The novel “Contact” by Carl Sagan was published for the first time in 1985. It won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.
Since she was a child, Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway showed an excellent aptitude for scientific subjects. Her father encouraged her but he died when she was still a child. Her mother remarried and her stepfather had much more conservative ideas about the role of a woman, resulting in a tense relationship between the two of them.
Despite the obstacles, Ellie earned a doctorate and started working in the field of radio astronomy. She ended up becoming the director of the Argus Project for the search for signals sent by extraterrestrial intelligences. A signal from the star Vega is detected showing clear indications of an artificial origin. The consequences are significant and include the problems brought by Christian preachers who try to make their vision prevail.
Carl Sagan was a famous science communicator and throughout his career he always supported a position of scientific skepticism. For this reason, he also addressed with rationality and rigor topics connected to the possibility of contacts with extraterrestrial intelligences becoming one of the founders of the SETI project precisely because it was set up on scientific foundations.
Carl Sagan’s career was also linked to some television productions and a project was started to produce a science fiction movie based on the reception of an alien message by the SETI project. He had already collaborated with Ann Druyan, a producer and also a science communicator, and the two of them ended up getting married. The new collaboration in this movie project accumulated delays in the development of the production and Sagan decided to transform the screenplay into a novel in which he expressed his ideas.
The author took several sources of inspiration in the creation of the protagonist Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway starting from Ann Druyan even if the main source was the SETI researcher Jill Tarter. Through Ellie’s personal story, Carl Sagan explored the possible consequences of receiving a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
The theme wasn’t new but in general, the deciphering of the message was the central element of this type of plot while Carl Sagan explored above all the social ramifications, and that also means religious, and political. The discoveries connected to the alien message seem to lead to other questions. While developing the various consequences of the information obtained, Carl Sagan tells the attempts to explore the unknown.
All this becomes even more important when the message reveals the design of a machine. Sometimes, its construction almost seems like an excuse to discuss the issues related to human reactions and the situations that result from them also at an international level. The unknown generates fears that can be new or new facets of old fears.
Carl Sagan wrote “Contact” at the time of the Cold War but not much seems to have changed and certain technologies such as the teleprinter seem much further away in time than international tensions. On various occasions, it seems that the real challenge doesn’t consist in deciphering the alien message and building a machine that requires extraordinary technological efforts but rather in getting the various nations on the same page. This is a characteristic that represents the point of the novel very well.
The political influence of religious leaders in the USA is also an element that is very present decades later and the author is harsh when he comments through Ellie on fideism and the influence of that attitude on the entire nation. In some ways, there’s a contrast between fideism and the attempts to investigate the unknown with a scientific attitude, with the constant search for evidence, even when it seems to be on the edge of the impossible.
Eventually, the plan to produce a film was brought to fruition under the direction of Robert Zemeckis, with Jodie Foster starring as Ellie. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
Some parts of “Contact” have a very science fiction sense of wonder but the novel is mostly made up of conversations in which different characters compare their opinions. The story spans several years even without considering the beginning about Ellie’s personal story and this helps to keep the pace slow. It’s the story of an alien message but it concerns humanity from various points of view with a lot of food for thought. If this interests you, I highly recommend reading it. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
