Carl Sagan needs no introduction
Whether by the Cosmos documentary series,
which went on to become one of the most widely watched TV shows in the 1980s,
or for his contribution to the development of an interstellar message that was attached
in the Voyager and Pioneer probes,
or for the numerous awards and honors he received during his life
Sagan's name is widely associated with the scientific endeavor
and with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Amongst hundreds of academic publications and TV shows,
Sagan wrote a novel called "Contact",
which was adapted to the big screen in 1997.
Both the book's and the movie's plot revolves around
the contact between humans and non-humans
that belong to a more technologically advanced civilization.
So our goal today
is to analyze not only how the book and its adaptation
might contribute to our understanding of how the contact would unfold in real life
but also how they might enlighten our perception
of the political, social and economical turmoil
that a successful interstellar message
if and when received would wreak here on Earth.
Alice in Wonderland
Let's start with the protagonist: Ellie Arroway
the axis around which all events revolve.
More so than the Ellie Arroway in the movie,
who is played by Jodie Foster,
the Ellie from the book is a kind of "Alice in Wonderland",
who falls into the white rabbit's hole
and wakes up here on Earth
already curious and knowledgeable about things,
as if destined to break paradigms
and to challenge the status quo.
On her journey, Ellie will face
a world governed by backward, misogynistic and hypocritical ideals
that will only listen to her
when it's no longer possible to ignore what she has to say.
It is so in her childhood, in her teen years,
and also in her adulthood,
when she is able to establish herself as an authority
in the North-American academic society
in the field of Radio Astronomy,
ultimately serving as the Project Argus director.
It's worth noticing that the Argus Project does SETI work,
an acronym that stands for
"Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence".
This type of work requires
a set of antennas and radio telescopes,
placed at key locations around the globe,
that monitor possible electromagnetic transmissions
that can't be explained by natural phenomena.
The Wonderland against Alice
More so than Sagan himself,
it is possible to speculate that his longtime collaborator,
Ann Druyan,
who co-wrote the original script upon which the novel is based,
had a better understanding
of the political challenges of the scientific world
faced by female scientists in the 1980s and 1990s.
That's why the book describes
with such accuracy all the obstacles
that Ellie will need to overcome on her journey.
The first obstacle, for example, is
the animosity that she, as a woman, encounters
for being interested in Mathematics and Physics.
Then when she chooses to focus her studies
in a subject considered eccentric by many of her peers,
...and later on when she is stigmatized
for taking up so much of the precious time of radio telescopes
looking for "little green men"
year after year without any sign of success.
However, to make up for all these challenges
that the Wonderland will throw in her way,
our Alice is, since her childhood,
gifted with an unshakable intellectual
and emotional awareness,
as well as a unique sense of selflessness.
Sagan's protagonist
whenever facing personal and professional dilemmas
always strives to find pragmatic solutions
without feeling intimidated by the toxic male figures
that surround her,
such as her stepfather, John Staughton,
her advisor, David Drumlin,
Michael Kitz,
and sometimes even her love interests,
like Der Heer in the book and Palmer Joss in the movie.
An interesting trivia I came across on IMDB
is that her name "Eleanor",
--we call her "Ellie", but her first name is actually Eleanor--,
comes from Greek and means
“bright light”.
If we combine this to the surname "Arroway",
which we can actually split into "arrow" + "way",
we discover this almost prophetic figure
that points the way towards
enlightenment and knowledge
and shoots forward in this direction,
leading the whole human race up this path.
Radio Astronomy and the interstellar "Hello!"
Now that we have introduced the protagonist,
let's move on to the plot itself.
It begins when Project Argus, which is based in New Mexico,
a project that exists not only in fiction but also in reality,
detects a repetitive, intense,
and unnatural fast radio burst signal (FRBs)
whose source is the constellation of Lyra,
more specifically from a star called Vega.
This all happens when the project has spent years
scanning the sky for electromagnetic signals only to find nothing
These tribulations faced by the Argus Project
in the book and in the film
is inspired by real events.
The SETI initiative started within NASA itself
with public funding
until the project started facing budget issues and cuts
due to the lack of practical results, ultimately
becoming a project funded
exclusively by the private sector.
It's the same sequence of events
portrayed in the novel/film.
Sagan was careful to use
hyperrealistic data and speculations
in his construction of the first contact,
so the setting described in the novel and shown in the film
could very well happen in the real world.
The star Vega, for example,
which is the source of the FRBs picked by radio telescopes,
exists, in fact, and is only is 26 light-years away
from Earth.
Initially, the message comprises
a sequence of prime numbers
ranging from 2 to 101,
something that no natural phenomenon
would be capable of generating or mimicking.
