Carl Sagan’s Contact

(Wednesday)

This week, while moving endless boxes of books, I pulled out one and remembered it as a light read and a lot of fun, though the characters and story did not stick out for me. This is actually a fair assessment. Contact is not a great book, but it’s a very good book, and through it I am reliving a suite of emotions I once felt as a backyard astronomer with a 2.5-inch refractor and a 4-inch reflector, the sense of standing on a dizzyingly high perch just barely able to see beyond what other people could see.

The book itself is a code, of sorts, and a lot of Sagan’s personality and professional, public concerns (he was as much a public figure as a professional scientist—this makes him something like Neil de Grasse-Tyson or Oliver Sacks, Richard Dawkins or Eugenie Scott) are clearly embodied in the novel.

I have two ideas here, and please let me know what you think. I was thinking about doing one of two things. First would be writing an article for publication regarding Contact. I would be willing to work with another skeptical academic in the humanities, or even an artsy scientist who would not mind collaborating (in the humanities, collaboration is frowned on—I have no idea why other than for being able to take full credit for a well-defined body of work when you come up for tenure). The other thing I thought might be a fun project would be a small, one-off online blog carnival-esque about Contact. I would like the blog carnival itself to be of publishable quality (though without the pesky waiting period that comes with waiting for peer-review). I would, of course, serve as a sort of self-appointed peer-reviewer.

I think that the book deserves a little more attention, given the recent attention given to skepticism and the public understanding of science.

Please leave comments/concerns/questions/especially answers in the reply section.

HJ