Funnily enough whenever I browse through the 1001 book I always land on the page where Contact is featured. Sagan has also featured in another way in my life as I had a lecturer who was obsessed with his works and carried a hardbound copy of Cosmos with her a couple of times during lectures.
So now our destinies meet!
Ellie Arroway is a scientist who specialises in extraterrestrial contact and one day she receives a signal confirming alien life. After lots of research and ethical discussions she discovers that the code the aliens were sending are actually the co-ordinates of a machine to visit the alien life. After even more discussions a team of scientists manage to build the machine and visit the star (Vega) on which the signals were emitted from.  When they do arrive they are in for a surprise.
Honestly I felt that Contact started well but had an ending which was a bit silly. In fact I felt ripped off plus the constant nerdy scientific detail was exhausting but other than that Sagan does write some very interesting points about the ethics of alien communication and there are some plot twists which come at the right moment – although I did predict some things as well. On the whole I felt that Contact was a good book but not as great as I imagined it.
The Bobsphere 