Those who watched the Jodie Foster – Matthew McConaughy starrer will know what this book is all about. And yet, somehow the
movie fails to capture the lyricism of this Carl Sagan masterpiece. Readers and television viewers might be familiar with Sagan’s “Cosmos”, a work that can be called “non-fictional poetry”. For all of Sagan’s work is poetic in its beauty. He was a visionary of our times- he saw the beauty of the
universe in it’s physical laws and the way everything just falls into place. And human beings are part of this vast scheme, maybe the ones for whom the Cosmos exists.
He continues with this idea in “Contact”, though this is a work of fiction, more appropriately, “Science Fiction”. It is Science Fiction of a different kind - no laser beams, flying saucers, green skinned aliens, or “Beam me up, Scottie”s. It is set in our times, not three hundred years in the future.
Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway is a special child who could read by the time she was three. Her mother is sympathetic to her, but it is her father Ted whose influence shapes her character. When Ted dies, a part of Ellie seems to have died with him. She turns out to be a brilliant student and goes on to become a physicist. She surprises herself by starting a relationship with Palmer Joss, a born again Christian and a preacher, whose religious views are completely different from Ellie’s more “logical” way of looking at the world.
Then she discovers something that shakes the world. Contact has been established with aliens, and now the entire world must ready itself for something unexpected. Ellie’s journey to the universe outside, as well as inside, begin from here. She must not only travel to the stars, she must reach into the depths of her heart, memories and existence. She must also unravel God’s
message hidden in her well ordered universe.
And the only thing that makes sense in the vast cosmos and the millions of stars, is the message, “for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”