Contact (novel)
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| Contact | |
| Author | Carl Sagan |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date | September 1985 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 432 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-671-43400-4 |
Contact is a science fiction novel written by Carl Sagan and published in 1985.
A film adaptation of the novel starring Jodie Foster was released in 1997.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
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Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the director of "Project Argus," in which scores of radio telescopes in New Mexico are used to intensely search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Before long, the project does, indeed, discover the first confirmed communication from extraterrestrial beings, a repeating series of the first 261 prime numbers (a sequence of prime numbers is a commonly predicted first message from alien intelligence, since mathematics is considered a "universal language," and it is conjectured that algorithms that produce successive prime numbers are sufficiently complicated so as to require intelligence to implement them). This plot element copies aspects from the opening chapter of Will Eisner's "Signal From Space" (1978). Further analysis of the message reveals that two additional messages are contained in different forms of modulation of the signal. The second message is a primer, a kind of instruction manual that teaches how to read further communications. The third is the real message, the plans for a machine that appears to be a kind of highly advanced vehicle, with seats for five human beings.
A subplot has Ellie interacting with a pair of Christian preachers, informally debating God's existence. Applying the scientific method, she states the agnostic viewpoint that "there isn't compelling evidence that God exists... and there isn't compelling evidence that he doesn't."
Ultimately, a machine is successfully built and activated, transporting five passengers—including Ellie—through a series of wormholes to a place near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where they meet the senders guised as persons significant in the lives of the travelers, whether living or dead. Some of the travelers' questions are answered by the senders, with the senders ultimately hinting at proof of a Universal Creator contained inside one of the transcendental numbers. Upon returning to Earth, the passengers discover that what seemed like many hours to them passed by in only twenty minutes on Earth, and that all their video footage has been erased, presumably by the time changing magnetic fields they were exposed to inside of the wormholes. They are left with no proof of their stories and are accused of fabrication.
Thus, though she has traveled across the galaxy and actually encountered extraterrestrial beings, she cannot prove it. The government officials deduce an international conspiracy, blaming the world's richest man in an attempt to perpetuate himself, embarrass the government and get lucrative deals from the machine consortium's multi-trillion-dollar project.
The message is claimed to be a fabrication from a secret artificial manmade satellite(s) that cannot be traced, because the message stopped once the machine was activated, a feat that is impossible unless one considers time travel feasible, and Ellie and other scientists are implicated.
In a kind of postscript, Ellie, acting upon a suggestion by the senders of the Message, works on a program which computes the digits of π to record lengths and in different bases. Very, very far from the decimal point (1020) and in base 11, it finds that a special pattern does exist when the numbers stop varying randomly and start producing 1's and 0's in a very long string. The string's length is the product of 11 prime numbers. The 1's and 0's when organized as a square of specific dimensions form a perfect circle.
The extraterrestrials suggest that this is an unmistakably intelligent artifact, an artist's signature, woven into the fabric of space. It is another Message, one from the universe's creator. Yet the extraterrestrials are just as ignorant to its meaning as Ellie, as it could be still some sort of a statistical anomaly. They also make reference to older artifacts built from space time itself (namely the wormhole transit system) abandoned by a prior civilization. A line in the book suggests that the image is a foretaste of deeper marvels hidden even farther within Pi. This new pursuit becomes analogous to SETI; it is another search for meaningful signals in apparent noise. This idea, among other plot points, was omitted from the film version.
[edit] Issues raised by the novel
[edit] A message from God in pi
The concept of a Message embedded within the digits of π has been criticized. First, it is an open question in mathematics if π is a normal number. If it is such, it would not be surprising that a "message" can be found in the infinite digits of the ratio. Actually, any specified message will be found within it, somewhere. Finding a picture of a circle or a drawing of Santa Claus is simply a matter of knowing where it is. Sagan assumed the "message" is not a likely occurrence due to its very high order, since the chance of random occurrence can also be calculated if pi is in fact normal.
Furthermore, this reshaping of pi raises questions related to the omnipotence paradox concerning whether God can do logically impossible things. This paradox relies on the assumption that logic somehow transcends the constraints of the universe, rather than being a property of it. Yet assuming logic is a property of the cosmos, God may just have fashioned our reality in such a way that pi has unlikely properties, thus conveying a Message to anyone clever enough to count in Base 11.
In the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics beginning after the Big Bang, some numbers that define essential properties of our universe, like the fine structure constant or Newton's gravitational constant, could vary among universes. The physical conditions in these universes would be radically different, and it may be possible that intelligent life could not exist in all of them.
- See also: Anthropic principle
π, however, falls into a different category of numbers than those which primarily represent space and time, because it can be defined by the inherent properties of the real numbers. These in turn depend on the properties of the natural numbers; changing the value of π is therefore analogous to changing the information contained in the ratio 2/3 and encoding data in that. Any intelligence, working in any universe— no matter what the characteristics of its particular "space-time fabric"—must deduce the same value of π, presuming they are able to think of numbers at all, and that logic is not a property of the Cosmos.
This type of argument goes back to philosophers like Averroes, who proposed that not even God could create a triangle whose internal angles did not add up to 180 degrees. The number of degrees within a triangle is a fixed consequence of Euclidean geometry (in non-Euclidean space such a triangle is possible); God may choose to build a universe that follows different geometrical axioms, but once the axioms are chosen, the results are essentially determined.
[edit] Publication History
In 1981, Simon & Schuster gave Sagan a $2 million advance on the novel. At the time, "the advance was the largest ever made for a book that had not yet been written."[1]
Sagan named the novel's protagonist, Eleanor Arroway, after two people: Eleanor Roosevelt, a "personal hero" of Sagan's wife, and Voltaire, whose last name was Arouet.[1]
