Contact

Author: Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was a prolifically talented astronomer, astrophysicist and astrobiologist, as well as being one of the best science popularisers of his age. He was particularly important in considering questions relating to extraterrestrial life: his work was central to demonstrating how hot the surface temperature of Venus is; he demonstrated that amino acids could be generated from base chemicals by radiation; and he was responsible for the messages intelligible to extraterrestrial intelligence that were aboard Pioneer and Voyage. And all of that experience he poured into his only work of fiction.Contact is about what might happen if humanity starts to receive messages from more intelligent extraterrestrial life. Ellie Arroway is a researcher on SETI when she discovers a message coming from the Vega system. Gradually, Ellie and her colleagues learn to decode the message, and find it is the plans for a space vehicle. When it is built, Ellie is one of the five passengers who are transported via wormholes to a place near the heart of the Milky Way, where she meets an alien who appears to her as her dead father. On her return to Earth, Ellie is able to prove that intelligence is built into the structure of the universe itself.This really is science fiction: that is, fiction with real science built in. Reading this is like getting a glimpse of how interstellar communication might actually work, and what the actual ramifications of contact with another race might be. It's the sort of novel that makes you thrilled about science again. Contact won a Locus Award for First Novel, but it's not really about awards. It's on the list simply because this is the best example of how science and fiction can meet and work together.

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Science fiction is crowded with stories about first contact with aliens, but from The War of theWorlds by H.G. Wells onwards, they've mostly been about which side can most effectively destroy the other side. Stories about learning to understand the alien are much rarer.

You might, however, want to check out Stories of My Life by Ted Chiang. It's a collection of short stories, all of which are excellent, but the title story, "Story of My Life", is about a language specialist brought in to learn to communicate with aliens. The aliens have two languages, one spoken and one written, and when the specialist finally learns to understand the written language it actually affects the way she perceives time. The story won both a Nebula Award for Best Novella and a Sturgeon Award.