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Contact
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I find the description of character dynamics, scientific process and, especially, politics of and around science very believable. Science is supposed to be rational, but scientists are only people; those who find their prejudices threatened by it especially so :-)I wonder how would most readers find the central idea of the novel: religious or not. I fall in the latter category; I think that the idea of a multitude, perhaps a hierarchy of Universes has nothing to do with religion. Granted, it is very difficult to imagine how would we go about finding anything about it ourselves, unless the creators (note lowercase "c") left their calling card of some kind. But "how Big bang came about" is an open question, and an idea that someone initiated it is as good as any.
Note that many scientist turned SF authors used the motif of "created universe(s)", whether it is ours that is the result of "Cosmogony 101" course on some university for meta-beings, or it is us who create "daughter universe(s)", like in Benford's Cosm.
All this is, of course, an "excuse" to speak about us, as any good SF (or indeed any literature) should, I think Sagan succeeded here. While the cosmological aspect is very interesting (and slightly surprising when reading the novel for the first time), I don't think it was Sagan's point.
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We recently buddy watched the movie of this over on the groups discord and commented on how basic the math was that the producers had the character spewing. I was glad that instead of a drawn out explanation of Occams Razor we got discussions of transcendental numbers and easily digestable breakdowns of how to calculate pi, for example. Yes, calculus can be cool.
There were a fair few observations that I enjoyed thinking about. Two examples in particular come to mind. The first being how modern technology and the move to cities as we know them have resulted in later generations being ignorant of the star filled sky that previous generations always had to inspire them.
The second was how the language of science has changed over the centuries from latin, german, and to present day English. It was nice to think that a couple of hundred years from now the most progressive ideas in science would be being debated most commonly in Hindi.
Sagan did a good job of recognizing the wider worlds contributions to science and not so subtly admonishing
The commentary on the struggles some people impose on Women in STEM was fairly basic, but it easily cleared the low threshold required for the work (and Sagan) to be called feminist. Kudos! The story could have done with the POV character having a healthy relationship with another woman, but that would be needlessly nitpicky on my part. (It really could have though)
An aspect of the story that I found less appealing was the scientific zealot vs Christian zealot arguments. I imagine they would appeal to antitheists and those of the mind that if you just say enough words, the right words, in the right combination, you can change the strongly held beliefs of another. I don't fall into either of those camps and so found all the exchanges to be intellectual noncery. It occasionally verged on the amusing, but Christ... what a flogging it became.
How I have written this many paragraphs without mention of first contact or maths as a universal language (and the idea being somewhat debunked in recent years) is beyond me, but this will have to do for now.
Ryan wrote: "those of the mind that if you just say enough words, the right words, in the right combination, you can change the strongly held beliefs of another."That is, whose who suffer from the delusion that people think and are willing to consider arguments. I admit that I often fall prey to that delusion, even now, deep in my 60s. But with Sagan, I feel I am in good company.
I found this book very slow at first, and I kept reading a little and then putting it down for a while, and then picking it up and reading a little and putting it down again. Finally, I just committed to finishing it today and read the rest in one big chunk (though I did skim some parts). I went into the book knowing nothing about it and having not seen the movie. I thought the overall story was very interesting. My favorite parts were around the science and wonder about the universe - when the scientists discovered the communication, the Message, working together with scientists from all over the world to figure out the Message, the trip in the Machine. I also liked that there was a strong female scientist as the protagonist. Even though the first 1/3 took a while for me to read, I still enjoyed it.
I found the political wrangling to be very believable, but not enjoyable to read. I was surprised by the religious element (not sure why, thinking on it now - it was also very believable), and I skimmed a lot of those sections - especially the long back and forth debates of science versus religion. I'm still not sure what I think about the ending - the letter from Ellie's mother about her biological father. I felt like Sagan had some specific things he wanted readers to take away from the book, but I almost wish the story would have stopped sooner - after the five returned in the Machine but before they interacted with anyone, so that the reader was left to decide how things played out and what the ultimate message of the experience was.
Edited to add - I'm not sure if I'll watch the movie now. I'll be interested to see what others who have watched it say about it in comparison to the book.
Quite enjoyed this, though I do think it could have been an effective & exciting novella without some of the slightly tedious cruft.Interesting that the novel was written just at the end of the Cold War, so the idea of an external power causing a new spirit of global cooperation may have been inspired by that opening up.
