My most recent reading is Contact by Carl Sagan, 1985, 484 pages.
I enjoyed this book a lot. It was only last year that I started reading science fiction, and I have become quite a convert to the genre. Reading Contact was a mistake, but a good one. I had thought, when I was downloading this novel to my e-reader, that I was getting his famous non-fiction work Cosmos, but it was a happy mistake.
Contact is the story of Dr. Ellie Arroway, who, in her position as director and radio astronomer in a New Mexico facility, is among the first to intercept a message transmitted from a planet in a different galaxy. What happens next, and the people who populate the tale, make for a fascinating book, strong on science and just as strong on the emotions of the characters. I learned a lot while reading it. Dr. Sagan was a radio astronomer and involved with SETI [Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence] as was Dr. Arroway and I couldn't help but feel that the novel was perhaps Sagan's wish-fulfillment, his dream of contact from alien life.
I will give the book 4 out of 5 stars; it's losing a star for the lack of explanation about a couple of human relationships improperly explained and for some of the science that went well over my head.
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