I think this is the first book I’ve read by Carl Sagan, and since I had enjoyed the movie I figured it would be a good place to start.
This was a fairly long book, so the story could be technically in-depth. I was surprised that there was so much weight on the technical side of things, and I really enjoyed this sort of nerdy style. Especially interesting were the predictions of “the future” of 1999, written by Sagan back in 1985. In some ways we’ve done a lot better than Sagan imagined, but as you might expect we’ve done worse, too.
He builds up the story well, telling of the female main character’s challenges entering the science field, and how she is underestimated her whole life. It is cool that there is this positive view of women in science back in 1985 – but I don’t know how much has changed since then. Probably not as much as he’d hoped.
On the downside all the tech-heavy writing leaves his writing of human issues and dialogue sort of lacking. Especially the conversations between characters felt unnatural and stilted. The author prefers to just download a bunch of information to the reader rather than introducing organically – and when it comes to talk of the future and technology it started to get old.
I can see when making the movie how they wisely cut out some of the fat and made a much more compelling story. I doubt fans of Sagan would complain about the book version, though. As for me, I’d prefer some version of the story that falls between the book and the movie.
Next I am reading In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin.
