Another great part of Contact , and one that was glossed over in the film version, is the way that the message brings all the people of the Earth together. In the book, the project is international almost from the get-go and the five-member crew represents different nations, cultures, and religions. The book preaches the message that we are all one big family, that we are devastatingly small in comparison to the universe, and that whatever differences we might find between us—ideology, language, religious orientation—are not even remotely important in the grand scheme of things. I think that this is a message that is beginning to make its way into the world as we enter the Third Millennium. But we're only on the first rung of a very tall ladder. We've got a long way to go.
But there is always hope. And that's the one thing that Contact definitely leaves you with. Many believe that only faith in God can fulfill the human need to be part of something bigger. Others believe that only through the acquisition of scientific knowledge can we fulfill this need. But on the last page of his novel, Sagan shows us that science and religion are one and the same. Hidden inside pi, thousands of places past the decimal point, is a series of 0's and 1's. When distributed on a graph, the 1's, surrounded by a field of 0's, reveal the shape of a perfect circle. Inside the number that you get if you take the circumference of a circle and divide it by its diameter is a picture of the same.
The message? The universe was made on purpose. It took science to figure out that a Creator had mathematically designed the universe and hidden a message inside a number. Perhaps there are bigger messages to come. All we need to find what we're looking for is a little faith.
Read this review's accompanying article:
"Life
As We Don't Know It" (Part 1)
"Life As
We Don't Know It" (Part 2)
And also the review of the film version:
If you'd like to read more articles at Science Fiction & Society, please make use of our index system to locate the information you're looking for:
 |
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Christopher B. Jones's Science Fiction & Society topic, please visit the Discussions page.