I liked the science around the message and the contact experience itself. But I was frustrated that there wasn't more about the questions and answers received by the others in the 5 - we only really heard Ellie's dialog.
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I went looking for more about maths as a universal language and read articles from teachers detailing their difficulties in teaching maths to Non-English speaking students effectively claiming that maths isn't even good for initially communicating with other humans, let alone other intelligent lifeforms.
Ryan wrote: "@Kaia, considering your critiques I would definitely recommend that you watch the movie. The ending is more ambiguous and whilst religion v science is still a theme of the story it's much reduced..."
Thanks, Ryan! I will give the movie a try.
Also, you make an interesting point about math as a (maybe not) universal language. I hadn't considered comparing Contact and
the stories around math / language in Stories of Your Life, but they do make an intriguing contrast (also with Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, which offers yet another idea around language). I think ultimately, whatever method is used to communicate has to be able to translated into language by both sides to be effective - perhaps it is more about pattern making / recognition, which is a strong point in the favor of mathematics, but also in other methods as well.
Ryan wrote: "I went looking for more about maths as a universal language and read articles from teachers detailing their difficulties in teaching maths to Non-English speaking students effectively claiming that maths isn't even good for initially communicating with other humans, let alone other intelligent lifeforms."Math requires a great deal of dedicated study to understand well, and natural aptitude helps too. Teaching it does require language as a medium, so of course it's going to be difficult if language is a barrier. But professional mathematicians can follow proofs written by mathematicians who speak different languages, and in any first contact scenario there are going to be competent mathematicians on both sides, who could at least initiate contact.
Book was interesting to me on a lot of levels. I think it was written in 1985 which was college for me so it was interesting to see all the ways it was an 1980s perspective. I was really surprised by all the discussion of Christianity. I thought it was just an atheist bashing religion but it was more like a discussion of how to search for truth or something like that.
I like this kind of science fiction. I would like to find more books like it. I joke with my family about whether any movie or TV show has "space aliens" and this one did so that is why I liked it.
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That's part of the argument Stories of Your Life makes where it shows mathematicians only getting a response from the aliens when they tried sharing higher level math theory/proofs. More basic maths like the sending of prime numbers in Contact wouldn't work.
1,3,5,7,11
I, III, V, VII, XI
1, 11, 101, 111, 1011
What are the chances of ancient Greeks recognising that these sequences convey the same data? How would an alien species that doesn't know any of our numbering systems know?
As far as initial contact goes, if a stranger in a foreign country threw a maths proof at me I'd dodge and run. It's not an ice breaker that encourages further conversation. Mathematics as we know it isn't universal, it's international. There's no reason to believe that an alien species would express maths theory in a way that we would understand or vice versa.
Why would competent mathematicians be on both sides in a first contact scenario? Surely that would require advanced planning making it second contact at best?
Civilised first contact, the contact that comes after determining whether this strange thing is a threat or edible, requires recognising Intelligence in an other and the decision to convey your own via numerous interactions/conversations. I wouldn't start with pi. The non human person you're initiating contact with might be a dance major.
I read this shortly after it was published and then saw the movie when that came out, so a re-read was in order. I enjoyed this book immensely. Although it is focused on first contact, it has the grand style of classic science fiction that reminds me a little of Olaf Stapledon. It is definitely hard sf, with a nitty-gritty focus on math and cosmology. While we can debate (as folks have done in this thread) whether math is the appropriate language for first contact, Sagan provides a detailed and plausible argument in the story for why it could work the way he outlines it. (Short of a real first contact, we can't prove it one way or the other.) The cosmology is also fun. I have seen recent writings on Einstein-Rosen bridges as possible wormholes across space. I would also call the book audacious in reaching for a Unified Field Theory of God and Science.I liked the geopolitics and thought they were realistically written. Bear in mind that Contact was published in 1985. The whole dynamic with the Soviets has a Brezhnev-era feel to it (even Khrushchev). It fits that period well. I grant, it does not project well to the late-nineties, but I can ignore the dates and still appreciate the story. Rankin does remind me of some of the mega-preachers of that era, so I think the religion component works as well.
