I remember reading the novel long ago. However, a part of it soured me on it, and for that reason, I have not seen the movie version.
When Ellie Arroway and her fellow wormhole travelers finish their extraterrestrial journey, all the physical evidence of that journey got erased -- all the videotapes that they had used to record their travels. So they were left with their memories, and everybody else was dependent on their assertions. From Contact (novel)WP, "Ellie finds herself asking the world to take a leap of faith and believe what she and the others say happened to them."
That's what I didn't like -- the destruction of the evidence, destruction that seemed very contrived to me.
Even worse, she had only the same kind of evidence as UFO contactees do of their contacts and travels. How was she much different from George Adamski or Billy Meier? She also seemed to have some spiritual awakening, something else like a UFO contactee. She was thus like this bit from Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:
Did Carl Sagan himself ever see the connection? He himself had once run into a UFO contactee early in his career, and he disdained UFO contactees from then onward, if not before.
I would have preferred a take on Carl Sagan's own dictum, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I would have said something like:
"It looks like I am left with only my memories of the trip. I am very disappointed with that, because my adventures in the wormholes were very extraordinary events, and I would like to have had something in addition to my memories.
Here is why. If I claimed that I had a cat with me, you would all believe me unless you saw me without a cat. This is because there is nothing unusual about having a cat. If I claimed that I had a lion with me, you would ask to see it or something like that. That is because it is much more unusual to have a lion. If I claimed that I had a sabertooth with me, you would ask if I am serious, because the last sabertooth died about 10,000 years ago.
My interstellar adventures were much more like the lion or the sabertooth rather than like the cat. You may well think that they are figments of my imagination in some way or another. Because of the erasure of the tapes, I am very disappointed that I have no way to demonstrate otherwise."
When Ellie Arroway and her fellow wormhole travelers finish their extraterrestrial journey, all the physical evidence of that journey got erased -- all the videotapes that they had used to record their travels. So they were left with their memories, and everybody else was dependent on their assertions. From Contact (novel)WP, "Ellie finds herself asking the world to take a leap of faith and believe what she and the others say happened to them."
That's what I didn't like -- the destruction of the evidence, destruction that seemed very contrived to me.
Even worse, she had only the same kind of evidence as UFO contactees do of their contacts and travels. How was she much different from George Adamski or Billy Meier? She also seemed to have some spiritual awakening, something else like a UFO contactee. She was thus like this bit from Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:
Quote:
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Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in “contact” with extraterrestrials. I am invited to “ask them anything.” And so over the years I’ve prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, “Please provide a short proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.” Or the Goldbach Conjecture. And then I have to explain what these are, because extraterrestrials will not call it Fermat’s Last Theorem. So I write out the simple equation with the exponents. I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like “Should we be good?” I almost always get an answer. |
I would have preferred a take on Carl Sagan's own dictum, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I would have said something like:
"It looks like I am left with only my memories of the trip. I am very disappointed with that, because my adventures in the wormholes were very extraordinary events, and I would like to have had something in addition to my memories.
Here is why. If I claimed that I had a cat with me, you would all believe me unless you saw me without a cat. This is because there is nothing unusual about having a cat. If I claimed that I had a lion with me, you would ask to see it or something like that. That is because it is much more unusual to have a lion. If I claimed that I had a sabertooth with me, you would ask if I am serious, because the last sabertooth died about 10,000 years ago.
My interstellar adventures were much more like the lion or the sabertooth rather than like the cat. You may well think that they are figments of my imagination in some way or another. Because of the erasure of the tapes, I am very disappointed that I have no way to demonstrate otherwise."
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1ND7R0K
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