Contact: A Novel

Contact (1985) is a science fiction novel by celebrated astronomer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sagan. Known for his popular science television series, Cosmos, Sagan drew upon his extensive scientific background and his advocacy for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to write his debut novel.

The story follows radio astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway, who discovers the first confirmed message from an intelligent alien civilization, a revelation that forces a global collaboration to decipher its meaning and build a mysterious machine. The narrative explores themes such as Reconciling Faith and Reason, Overcoming Human Provincialism, and The Search for Meaningful Contact. The novel received widespread critical acclaim upon publication, and in 1997, it was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.

This guide refers to the 2019 Gallery Books trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness or death.

Plot Summary

The narrative begins with a series of flashbacks detailing the formative years of Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway. From a young age, she exhibits a profound curiosity about science and the cosmos, from learning to read as a toddler and repairing a radio as a young child to pursuing a lifelong fascination with the stars. Encouraged by her father, Theodore Arroway, she avidly pursues her intellectual interests. In seventh grade, her teacher responds rudely to her innocent question about the nature of the transcendental number Pi (π), inspiring her to research the number herself and learn more about it than her teacher could have told her.

When she is a teenager, her father’s sudden death causes a deep and lasting trauma. Her mother soon marries a condescending physics professor named John Staughton, whom Ellie detests and against whom she rebels at every opportunity. As time goes on, her desire to escape and pursue her deep interest in science intensifies.

Ellie does well enough on her exams that she earns a scholarship and decides to attend Harvard instead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, she excels at physics even as she endures the rampant sexism from her peers and the faculty, who initially dismiss her ideas and exclude her from intellectual conversations. To compensate, she actively cultivates a clear, assertive tone to break into their conversations and claim her place in the intellectual world.

She develops a passionate relationship with a musician named Jesse, but after a couple of years, he asks her to abandon her studies in order to have a baby, and she refuses. Their relationship soon ends, and she never sees him again. She then goes on to shift her attention to radio astronomy when this area of study reveals the inhospitable surface of Venus, shattering her childhood fantasies of life on that planet.

She attends the California Institute of Technology for her graduate studies, working briefly under the arrogant Dr. David Drumlin. She also finds a true mentor and friend in Dr. Peter Valerian, a proponent of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). After developing a highly sensitive radio receiver for her doctoral thesis, she takes a position at the Arecibo Observatory, conducting early, unsuccessful SETI searches and speculating that highly advanced alien civilizations might simply ignore primitive ones like humanity. While she is in Arecibo, Peter Valerian visits her and invites her to join the SETI program full-time.

Years later, Ellie has become the Director of Project Argus, a SETI-based program underway at the Very Large Array, a massive radio telescope array in New Mexico. After more than four years without discovering any signals from intelligent life among the stars, the project now faces pressure from the astronomical community, led by a skeptical David Drumlin, who argues that SETI’s time with the array would be better allocated to other projects that have been sidelined due to SETI’s current priority level. Shortly after Drumlin’s visit, the Argus computers detect a powerful, structured radio signal originating from the star Vega, which is 26 light-years away. Ellie and her team confirm that the signal is not terrestrial interference and discover that the signal is a sequence of prime numbers, which they take as definitive proof that an intelligent alien civilization has sent the signal. Ellie alerts the president’s science adviser, Dr. Kenneth der Heer, and coordinates a worldwide observation effort to ensure that the signal is fully recorded.

Government officials soon descend on Argus, including Kenneth der Heer and the surly, suspicious assistant secretary of defense, Michael Kitz. Despite Kitz’s skepticism, the signal is confirmed globally, and soon, Dr. Drumlin discovers a second layer of information encoded in the signal’s polarization. When decrypted, scientists and politicians alike are shocked to learn that the layer reveals a video broadcast of Adolf Hitler announcing the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The scientific team theorizes that this broadcast, which was Earth’s most powerful television transmission at the time, was the first message to be able to escape into space; the Vegans are simply reflecting it back as a way of saying “hello.” Soon after this discovery, a third layer, much deeper and more complex, is found in the Message; scientists use the analogy of a “palimpsest” (an ancient parchment with layers of writing) to describe the fact that the Message contains thousands of pages of undeciphered data.

Decoding the discovery necessitates global cooperation, and worldwide efforts lead to the formation of the World Message Consortium. As Ellie collaborates with respected Soviet scientist Dr. Vasily “Vaygay” Lunacharsky, among others, and the news of the Message from Vega triggers a worldwide wave of religious and millenarian fervor (the latter being a belief in a new age of blessedness that will begin upon the prophesied “second coming” of Jesus Christ). Palmer Joss, a prominent religious leader, becomes a leading voice in the public debate over the Message’s meaning. Because he and his associate, Reverend Billy Jo Rankin, have gained considerable political influence at the national level, the two Christian men show interest in the project and engage in a series of philosophical discussions and outright debates with Ellie, opposing her scientific worldview with their faith-based observations. Ellie is annoyed by the dogmatic Rankin but respects Palmer Joss for being sincere and authentic in his beliefs.