Of the characters, Ellie is terrific. She is a superb character, brilliant, driven, troubled with self-doubt. She has enough flaws to be real and makes a great hero. When I first read this, I thought Hadden did not make sense. Now, I see him as an Elon Musk type and he works for me. Palmer Joss is not developed enough for me; he is convenient to the plot. The other characters are really archetypes, which is okay, I think, for this type of story. The character interactions, however, I found relatively devoid of emotion or true feeling. We are told a character felt a certain way, but I don't "feel" it from the writing. A little bloodless, if you will.
I alos enjoyed the movie and would recommend it as well. They trimmed a number of characters but kept fairly close to the flow of the book. The ending of the movie (as I think someone already wrote) is less clear but does not change the interpretation. Jodie Foster is a good Ellie Arroway.
Overall, I would say very, very, good. Top-notch hard sf.
Ryan wrote: That's part of the argument Stories of Your Life makes where it shows mathematicians only getting a response from the aliens when they tried sharing higher level math theory/proofs. More basic maths like the sending of prime numbers in Contact wouldn't work. Why wouldn't it work?
Ryan wrote: 1,3,5,7,11
I, III, V, VII, XI
1, 11, 101, 111, 1011
What are the chances of ancient Greeks recognising that these sequences convey the same data? How would an alien species that doesn't know any of our numbering systems know?
If you're sending signals consisting only of some kind of pulse on a radiowave, the written form of the number doesn't enter into it. It's only the count and time, both of which are culturally independent.
Ryan wrote: Why would competent mathematicians be on both sides in a first contact scenario? Surely that would require advanced planning making it second contact at best?
First contact being defined as sending out a deliberate message would require mathematicians to encode the message. A narrow definition of a chance meeting would of course likely not have linguists or mathematicians, but surely a second meeting would.
The primary point I'm trying to make is that I agree with Sagan in that mathematics is the way that is most likely to firmly establish intelligence in a way that does not require language. I think it is a relatively uncontroversial statement that any sapient species that has technology that allows for interstellar communications and especially spaceflight or would have to have fairly advanced mathematics.
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While the writing is stilted in the abundance of exposition, I found it fascinating. I thought I’d at least enjoy the science (if I could figure out what was science and what was fiction). The focus on religion bothered me mostly because I feared it would end up being a story of faith. No one believed her. So the twist at the end, with the reveal of her father blew me away, then the message in pi. Makes the whole thing quite brilliant for me. On the whole, the movie is pretty faithful to the book, necessarily cutting out lots to fit the time frame. Except for changing the ending. I can see cutting the step father (if I recall correctly) and maybe calculating pi wasn’t film friendly. Where I think the movie would disappoint (I saw it not long ago, but don’t remember exactly), is whether Ellie gets the satisfaction she gets in the book.
That Sagan originally wrote the book as a film treatment was interesting and I assume what followed was to his liking, though he didn’t live to see it.
I’m about 1/3 through and am finding it very dry - It reads more like ‘scientific journal fiction’ though I did just notice that my copy is abridged so now I’m wondering if that plays into it.
Sarah wrote: "I’m about 1/3 through and am finding it very dry ..."The first part was a little slow for me. There were a couple of spots in the end that slowed down, but the overall work to me was very interesting.
It definitely picked up. And having not seen the movie, I was hooked and finished it today. I usually don’t like religion aspects in sci fi but this felt more ‘faith’ in a cool way.
Sarah wrote: "It definitely picked up. And having not seen the movie, I was hooked and finished it today. I usually don’t like religion aspects in sci fi but this felt more ‘faith’ in a cool way."I was surprised by the religion aspect also. I noticed that the audio version was narrated by Jodie Foster which I think would be fun to try. I read the paper book.
I listened to the Jodi Foster audiobook and really enjoyed it, but the version my library has is abridged which I didn't realize right away. I love the movie and it felt right to hear her telling the story, but I also read a paper copy in tandem as I usually do with audiobooks.
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(last edited Mar 22, 2023 05:15PM)
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rated it 5 stars
I thought it a wonderful SF novel! It covers every basis of discussion both fiction and non-fiction readers have ever talked about in regards to what first contact might be like, and how it would play out given the politics of the different factions on Earth, if that contact were with an intelligent space species and not Daleks.
