A review by g_r_frank
Contact by Carl Sagan

4.0

I remembered enjoying the movie that was a made from this novel so I wanted to read Sagan's original story. It has been many years since I saw the movie but I do know they cut down the story, the number of characters, and a few other things for the screenplay as is usual. I think the simplifying for the movie might have actually helped the story a bit. The novel did seem to have a lot of places where Sagan just wanted to monologue like he was doing his Cosmos show, so much that you started to wonder if this was a narrator or the main character thinking. Since this was written in the 70s it also assumed the Soviet Union would still be around in the years 2000, rich humans were living in fancy orbital luxury stations and a few other things that never came to be before Sagan died. Those "unintended alternate universe" elements are kinda interesting from the standpoint of seeing into what Sagan thought the future might hold. On the whole it was an interesting novel and worth the read but it felt like it was front loaded with a lot of things that could have been edited out and streamlined like the movie was.