Contact (Roman)
Contact is the name of a novel by the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan , which was published in 1985.
The novel is the basis of the film of the same name Contact by Robert Zemeckis .
History of origin
On the advice of a friend, Carl Sagan and his future wife Ann Druyan wrote a treatment for a film about first contact with aliens in 1979 . When the basic ideas threatened to be watered down by revisions, Sagan began in 1982 to process his ideas in a novel. Contact was published by Simon & Schuster in 1985 and became a bestseller.
When the project was finalized, Sagan and Druyan were also involved again, so that the film that ultimately came about comes very close to their original ideas.
action
Curious by nature as a child, Eleanor Arroway decided to embark on a career in science. Through a friend and colleague, she came across SETI , the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and was fascinated by the possibility of discovering life on other planets. This enthusiasm is not always shared in the scientific community, especially the respected David Drumlin, who takes Ellie little seriously as a scientist, is an opponent of the SETI project.
Ultimately, Ellie's research team actually discovered a message from aliens which, in addition to the first 261 prime numbers and a television recording sent back, contained a - as it later turns out - a blueprint for a machine. In international cooperation - which represents a diplomatic challenge - this machine will ultimately be built twice in two different places in the world within several years.
The machine turns out to be a transport device for five people. The President of the United States appoints Ellie's teacher and temporary adversary, Drumlin, as one of the people who are to begin the journey as a representative of humanity. Ellie Arroway is disappointed that she was not selected, but when one of the two copies of the machine is attacked and Drumlin dies, she takes his place.
When the machine is activated, the five ambassadors are carried through a system of wormholes . Eventually they have contact with the aliens, one of whom manifests itself in the form of Ellie's father, whose appearance and behavior they reconstructed from Ellie's memories. The aliens give little information about themselves, only explain that they sent the construction plans to Earth, as certain information about people could not be obtained from the television signals and they therefore had to come into direct contact with individual people. They did not build the transport network, which extends through the entire galaxy, but found it. In addition, the number Pi contains an encrypted message that indicates a higher power, i.e. ultimately a god.
Finally, the travelers are sent back to Earth, where they cannot initially provide any proof of their experiences, since all recordings were deleted until, years later, Arroway succeeds in extracting one of the encrypted messages in Pi.
See also
expenditure
- Carl Sagan: Contact . Simon Schuster Trade, September 1985
- Carl Sagan: Contact . Droemer Knaur 1988
literature
- Detlef Hedderich: Contact , in: The Science Fiction Year 1989 (Vol. 4), edited by Wolfgang Jeschke , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-03139-3 , pp. 574-575.