“…imagine the greatest adventure of all–humanity’s first encounter with other intelligent beings.”Īs Sagan’s only solo fictional novel, it is remarkably well structured and written. This is one of the rare cases where I think the movie, even with simplifications and changes, is about as good as the novel.Ĭontact: A Novel (1985) by Carl Sagan, 1st ed.

It was later made into an excellant movie in 1997 starring Jodie Foster. As the only fictional novel he ever wrote, Contact is the book I am writing about here. When the movie failed to be made, he turned it into a novel in 1985. In 1979, Sagan wrote a screenplay called Contact for a movie. After Cosmos, which is the best-selling science book of all time, he wrote Pale Blue Dot, The Demon-Haunted World, my favorite The Varieties of Scientific Experience, and Billions & Billions, the title of which became the go-to line for comedians and impersonators who treated Sagan with humor.

He has written many non-fiction books, including Broca’s Brain and The Cosmic Connection in the 1970’s. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for his book The Dragons of Eden, and an Emmy for his highly-acclaimed TV series Cosmos which was based on his 1980 book of the same name. His work on the Mariner, Viking and Voyager spacecraft expeditions won him awards and medals from NASA. As Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University, Carl Sagan probably brought “science” to mainstream consciousness better than any scientist in our age.

Contact book sagan