Making Contact
I hadn't known that the main character in Carl Sagan's Contact was based on a real person until my mother-in-law gave me this book for my birthday. It's a biography of Dr. Jill Tater, inspiration for Ellie Arroway, who as devoted almost her entire life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. As such, it's also a history of that field of study. The subject matter is interesting, especially when it comes to the financial struggles, under-the-table deals and slapped together technology that are more apparent in SETI than any other field of science. And Dr. Tarter is certainly an interesting woman. But I had a hard time with this book. Mostly because I still can't figure out how the author meant to organize it. There was probably a method to her madness, but I found the book jumped around too much for me to really follow the thread of Dr. Tarter's life. Her second husband is mentioned two chapters before her divorce, in a way that makes it seem like her ...