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Contact is a science fiction book written at the end of the 20 th century. It is a novel that depicts the life of a person from the very birth until her late thirties. Ellie Array is a girl that discovers her attraction for science from an early childhood. Her father, who dies when she is only 10, encourages her love for physical astronomy. Many people dont understand her passion and believe that she will never be successful, but she finishes school, goes to MIT, and then gets a PHD at California Institute of Technology proving to everybody that they were wrong. After finishing her studies, Ellie is assigned to different laboratories around the country, eventually ending up in New Mexico, where she is working on a project called SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).
Many scientists believe that this is a worthless project. Among these scientists is Drumlin, her teacher from CIT. After four years with no results, Ellie depicts a message that is comprised of prime numbers. This is believed to be the biggest discovery of the time, as the message comes from Vega. The problems begin when the message turns out to be a transmission of Hitlers welcome speech at the 1930 s Olympic games. United States is worried about the impact of this discovery in the worlds politics.
A second message that is approximately 40, 000 pages long follows the original one. Unfortunately nobody is able to translate it. The entire worlds scientific community is involved in the search for the primer, but nobody can find out what the message says. Finally, Ellie is invited by Hadden, a multimillionaire and an extremely intelligent person, for a conversation.
While talking, Hadden gives Ellie the hint where to search for the primer. It turns out that the pages of text are instructions for building a machine. Two similar machines are being built, one in the United States, and another one in the Soviet Union. Only five people can go once the Machine is completed.
All the nations are trying to compete for a seat in the Machine. In the end, 5 countries are selected: Unites States, Soviet Union, China, India, and Nigeria. Unfortunately, Drumlin is the one who is going to represent the United States. When the American machine is almost ready, a terrorist attack destroys it through a bomb explosion and in the process Drumlin dies while trying to save Ellie. This makes a change in the composition of the group that is going to go to Vega; now, Ellie is going to be the representative of the United States. The problem lies in the fact that now, after the American machine is destroyed, and while the Russian one is far away from being build, how can they go to Vega?
The Japanese provide a great solution: they have been secretly building a machine on their own, so this is going to be new transportation to Vega. A lot of people oppose the use of the Machine; among them is Palmer Josh, a new religious figure that advises the president. Ellie and Palmer develop a very special relationship based on trust and respect, even if their views are so different. The Machine is finally activated and the five passengers go through a unique travel experience that is approximately 18 hours long to the center of the Universe, where they encounter the Keepers of wormholes and the connection point of many civilizations. Unfortunately, nobody believes in this journey as the cameras dont record anything and the time on Earth when they arrive is the same as the time when they left. Even more, Ellie is accused of stipulating and faking the message from Vega in order not to be closed with her SETI experiments.
The end of the book is that even if people on Earth do not believe in the discovery made by Ellie, her life changes and she starts to realize and live with some realities she has never imagined before. I have never liked Science Fiction before, so I was not extremely thrilled with the idea of reading Contact. But it was a very interesting book and I definitely recommend it to other non science fiction readers. The book was pretty heavy and scientific; it required some knowledge in physics and radio astronomy.
Still, the explanation of science is very clear and good, and even without knowing too much physics it is possible to fallow the plot. The things I liked about this book are: 1. The idea of traveling in space in such a way at the begging of the 21 st century. At this point of time, people are able of many scientific discoveries and things that are truly amazing, but what I read in this book is still too advanced for todays technology.
Still, the possibility of all these things is truly exciting. 2. The fact that Ellie, the leading scientist, and the American President are both women. This is pretty unusual to come out in a science fiction book, and it was something that I didnt not expect, but something that gave a special note to the book. 3. The plot that sometimes seemed so real and possible. After reading the book I began to ask myself if these kinds of travel are possible and if Star Trek is really as far from reality as people tend to believe it is. 4. The fact that while reading the book I had no feeling that I have to read it.
It was so interesting that I never minded reading it. A couple of things that I didnt like about this book were the end and the presence of too many scientific words. After reading the entire book, I expected something different, but I guess such a negative end is more realistic to the sciences position in the year 2001. Another thing that I found hard was to follow some of the parts of the book. Sometimes it was hard to understand many words and the reading was a little bit slow, but I guess these are normal consequences of a book so closely related to physics as this one. I dont know how realistic this book is.
It definitely felt pretty real when I was reading it. The problems presented in the book, except the ones related to science, where also very real, as for example the politics involved in science or the balance of powers in the world. I hope that someday a machine that could travel to the center of the Galaxy can be built, so in such a way science can progress to even a further point than it is today. This was an excellent book and I wholeheartedly recommend it to other people.
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