Product Description

The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension.

In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who -- or what -- is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future -- and our own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #937708 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07-01
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 4
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Customer Reviews

Sagan does it agan.
Like most of his work, Sagan puts across the sciences and professions of astronomy and astrophysics across for the lay reader with great ability and an obvious feeling for his subject and his readers. I enjoyed the humanness of his characters, the realities of their work world, and the science in which they were involved. I read the book before watching the video and felt, as I usually do, that the book was better. One can always create more side plots and develop to a greater extent the individual characters in a volume of so many pages, which the reader can set aside at will and return to as needed. The director must stick to a central theme and be constantly mindful of budgetary constraints. I also thought the relationship of the heroine with her father was more intense and surprising in the book than in the movie.

A flawless reading of an excellent book
The only science fiction novel by a prominent astronomer who was the late twentieth century's foremost popularizer of science was bound to be something special, and Carl Sagan's "Contact" certainly is. No other science fiction novel is quite like it in its thrilling realism; one can easily believe that a sequence of events similar to that in the book could begin taking place tomorrow. The book is filled with a plethora of wonderful plot twists, fascinating details of scientific fact and speculation, and unexpected bits of characterization that only Sagan could have thought to include. Sagan, who apparently considered himself a "spiritual agnostic," explored religious as well as scientific issues in this work, and the result is arguably heretical if seen from a traditional religious standpoint -- but not heretical in the specific way a reader might initially expect. Indeed, the story's climactic twist makes "Contact" into a twentieth-century equivalent of "Paradise Lost" -- a work which, while subtly heretical, is one of the most awe-inspiringly religious books ever written.

Jodie Foster's reading of "Contact" on this recording is absolutely superb. She differentiates between the voices of all the characters and her own voice as narrator -- even her voice for Ellie Arroway, the character she played in the movie of "Contact," is a subtly more energetic and characterful version of her normal voice. Foster also employs about seven different accents (counting her usual American accent) in the course of the recording, moving effortlessly from one to another when characters from several different countries have conversations. At one point, when Sagan's text describes a character as having an almost (but not quite) non-existent Russian accent, Foster even manages to produce exactly that! She also evokes all the varying moods of the story, conveying Sagan's sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and majesty of the universe. Foster's performance on this recording is probably the best reading of a book which I have ever heard.

I listened to this recording over several nights, and was in suspense from one night to the next, wondering what would happen next. This superb example of the intelligence and artistry of Carl Sagan and Jodie Foster is highly recommended. Six out of five stars.

Incredible
I read this book shortly after I saw the movie, just after completing my sophomore year in high school. The book went much more in depth than the movie; something that usually makes books better than the movies that are based on them; which is true in this case.

If you can understand the complex math and science that is interwoven into the chapters (I didn't, but I read it anyway :) you'll probably enjoy it that much more. Otherwise I would have rated it five stars. A must for for the obsessive sci-fi reader (such as myself :).