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Title: Disappointing first contact with Sagan the novelist
Review: I loved Sagan on TV and I loved Cosmos, but I didn't love Contact. Sagan is a great scientist but he's a pedestrian novelist. I'd call him a poor man's Michener. The characters in Contact are stereotyped and dull. Some sections lag such as the exposition of Ellie's childhood which, apart from being banal, was unreasonably long notwithstanding that it ties in with the ending. I also found the "real science" aspect -which other readers have said is the books strength -to be a little elementary and a little skimpy. Seems to me that Sagan spent a lot more time in musing on religion vs science than on the technology or the science of SETI (and he does this via too many unauthentic long speeches). All in all a great disappointment
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