I don’t think the book was entirely about faith, it was more about fatherhood, I think. Humans seem to find fatherhood important to know, whether it was the man mom married or someone she never told anyone, or if it was a god, or if the Earth was seeded. Although mom is clearly important, Humanity has ruminated about the father who created us for a lot more centuries, both in the parental sense and in the theological sense and in the cosmological sense. It’s maybe kinda pathetic of us, I suppose, but no culture has not wasted a lot of ink, so to speak, on this question in all of its ‘faces’.
aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "I don’t think the book was entirely about faith, it was more about fatherhood,..."Interesting insight. The aliens spoke to her as her dead father and then she finds out that her stepfather is her biological father. In the end there is some unknown alien(s) who created the transportation system and put a message in Pi, having created math. Overall I was surprised that all this was included. Kind of wish I knew what the author was thinking. Makes me want to read Cosmos.
I just finished! My topline takeaway is that I loved it, and was really surprised at how good a fiction writer Sagan was.I won't blow up the thread with all my thoughts, so you can read my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
As for what I thought the book said about geopolitics, a few things stood out to me:
1. I'm always fascinated by how no one expected the USSR to dissolve. Sagan makes no note to the country's collapse, and this book was written only about 6 years before the dissolution.
2. He does a good job showing how immature geopolitical squabbling are in the grand scheme of the universe. Talking about the South African crisis juxtaposed against the billions of stars really sets the stage that our disputes are important, but trivial compared to the world.
3. He thinks our economies are poorly run. I believe it was one of the ETs who said "your economies are chaotic and childlike," or something along those lines.
Would love to here everyone else's thoughts!
Also, do we ever learn who blew up the American Machine? I assumed it was a religious fundamentalist, but that was never confirmed.
I think it was religious fundamentalists, too, but like you said, Joe, I don’t believe it was confirmed.
aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "I don’t think the book was entirely about faith, it was more about fatherhood, I think. Humans seem to find fatherhood important to know, whether it was the man mom married or someone she never tol..."Thank you. I like it better now.
Mainly I'm here to say thank you all for getting this off my 'bucket list.' I really wish I'd read it when it was newer and I was younger. Lots of good stuff, including good writing, but just doesn't do much for me now. But I def. appreciate every comment you-all have made.
Bobby wrote: "I was really surprised by all the discussion of Christianity. I thought it was just an atheist bashing religion but it was more like a discussion of how to search for truth or something like that.."Don't forget that our Universe in "Contact" was created, just not by Abrahamic deity, complete with the creators' "fingerprint" in one of fundamental constants of mathematics.
Sagan had no problem with an idea of a hierarchy of Universes, or with some agency behind the Big Bang, or something like that; only with "my Holy Book is better than your Holy Book, and don't you dare doubting it" mentality.
I liked the start of this one, but as it went on I felt myself losing interest. The long passages about speculative ways the science might work (Pi is a hidden code! Wormholes to benevolent universe caretakers along a black hole subway system, cryo-sleep from freezing your body in space) along with the religious philosophizing (Ellie having to deal with doubting Thomas-like reaction from officials on her return - the whole father thing at the end ) just didn't connect with me.
I know that almost any SFF falls apart under too harsh a scrutiny (yet it's my preferred genre -- I love Star Wars for example all the while realizing it has many flaws), but here I feel like I just wasn't able to keep up my suspension of disbelief and the inherent story outside the speculative ideas wasn't enough. Someone said that this felt like reading a textbook and I got that vibe, but moreover I felt like I was reading a textbook full of things that aren't true.
I did like the scene of Ellie with her alien "dad" -- there is something magical about that moment where some entity with so much more understanding of everything could answer some of life's questions, but it was too short a sequence in a long book to make up for the deficiencies I felt.
I know Sagan was a big proponent of SETI and I felt like maybe knowing that I was feeling like this was propaganda pushing for his agenda -- not sure if that's an entirely fair reading of it, but it's how I felt and I didn't love reading a commercial for something,
Christopher wrote: "I liked the start of this one, but as it went on I felt myself losing interest. The long passages about speculative ways the science might work (Pi is a hidden code! Wormholes to benevolent unive..."
I don't believe I was as unmotivated as you, but I do agree Sagan spent a lot of time "proving" that this interaction of SciFi could be real. I imagine he's determined to have his work hold up under the scientific scrutiny that has been applied to his academic writings, but I agree it caused points of ramblings.
A few questions to get us started:
1. What did you think of the way geopolitics were handled?
2. What did you think of the main character relationships?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?