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frakalot 's review for:
Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record
by Carl Sagan
Murmurs of Earth was so fascinating that even the acknowledgments were worth reading. The book takes 3 approaches to providing the story of the message that we strapped to Voyager and sent out to the stars. Of course the odds against a random projectile message ever reaching any other intelligence are daunting, yet the project was carried out with admirable conviction.
We are first given an idea of the effort that went into planning the contents of the message. What might seem like a trivial or novel task was taken on by a team that wanted sincerely to produce a most genuine artifact of the people from Earth. They were forced to work within the constraints of both the medium and the politics of such a project which of course meant that the final product was not the most perfect representation of our rich diversity. We are treated to an insider's look at the decision processes involved and I'm convinced that no such endeavour could have been perfect.
The next part reads like a bit of a random stroll through culture and history. More fascinating content to support the value of the choices made, however I thought that some few portions of this section bordered on irrelevant to the story. (In particular some of Beethoven's background)
Finally the book helps us imagine where our message is going. Given the publication date we could perhaps acquire better information about this now but it's uniquely rewarding to read the optimistic views of the people involved with the project and their own hopes given the limitations that they expected.
We are first given an idea of the effort that went into planning the contents of the message. What might seem like a trivial or novel task was taken on by a team that wanted sincerely to produce a most genuine artifact of the people from Earth. They were forced to work within the constraints of both the medium and the politics of such a project which of course meant that the final product was not the most perfect representation of our rich diversity. We are treated to an insider's look at the decision processes involved and I'm convinced that no such endeavour could have been perfect.
The next part reads like a bit of a random stroll through culture and history. More fascinating content to support the value of the choices made, however I thought that some few portions of this section bordered on irrelevant to the story. (In particular some of Beethoven's background)
Finally the book helps us imagine where our message is going. Given the publication date we could perhaps acquire better information about this now but it's uniquely rewarding to read the optimistic views of the people involved with the project and their own hopes given the limitations that they expected.