However, it is soon discovered
that the message is actually composed of
multiple layers of information
hidden underneath the prime numbers.
These extra layers are detected by different techniques
at different laboratories spread across the globe.
In the book, this cooperation with international scientists
receives more emphasis,
especially the Russians.
The Russian scientists are the first to suggest
that the message
includes the actual blueprint or construction plan
for some type of machine.
The effects of the message on Earth
Even more than the idea of the first contact,
the novel is successful in showing
the turmoil that this contact unleashes
on the social structure
and political configuration here on Earth.
Sagan describes in detail
the tsunami of transformations set in motion by the message
for the government of the nation-states
as well as the military and also for the civilians,
nobody remains unscathed;
everybody is affected one way or another.
Messianic groups and cults
of a wide variety of nationalities and beliefs
start arousing their members
either for or against the message.
Some say the message comes from God while others say it comes from the Devil.
There's also the upheaval around the turn of the millennium
which in fact was happening at that time... I mean the book was written in the 1980s
and the plot takes place in the 1990s,
so Millenarianism is an ever-present issue
and plays a vital role
in the unfolding of the plot.
In the economic realm, we are told that
the countries' GDP plummets
as people get obsessed with the now definite proof
of non-human intelligence,
extraterrestrial intelligence.
New industries appear
as established businesses are wiped out.
The press repeatedly breaks down
every known detail of the message.
In the end, we can say a new world is indeed born.
And not everything is negative.
In the geopolitical configuration of the globe,
the message will turn out to have a peaceful effect
since the countries will need to unite
both to register and to decode
all the data received by their telescopes.
Nuclear disarmament, which was already a reality at that time,
intensifies as the two world powers,
the US and the Soviet Union,
pledge to cooperate.
The World Message Consortium
In time,
a World Message Consortium is formed.
This consortium is an association between
the nations involved in receiving
and deciphering the message
So these countries choose
a party of representatives who engage
in discussing what to do
with the information received
and how to deal with its consequences.
At this point, it is already clear that
the message conveys specific instructions for building a machine,
whose purpose, however,
is still unknown.
Many of the representatives claim to be
a Trojan horse,
or a doomsday machine,
and even a bomb aimed to annihilate
the competition of an ascending technological civilization
that is taking its first steps
in the cosmic arena.
However, by uncovering a primer that allows them
to decode thousands of pages of information
Ellie and her collaborators are able to prove that
the machine is actually some type of vehicle.
This vehicle is shaped like a sphere
enveloped by a dodecahedron.
Furthermore, through the blueprint, they see that it's designed
to accommodate a total of five human beings in the book
and only one in the film.
For this moment on,
the "World Message Consortium" becomes the "World Machine Consortium",
and a selection process begins to take place
in order to choose the members of the group
who will courageously board the ship
and sail to the unknown.
The confrontation between science and religion
The conflict between science and religion,
--Western, mainly Christian--,
is one of the most prominent issues
both in the book and in the movie,
and it's represented by the relationship between
the characters of Ellie
and Palmer Joss,
who is played by Matthew McConaughey.
In the film, Joss is actually
the combination of two characters:
the presidential advisor and the religious leader,
in addition to being Ellie's love interest
who is openly agnostic.
When these two characters meet,
it becomes clear that science and religion
function as the two tangents
that will border the first contact,
and they will walk hand in hand
up until a moment when they simply merge,
to the point where you can no longer
distinguish that which is scientific from
that which is religious...
or rather: "numinous", the adjective chosen by Sagan to describe
the extraordinary experience of the first contact.
When personal narratives become one with the universal
In the film, only one traveler is chosen
to board the machine.
As a result, we follow the entire trip to Vega and beyond
from Ellie's perspective.
In the book, on the other hand,
this challenge falls to five members
selected by the Machine Committee.
They are as follows:
Russian astronomer Vaygay;
and fellow astronomer Ellie;
Indian astrobiologist Devi;
Chinese statesman-archaeologist Xi;
and finally Nigerian physicist Eda.
Upon entering the machine and activating it,
the crew is sucked into a "wormhole",
or, in more scientific language, an "Einstein-Rosen Bridge",
that will take them to Vega in a matter of minutes.
They soon realize, however,
that the young solar system is just a stop
in a much longer journey,
that continues through a system of holes similar to the first one
and that elicits comparisons with a subway line.
The end of the line in which they travel is
an enormous space station
located at the center of the galaxy,
quite close to the colossal black hole called "Sagitarius A".
Upon arriving, they finally meet
the "Keepers".
Keepers of the numinous
The keepers
are a congregation of intergalactic beings
that keep an eye on emerging technological civilizations.