Later, at a Consortium meeting in Paris, Soviet scientists propose that the Message is a blueprint for building a complex machine. This hypothesis is confirmed when the primer needed to fully translate the Message is discovered and used to fully decode the Message’s deeper meanings. The primer was hidden in the signal’s phase modulation, a discovery prompted by a suggestion from the reclusive, eccentric, and extremely wealthy industrialist named S. R. Hadden. His advice provides the inspiration the scientists need to decode the diagrams and schematics. The world’s nations debate whether to build the Machine, with some, like one Soviet delegate, fearing that it could be a “Trojan Horse” allowing the Vegans to invade Earth. Ellie counters this idea by pointing out that the blueprints show five chairs clearly designed for human occupants; she and others believe that the Machine is a transport device.

The international community agrees to build two identical Machines, one in the United States and one in the Soviet Union, with component manufacturing distributed globally. The project becomes a unifying force for humanity even as philosophical and religious debates continue to rage worldwide. An international crew of five is to be selected. For the American seat, the choice narrows to Ellie and David Drumlin as final contenders. Citing Ellie’s perceived volatility, the president secretly selects Drumlin, with Ellie as his backup.

As the American Machine nears completion in Wyoming, it is sabotaged by an explosive that has been hidden in a critical component called a benzel. The blast kills 11 people, including David Drumlin; a subdued Ellie believes that he gave his life to save hers by pushing her to safety in the split second before the blast hit. In the aftermath of the sabotage, multiple fringe religious groups claim credit, and the American project is indefinitely delayed. However, when a discouraged Ellie is sent to visit S. R. Hadden aboard his private orbital space station, Methuselah, he reveals that a third Machine has been secretly assembled in Hokkaido, Japan, from components that were originally intended merely for testing. In light of this news, a new international crew is chosen and will include Ellie, Vaygay Lunacharsky, a Chinese official named Xi Qiaomu, an Indian biologist named Dr. Devi Sukhavati, and a Nigerian Nobel laureate named Dr. Abonnema Eda.

On December 31, 1999, the five crew members enter the dodecahedron at the Machine’s core. As the Machine’s large, rotating spherical shells (nicknamed “benzels”) spin to speed, the dodecahedron’s walls become transparent, and the crew members feel themselves falling through a vast, dark tunnel.

The dodecahedron travels through a network of what Eda and Vaygay theorize are “wormholes” or “Einstein-Rosen bridges.” They make several brief stops, including a visit to Vega. There, they observe a massive artificial structure covered in radio telescopes but find no planets or inhabitants. After passing through other exotic star systems, the five scientists arrive at a colossal transportation hub near the supermassive black holes located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. They liken the structure to Grand Central Station because it has thousands of docking ports designed for countless different species.

The crew disembarks onto a perfect simulation of a terrestrial beach. A mysterious door appears in thin air, and after some discussion, the other four members enter one by one, vanishing. Ellie hesitates and decides to spend time alone on the beach as she wavers over the question of whether to walk through the door. Eventually, she is approached by a flawless “simulacrum” of Theodore Arroway, the beloved father who raised her and whose death she still mourns. The figure explains that the beings here are “Caretakers” of a vast galactic transport network that was built billions of years ago by a far more ancient civilization that has since disappeared. “Theodore” shows her a vision of the Caretakers’ cosmic engineering projects and reveals that even the Caretakers are still struggling with a final mystery. He states that a message from the universe’s creator, an “artist’s signature” of sorts, is embedded deep within the digits of the transcendental number Pi (π), and even the Caretakers have not yet been able to decipher this message. Suddenly, the other crew members reappear on the beach. They are each accompanied by a simulacrum of a lost loved one (or in Xi’s case, a beloved historical figure). The five scientists are told that they must return to Earth and that a return trip through the wormholes will no longer be possible.

The five scientists board the Machine and return to Hokkaido to discover that although their journey felt like a full day, only 20 minutes have passed on Earth. All of their recording devices have been erased by the Machine’s powerful magnetic fields, leaving them with no physical proof of their journey across the galaxy.

In a hostile debriefing and interrogation, an irate Kitz informs Ellie that the Message from Vega ceased transmitting at the exact moment the Machine was activated. Focusing on the paradox of the 26-year time lag, Kitz accuses Ellie and Vaygay of orchestrating an elaborate hoax. (In his reasoning, the fact that the signal from Vega stopped at the exact moment of the Machine’s activation proves that the signal did not come from Vega, since any message to stop the transmitter would also take 26 years to reach Vega.) Citing this issue and the group’s strange stories and lack of evidence, Kitz and other security officials decide to tell the world that the Machine failed; they also force the five-person crew to remain silent, threatening to discredit them if they dare to speak out.

Among themselves, the five scientists vow not to forget the veracity of their experiences, and they promise to coordinate with each other to record their observations for posterity, however secretly. In the aftermath, the world eventually accepts the Machine’s failure. Ellie is permitted to return to Project Argus and begins a secret computer project to find the message hidden within Pi (π). She also entrusts her written account of the journey to Palmer Joss.

After Ellie’s mother’s death, John Staughton gives Ellie a letter that her mother wrote many years ago, revealing that John (not Theodore Arroway) is her biological father. As she reels over this personal revelation, the Argus computer makes an important discovery. Deep within the digits of Pi (π), calculated in base 11, it has found a non-random pattern of ones and zeros that forms a perfect circle. The narrative confirms that this is the so-called “artist’s signature,” the unambiguous, universally accessible proof of a transcendent intelligence that predates the universe.