honest if i hadn't seen the film I don't think I would have finished the book. You are a bit blinded by science and most of it I only understood because I had seen the film.
I gave it four stars as it is an excellent film and the book is very much the same just in more detail.
Watch the film first though

A romantic story about the abandoned SETI project. Mankind receives plans from outer space to build a spaceship and Ellie Arroway heads up an international effort to build and fly it.

Although the general tone of the book is optimistic and high level, I found it tedious and naïve. This is not a novel, it is a thesis thinly disguised as a novel. The characters don't drive the story, the thesis drives the characters. And as for the thesis, I don't think that stands up either. He makes assumptions that just don't ring true. You can just imagine us (humanity) picking up an episode of a terrible alien soap opera, broadcast from some distant galaxy, and then sending them plans to build a starship so they can come visit. Sure.

The story, as it tries to get underway, is continually held up by the frequent and tedious long lists of people, institutes and theorems, especially theorems: Shannon's famous dictum on information theory, the fourier integral theorem, Losschmidt numbers, Stoke's numbers, Poincare's spheres, Heisenburg's Uncertainty principle, Fermat's last theorem, the Goldbach conjecture, Schwarschild's equations, etc, etc. By the end of the book I was asking myself, has he left out any principle or theorem in the history of physics and mathematics? In a novel this should be backgrounded, we don't need to be blinded by the science. It doesn't add any gravity to the situation (pun not intended). As if this isn't dazzling enough there are the spurious classical quotes at the beginning of each chapter, which I stopped reading. Again, here he is saying, not only do I know every maths and physics theorem in the universe but I've also read all the classical poets and philosophers. He would have served the reader better by writing a book like his friend Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps and leaving novels to the novelists, but hey, this is Science Fiction where the idea is the major protagonist and anybody armed with a handful of theorems can write a novel, (not).

Everything about this novel seemed contrived for effect. Sagan does his not very cool nod to the feminist mood of the times and makes the smart protagonist, Ellie, a woman. Then a new Bodhisattva proclaims herself and even the president of the USA is a woman, whereas most of the men end up pistol pointing jerkoffs.
`Too dam fast.... Hitler's bullcrap.' Is this the way a female president of the USA would talk?

THE ALIEN MACHINE

The construction of the machine is a masterpiece of tedium. It seems that Sagan never learnt (this being his only novel we might be tempted to let him off) that description does not equal plot. The machine itself with its armchairs and spinning benzels reminded me of the Victorian whirlygig in the Time Machine, a movie of the novel by HG Wells starring Guy Pearce. Sagan's alien spaceship seems more like a contraption designed to convey Dorothy to see the wizard of Oz than a spaceship to take us to the stars.

Sagan seems to think that the building of a machine from blueprints received from outer space would unite the human race. I think it much more likely that an imminent attack from outer space would unify the world in the way Sagan describes rather than the prospect of building an alien machine that no one understands. However, for me, the most dangerous and naïve assumption he makes in his book by far, is the idea that a technologically superior civilisation should in any way also be morally or ethically superior. Tell that to the North American Indians. This is an assumption that has no basis in our experience here on earth. In fact the opposite is quite usually the case: Technologically superior cultures invariably end up having imperial ambitions made possible by their technology, and show themselves to be greedy and brutally amoral in the pursuit of those ambitions. If it comes to it, I think a morally and ethically superior civilisation would not be interested in making Contact. It would, in its sage wisdom, cloak itself in a huge EM de-coupler and remain discretely hidden from any empire building aliens (like us).

THE CLIMAX

If you have no great ending, no great climax towards which your story is heading then you have failed and so have your characters. I think this is the case with Contact.
A space-time diagram drawn using the Krezkel-Szekers co-ordinates. Ellie didn't know what they were talking about? And nor do we, so why include it, does it add to the story? Storytelling s primarily an emotional not an intellectual experience. It is an emotional expression of the writer. Sci-fi has been called a fiction where the idea is the protagonist but this does not contradict the axiom. At least Stephen Hawking was smart enough to know he wasn't a novelist.

