August 15, 2020

Contact covid-19: day 158 | US: GA | info | act

Perusing science fiction for the Kindle, I scored two books: Carl Sagan’s Contact and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology a collection of short stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Both for under $5.

(Have I mentioned how much I really enjoy reading on my Kindle Peperwhite? Especially after installing my favorite font? The compulsory ads are stupid—like Amazon needs to do this, but the actual reading experience is excellent.)

I have done some work on Zemeckis’ film Contact back in the day, but I have never read Sagan’s novel. Obviously an oversight, so I started it today. I can’t believe it was published in 1985, and I equally can’t believe that I didn’t read it in high school.

My treatment of the film was that it contained the epic spirit: it was an example of the epic as science fiction. Here, Ellie Arroway is the scientist/hero, her birth, education, and early trials—mostly in proving herself in a male-dominated field. I’m up to the point where they discover the alien radio transmission from Vega. I guess Sagan was going for verisimilitude, but if I have one criticism, it’s a bit heavy on the math/radio astronomy details.

I continue to work my way through Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. I’m up to where I’m supposed to be for our next book club meeting on August 25, and I have an idea for a journal entry about it. Maybe tomorrow.

[{Category:Science Fiction]]