I also like Contact, which I think of as Sagan’s struggle with reconciling religion and science for himself. Also, I nlike what the article mentions, I recall the book being based on the script.
IMHO that was a fatal weakness to both the book and movie
Spoiler Alert
The book went further by accusing Arroway of engineering a fraud instead of the "you want us to have faith" bit from the movie. But that made no sense in the context of the story. The radio signal unequivocally came from Vega and the message contained instructions for technology completely unknown on Earth. It made no sense to dispute that contact was made and something happened.
Spoiler Alert
The book went further by accusing Arroway of engineering a fraud instead of the "you want us to have faith" bit from the movie. But that made no sense in the context of the story. The radio signal unequivocally came from Vega and the message contained instructions for technology completely unknown on Earth. It made no sense to dispute that contact was made and something happened.