Reviews - Contact | The StoryGraph

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I will credit Sagan with having a modicum of self awareness as a male author.

Obsessed with the idea of messages being left for us in the mathematics which order the universe. And that even the aliens still have mysteries they’re trying to uncover.

kennykun's review against another edition

4.25

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

jackabrac's review against another edition

Too plot-driven (or perhaps event/fact-driven) for my liking, and unfortunately since I've seen the movie recently what plot there is feels too familiar.

mhowells98's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

eve_prime's review against another edition

4.5

I quite liked the book, although the story was rather quietly told. I’m especially interested in the differences between the book and the movie, which I’ll tell without spoilers for the movie. Ellie’s social world was moderately different, but that makes sense given that movies need to have many fewer characters for us to learn over the span of a couple of hours. The eventual strange adventure is similar in some ways but different in one very important way that makes the book far better (

having more than one person go

). Then, at the end, the book and movie have different ways of proving that everything was real. I thought the movie’s way, which was much simpler, was also far more realistic. In the book, the big discovery is that in a sense, circles are embedded within the math for circles – which is cool, but for the average person, it would be very hard to understand why it’s more cool and important than, say, the repeating pattern you’d find when zooming into the Mandelbrot Set fractal – if, in fact, it is. I’m certain that it would be very hard to build a future social movement based on the fact that mathematicians believe something extraordinary is true. So – it’s a fine book, I recommend it, and it’s also fine to read the book if you’ve already seen the movie.