So what is the story about? Contact with Aliens? Did we get the feeling we made contact? The structure of a well written story should be the acting out of this idea not by discussion or dialogue, but by action and there was far too little of that in this story. Where are the conflicts, the ironies and the insights. To me Contact was ultimately just some romantic nonsense about how a message from space would unify the human race. It lost me.

Wolf Sonderhausen

I read this book in a single go, I was so enthralled. For those of you who have seen the movie, the book is way more complex, there are a profusion of additional characters (and they all seem to be vital to the story! I wonder how they made away with them in the movie...), and there is much more reflection on the nature of religion and science, the nature of existence and more. Carl Sagan, however, has intertwined these so finely with the story that it never becomes boring. The story itself is very gripping, all the way to the end. I found it to be a thrilling story, not only from a storytelling point of view, but also because of the amazing science, religion, art and culture packed into this book. As one reviewer aptly put it, with Terrestrials like Mr. Sagan, who needs Extras?

The movie drew me to this book as the concept behind it was so fascinating. What if we made contact with another world, what would it mean for humans as a species and what questions would it raise? Carl Sagan combines a unrelenting narrative with accessible, fascinating science, to produce a really unforgettable read. I am not an astronomer and have no physics background, but it made me wish otherwise. Not because this book was hard to understand, but because it made me want to explore the issues raised in more detail. How could we travel through a black hole? Would causality be affected by intense gravitational fields? How could anyone possibly cast Matthew Mcconaughey in such a great story? All very difficult questions. I don't have the answers but this book made me wish I did.

Carl Sagan is one of those people whose legacy seems untouchable. From the Pale Blue Dot and his work with NASA to the groundbreaking and essential TV series Cosmos you'll never hear a bad word spoken about him. He's one of those people who just makes you damn proud to be human. I cracked through the box set of Cosmos in under a week and was eager for more. I was excited by the prospect of Sagan having a whole novel to stretch out his ideas and was curious about how the passion and intelligence he displayed on screen would translate to the page.

What a shame then that this book is such a crushing bore! Massive theme's, breathtaking consequences. A protagonist vindicated before the whole world and realising a life's dream; contact with beings from another world! Do we sense any of this? I'm sorry but I didn't. The enthusiasm evident in Sagan's TV programs is all but absent from his prose. The writing is so dry, academic and thuddingly dull. There's just no personality or style to it. I wasn't expecting loads of laughs or anything but this book is as close to being amusing as we are to a faint star in a distant galaxy. Characters still need to be human, not machines for the pursuit of science or puppets to espouse the authors theories on Religion and politics. Dr Arroway, our protagonist, is given an injection of excitement and personality when she reveals that she is pretty liberated sexually. Not that she is given a chance to persue her penchant for experimentation; it forms no part of the plot and her only love interest is a lukewarm affair which peters out weakly. Really, her liking sex has more to do with Sagan's ideas on Feminism than it does to her character. Similarly we are presented with two religious characters, one closed minded and fundamentalist, the other open minded, giving Arroway (an Atheist) a chance to argue with both faces of religious intuitionalism. Can you guess who comes out on top? The shame is that as a respected scientist and thinker Sagan does have great idea's on a wide range of subjects but the whole book smacks more of a thought experiment than it does a novel. I have to say if it wasn't for the strength of the ideas and my respect for the man I'd have given up a long way before the finish. My curiosity did win out, and I really wanted to read Sagan's vision for first contact between Humans and an Alien race. The result is believable and fairly spectacular, or at least it would be if, like the rest of the book, the life wasn't drained out of it by the dull characters and duller writing.

I saw the movie and i was amazed.It had great excitement and and an excellent story to it. I got the book and i loved the sense of wonder i got from it about the stars. This really is a great book but see the movie first as although the movie is based on the book it is almost totally different in terms of characters and basically i enjoyed the book more because i saw the movie first.