And what do they look like?
Well, Sagan comes up with a simple solution to
the thorny task of imagining and writing
about a more technologically advanced
alien creature.
From the point of view of the five travelers,
the Keepers look absolutely familiar.
There is an excerpt from the book, which I think is worth highlighting here
that features our Ellie about to make contact,
she's is preparing herself for it... for meeting the Keepers,
in which she dwells on her difficulty
in dealing with everything that is different
in anatomical terms.
Even back on Earth.
On page 395, she states:
"There was something deep within her that was bothered
by insects, snakes, star-nosed moles.
She was someone who felt a little shudder
--to speak plainly, a tremor of loathing--
when confronted with them
[...] a feeling of disgust and a wish to flee".
Then she reaches the conclusion that
-- she is actually thinking, not saying it--
"It had been a mistake to send her.
Perhaps, when confronted
with some serpent-haired Stationmaster,
she would disgrace herself
--or far worse, tip the grade given to the human species
in whatever unfathomable test that was being administered, from pass to fail".
Then Ellie says that the committee
responsible for choosing the crew members back on Earth
should have considered that.
But didn't.
However, if we stop to consider it:
What would prepare a scientist
or an astronaut for the task of dealing
with something so different from himself/herself?
What kind of background would prepare
him or her to overcome the anatomical, biological and social barriers
that will undoubtedly separate him/her from an intelligent alien species?
What could be included in his/her training
here on Earth for a diplomatic mission
such as the one depicted in the book?
I don't have the answers for these questions,
since these are actually open questions and reflections.
Nonetheless, something that occurs to me
is that being aware of the multiple human experiences
that spread across both time and space
here on this planet,
might be of some help.
On the other hand,
I believe analogies, such as the ones I just brought up,
can only take us so far.
If a first contact with such anatomically distinct beings
indeed take place,
I believe that our first task will be
to make the strange familiar,
through a direct and repeated interaction
with them.
Because in the book the Keepers take on these familiar shapes from the start,
the Earthlings don't need to go through
a period of adaptation to the alien presence,
although it is said
that seeing them and talking to them is slightly disturbing
from an emotional perspective.
So, instead of acclimating themselves to the "alien other",
the crew members star discussing matters with them right away.
Each of the five members is allowed
a glimpse into how the Keepers
go about doing their jobs.
The Keepers themselves state that they form a “galactic census department”
Before departing, the Earthlings find out
that the Keepers aren't
the actual engineers or even the builders
of the wormhole system
that connects different parts of the universe,
and that brought the Earthlings there.
Furthermore, they learn that the Keepers only work to maintain it,
being themselves engaged in:
1) deciphering an enigmatic message that was
built-in the structure of the universe itself,
and 2) they seek to understand
who actually built this
intergalactic transport system,
a colossal structure that is ready for use
without anyone knowing who was responsible for it...
Since the Keepers evolved
by themselves
and reached this technological stage that allowed them
to travel through the vastness of space-time grid,
they found this entire structure --that the Earthlings compare to subway lines--
awaiting for them
but without knowing its authorship,
without anyone claiming to have made it,
or to have projected it.
It's a puzzle that the Keepers simply haven't been able to solve.
So their main task is to maintain it.
Here, we have again an idea of the "numinous".
As I said before the "numinous" does not exist only for us humans,
since the crew discover that there's a whole new level
of "numinous" with which
the Keepers themselves are engaged.
Ellie Arroway's evidence
As I've mentioned at the beginning,
the disruption caused by the detection of the message
and the ensuing decision to build the machine
is profound and irreversible
in all spheres of social life on Earth...
economy, politics, religion, etc.
In the final chapters, however,
Sagan's narrative lens zooms in solely on Ellie,
stepping away from the more collectively-driven pace it had incorporated up until that point,
in order to portray the psychological impact of her experience.
Sagan reminds us that at some point in the past,
before the events unfolded the way they did,
a younger Ellie probed "Who are we?"
and “What are we doing here?”,
always focusing on the collective
and emphasizing the "we".
But the answers to these questions,
which she somehow finds through her experience with the Keepers,
will prompt her, for the first time,
to focus on her inner world
and to question herself as an individual,
attempting to decipher the message
and the riddle that is Ellie Arroway.
Well, folks... these are the pivotal moments and ideas
from both the novel and the film.
Normally,
we would wrap things up around here
but taking into account that SETI
and the Argus Project were Sagan's field of expertise
and that he summarizes in the novel
many of the key thoughts
and ideas
shared in publications that are more academic in nature,
I decided to split this video into two parts.
So, if you're ready and interested
you can click on the card above and jump straight to Part 2.
