What are binary numbers?
There are only 10 binary numbers.
Like tdn, I first saw the movie - which I liked very much - and then read the book, which I didn’t think was nearly as good. One of the few examples, for me, of the movie actually being better than the book.
I think Sagan was trying to get across the sense of wonderment that he felt when he looked out at the Universe. It’s a story of faith, but not necessarily of religion, as such - He was warning of religious fanaticism and humanocentrism (is that even a word?). And, perhaps revealing more than he meant to, he was telling us that scientists are human beings who, even when wounded and hurting inside as Ellie was, are capable of great things.
Roger Ebert praised the movie when it came out, and later wrote a column arguing that everything Ellie saw and heard during the first contact occurred in her own mind, in the brief moments as her sphere fell from the tower. Can’t find the column either on his website or through Google, though - maybe someone else can? He didn’t entirely persuade me, but he made some good points.
Heh. That’s a great example of what my high school creative writing teacher called the “as you know, Bob” style of exposition, in which the characters give each other background information they already know about for the sole benefit of the reader. It is really clumsy and obvious when you’re paying attention.
It’s been a long time since I either saw the movie or read the book, but I know I liked the movie better. One specific thing I remember is that the book, for some reason, had four other characters go with Ellie. The book is quite clearly about Ellie more than anyone else, and I couldn’t see what those other characters added. The movie wisely left them out.
An extremely in depth analysis of the novel and film…I found it to be a nice supplement to the story. I might not agree with everything in the essay, but it was good brain food.
Hey, didn’t hurt Dan Brown…
I loved the book, thought it much better than most here. And I thought the movie to be so atrocious as to be a slap in the face of the audience.
In regards to the writing flaws, it was Sagan’s first novel and possibly his first piece of published fiction. Given that, it’s not a bad job.
Contact was about one womans search for God. She was unsatisfied with approaches that necessitated faith, she wanted evidentiary proof of God’s existence. It’s why she was a radio astronomer, it’s why she wrestled with religious thought, it’s why she asked her “father” ‘do you believe in God?’
He gave her the answer she craved - Yes, the universe was built, yes, there is evidence of a creator. He gave her a clue, a rather simple one, and she set her computer to work finding it.
The movie fvcked it all up. The movie destroyed the central message of the book, claiming that God could only be found through faith and blind acceptance. Her brainwashed look at the end of the Congressional hearing, when she says “yes, take me on faith”, has Carl Sagan spinning in his grave every time it’s viewed. He would have never wanted anybody to say about his story what Cunctator (correctly) noted:
Well, the book isn’t. It’s as clear a denunciation against faith as he could make it.
Shalmanese was closest to my view:
- The aliens don’t look like us. They formed the image of the one person that Jodie loved, and missed, the most, a person she had learned to idealize. Using her idealized image of her father, they were more capable of breaking down any psychological barriers she would’ve thrown up.
In the book there were four other passengers who all went through the same experience, so what happened is made much clearer.
- She doesn’t discover “the” secret, she discovers the secret behind the clue given her by her “father”. The aliens have known about the anomaly in pi for megayears.
Oh, and Ebert’s wrong. The trip happened.