Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

One of the most interesting themes in SF, and also one of my personal favorites, is the theme of first contact. The theme is not exactly unique to SF - think of European contact with the New World, Roman contact with various barbarians, etc.- though these days it would probably seem so. In SF "first contact" stories deal with mankind's first contact with alien races. Even if you exclude all of the uses of this theme in Star Trek, the genre is chock full of examples. And although it is difficult for me to say for certain which one of the many first contact stories is my favorite, my attention is frequently drawn to two in particular: Listeners, by James Gunn, and today's selection, Contact, by Carl Sagan. Sagan's novel made an enormous splash when it came out: Sagan was world renown as a charismatic, handsome, brilliant and likable popularizer and explainer of very advanced astronomy and physics concepts, and was already associated with the PBS television show Cosmos, in which he essentially explained everything in the universe. Personally I consider Cosmos so well done that it was hard for me to see how Sagan ever could have topped it with another non-fiction product; and in fact he never really did. But when Contact came out I really had to stop and ask myself whether he had in fact outdone himself. I think the answer to that question is yes...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..

I have about 50 pages left on this one and I actually really enjoy the faith vs rationalism elements, probably some of my favorite discourses in the book. I am enjoying it also but I know that my brother in law (a baptist youth pastor) gave me a very odd look when he saw what I was reading for no reason other than the fact that Sagan was not known as a proponent of christianity not b/c he had any idea about the book itself.

Oh well, I agree Omph very good book thus far.

BTW have you read Demon Haunted World? It is not Sci-Fi but aimed more at the scientific aspects of his thinking and much better even than this book is, imho.

Havent read that one. You should give The Listeners a try when you finish Contact.

I highly recommend Demon-Haunted World. It gets a tad diatribish in places, but overall it's a fantastic discussion about science vs. pseudo-science. Must reread it at some point.

HBJ

Holy guacamole, Contact was a book first? I always thought of it as "that Jodie Foster movie that's been #13 on my Netflix list for like three years."

That's definitely my "learn something new every day" thing for today. I had no idea.

A very enjoyable book, actually. In the eternal debate of "which was better - the film or the book," I'd go with the book, but the film did a great job with the story it tried to tell.

Oh yeah, definitely read the book!

i Heart this thread. and Contact. and Demon Haunted World. and Dragons of Eden. pretty much anything Sagan related gets Hearted by me.

does Agent Smith in el matrix remind anyone besides myself of Carl Sagan? is there a crunchier pickle than Vlassic? why is this post so chock full of whimsical questioning?

i hope someone here has answers. BILLIONS of them. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS.

I think you mean "billyums and billyums." Welcome back. Were you deployed?

nope. Im a lurker these days. i come in here at least once a week and have a look around. i havent gotten back into my old routine since returning home. finally read PAUL OF DUNE though... DYNAMITE! fantastic book. im sure you guys felt similar during your readthroughs.

Sagan though... that guy was friggin AWESOME. Billions and Billions of Awesome.

Well, glad to hear from you. It's been too long.

(Ditto! Kewl new avatar, too! )

read it when it came out, dug it then, still dig it. Movie pretty dam good too. Cosmos was just unbelievable, watch it periodically. When it came on PBS I had recorded all the episodes to VHS, but I believe he did some updates later and they were incorporated to a DVD set, havent got around to getting those yet, but need to.

guess the unanswered question was, Sagan one of us? or was he a Visitor?

(I really hate that "aliens helped us build Stonehenge/the Pyramids/etc because our recent-to-the-ground ancestors were WAY too stupid to have done it on their own" shit. Sagan was one of us. )

::::in a terrible baritone singing voice::: "soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of CRANKY?"

That's ME!

not much of a question about "book v. movie" - movie was waste of time, etc.


this book has almost been as important to me as parts of Dune,
if only for the ending, and the mystery of Pi

I've used that example over and over again around campfires when
the talk turns to the nature of God - while Sagan used this idea
fictionally, I have no doubt that one day mathematicians & physicists
will discover something similar -not like they haven't already, there are
amazing clues to the nature of "creation" already discovered if barely
understood, but I think one day we will be faced with some clear cut
proof, and it will come thru math & science ....

I would agree (I think...) I doubt there is anything that could ever even come close to proving the existance of a creator, but if anything ever did then I think it would come from the field of mathmatics.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:I would agree (I think...) I doubt there is anything that could ever even come close to proving the existance of a creator, but if anything ever did then I think it would come from the field of mathmatics.

No doubt if there was such a proposition it would end up being one of the undecidable ones Godel tells us about; at least if I was the creator, that's what I would do, just to annoy people.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:I would agree (I think...) I doubt there is anything that could ever even come close to proving the existance of a creator, but if anything ever did then I think it would come from the field of mathmatics.

Or physics, maybe.

It sure ain't through biology tho. Our bodies are a mess.

HBJ

Hunchback Jack wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:I would agree (I think...) I doubt there is anything that could ever even come close to proving the existance of a creator, but if anything ever did then I think it would come from the field of mathmatics.

Or physics, maybe.

It sure ain't through biology tho. Our bodies are a mess.

HBJ

No kidding, what kind of fool god would combine our breathing tube with our eating tube? Rediculous design flaw.

or put the sewer right in the middle of the playground







BTW:

ridiculous, godsdammit ....

A Thing of Eternity wrote:No kidding, what kind of fool god would combine our breathing tube with our eating tube? Rediculous design flaw.

Rediculous? Or Redundancy?
To coin a phrase from Sandrider, sometimes called the "second fish sucker!"

Btw, nice sig Sandrider. Great series!

That's ridundant.

Mr. Teg wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:No kidding, what kind of fool god would combine our breathing tube with our eating tube? Rediculous design flaw.

Rediculous? Or Redundancy?
To coin a phrase from Sandrider, sometimes called the "second fish sucker!"

Btw, nice sig Sandrider. Great series!

I was looking around for a "prisoner" thread when I got back on -
the AMC "Television Event of the Year" sucked saltwater.

swear t'God, on night two I was wondering if Keith wrote the script.

what was stupid was for IFC to run the entire original series in the weeks before
as a tie-in. Had I not seen all that, I wouldn't have so many "WTF is this shit ?" moments.

[I put that sig up while watching the original, before the AMC failure.]
[Who is Number One ?]