|
|
 |
|
|
Interested in other author autographs or signatures? Go here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Demon-Haunted World by CARL SAGAN, ANN DRUYAN
|
|
|
|
Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper
morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys
spirituality, and provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues.
"
A glorious book . . . A spirited defense of science . . .
From the first page to the last, this book is a manifesto for clear thought."
*Los Angeles Times
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cosmos by CARL SAGAN
|
|
|
|
Cosmos was the first science TV blockbuster, and Carl Sagan was its (human) star. By the time of Sagan's death in 1997, the series had been seen by half a billion people;
Sagan was perhaps the best-known scientist on the planet. Explaining how the series came about, Sagan recalled:
I was positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in
the exploration of the planets and in many kindred scientific topics--the origin of life, the Earth, and the Cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, our connection with the universe. And I
was certain that this interest could be excited through that most powerful communications medium, television.
Sagan's own interest and enthusiasm for the universe were so vivid and infectious, his
screen presence so engaging, that viewers and readers couldn't help but be caught up in his vision. From stars in their "billions and billions" to the amino acids in the primordial ocean, Sagan
communicated a feeling for science as a process of discovery. Inevitably, some of the science in Cosmos has been outdated in the years since 1980--but Sagan's sense of wonder is ageless. --Mary Ellen
Curtin
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dragons of Eden by CARL SAGAN
|
|
|
|
Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the
function of our most haunting legends--and their amazing links to recent discoveries.
"A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before
yesterday...It's a delight."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact by Carl Sagan
|
|
|
|
It is December 1999, the dawn of the millennium, and a team of international scientists is poised for the most fantastic adventure in human history. After years of scanning
the galaxy for signs of somebody or something else, this team believes they've found a message from an intelligent source--and they travel deep into space to meet it. Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan
injects Contact, his prophetic adventure story, with scientific details that make it utterly believable. It is a Cold War era novel that parlays the nuclear paranoia of the time into exquisitely wrought
tension among the various countries involved. Sagan meditates on science, religion, and government--the elements that define society--and looks to their impact on and role in the future. His ability to
pack an exciting read with such rich content is an unusual talent that makes Contact a modern sci-fi classic.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact (1997) Movie DVD Video
|
|
|
|
The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies
these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by
soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie
Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual
epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The
Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of
rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest) reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these
things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation, but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contact deserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio filmmaking on
a personal scale. --Jim Emerson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
