Angela Mitchell answers “So he writes a book mocking people who...”

A Goodreads user asked this question about The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:

So he writes a book mocking people who believe they or others have meet or been kidnapped by aliens. but he wrote a bestseller about a women meeting aliens in the book Contact? What book did he write first?

Angela Mitchell You definitely didn't read this book.

1. TDHW is nonfiction; CONTACT is fiction. Comparing the two isn't really appropriate and is counterproductive.

2.…moreYou definitely didn't read this book.

1. TDHW is nonfiction; CONTACT is fiction. Comparing the two isn't really appropriate and is counterproductive.

2. Sagan didn't mock anyone in TDHW, and in the anecdote you describe, he isn't mocking people for believing in alien encounters, but for being gullible enough to do so with zero evidence or scientific proof. Nobody would have been happier than Sagan to be able to verify that actual contact had taken place.

3. Nobody was more dedicated in the search for extraterrestrial life than Sagan, who himself started SETI. "Contact" is his fictional exploration of what that encounter might have been like.

He wrote "Contact" many years before "The Demon-Haunted World."(less)

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The Demon-Haunted World

by Carl Sagan

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