Blog assignment 3

My reflections on Carl Sagan’s Contact

I have actually seen the movie of this novel some years ago. I am more of a movie person than a novel person simply because I find it more entertaining. Usually the people that reads novels before they seen the produced a movie out of it, says that the novel was way better. I guess they imagined something else than the producer or thinks that the producer missed out on details from the novel. Personally I use the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”. I am not sure but the cameras record with about twenty-five pictures a second, multiplying that on a full movie length and the saying, I am sure that the movie will outgo the novel in word length, but as always it is the quality that counts not the quantity.

Sci-fi is not my first choice of genre but when it is mixed together with others genres I might like it. When you add drama and comedy it gets more alive and likable, just like this novel. I have always admired authors’ imagination, especially when it comes to things which are unknown for the mankind. They must have a great interest and a vivid imagination or maybe it is just me. Painting with words has never been my thing so it is fortunate that there are others who are good at it.

I was a bit curious about the author behind the novel so I checked out Wikipedia to get some information about him. Carl Sagan was actually an astronomer and a scientist so he had all the technical terms within himself. I am not sure if his writing was his beliefs or just made up, but I guess he had some hope that the stuff he wrote would actually become reality. It seems like Carl was skeptic that UFOs has visited earth but his beliefs was that there actually is intelligent life in outer space. With these beliefs he studied the universe in order to obtain “contact” according to Swedish Wikipedia.

After further reading on Wikipedia and on this time about the movie; it seems that Carl wrote in order to make a movie but the production stopped and put aside. Therefore Carl published “Contact” as a novel in 1985. They started the development of the movie again in 1989. Too bad Carl Sagan went away in cancer 1996 and could not see his novel become a motion picture in 1997, but I guess that he has been involved in the movie as well. Perhaps someone can enlighten me if he was involved in producing the film?

Finally in the novel like most other novels or movies, the U.S. government acts like that they should hide all the information for the rest of the world. This I believe is reality so if the U.S. government would find out that there was life in space first, we would probably never find out.

Maybe there is life in outer space?

My opinion is that there is life, I quote a memorable dialog between Ellie and her father Ted from the movie which I find brilliant…

Young Ellie Arroway: Dad, do you think there’s people on other planets?
Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.

Merry X-Mas!