Shortly after it was first published in 1985, I read Contact by Carl Sagan. I was a nerd in high school who loved hard science fiction by authors such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. I’d watched the PBS series Cosmos and was very much interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Of course I was going to read this novel!
When I first read it way back then, I was an altar boy with a deep faith in God. Now as a divorced man in his early fifties, I find myself more of an agnostic than a believer of any religious faith. While I no longer believe in the supernatural, I do recognize there is much in our world that remains explained. I believe in the incredible capacity of humanity for love and the undeniable beauty in the universe that inspires awe.
Given this change over the last thirty-five years or so, when I recently thought of this book I decided to read it again. I am so glad I did. I was surprised by how much of the book I didn’t remember. Most of it in fact. But despite my changes over the intervening years, I loved the book just as much this time as when I first read it.
Despite his public status as a non-believer, the author respected religion in many ways throughout the book. In fact, much of it involves the interplay between religion and science, though indirectly. In the end, he reveals how much these two have in common, specifically the numinous experience of awe and the foundation of love.
Yes, this is the hard science fiction story of how an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence contacts the human race and how the human race responds to that contact. But on a deeper level, it is about human relationships and how they interact with the enormity of our universe and its limits. It deals with these intelligently, intellectually, as well as emotionally. Carl Sagan may have been known as one of the preeminent astronomers of the twentieth century, but he was also a committed and loving husband, father, and humanist. And both of these sides shine forth from this incredible novel.
