“Contact: A Novel”, by Carl Sagan

Sagan, Carl. Contact: a Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print.

I made the mistake of watching the movie adaptation before reading the book.  Although it didn’t specifically ruin the book for me, I did find myself huffily pointing out to my husband all the things that they had changed for the movie.  I know that a fat book like this has to be trimmed to make a regular-length movie, but changing huge parts of the character’s life – like having her mother dead in the movie, but alive in the book – seems like gross negligence that in no way improved or the story or made it easier to tell.  I also resented the fact that the female president in the book is replaced by Bill Clinton, president at the time of the movie’s making, presumably as an excuse to use some doctored footage of Clinton.

In any case, the book on its own is a thoughtful look at how human society worldwide might react to the news that we are not alone in the universe, from one of America’s most respected scientists.  As far as I know this is the only novel  Sagan has written.  The conflict between religion and science plays a big part, with main character Ellie Arroway arguing on and off throughout the book with Palmer Joss, a religious leader and advisor to the President.  Although the book is set in a near but not specified future, that future is actually behind where we are now; some technologies that are described never came into being, nuclear arms reduction treaties with the USSR are being implemented.  Those anomalies are charming rather than annoying, though.

This book was on my nightstand for a long time.  If I hadn’t known how it ended already, I might have been tempted to race through it, but it was good bedtime reading for a month or longer.  I could easily pick it up and put it down every night, with no danger that I’d stay up until 1am reading it.  I suppose that’s not really a rousing endorsement, but I wish I had more books I could do that with.