Why space scientists need science fiction


2H8TP9E JODIE FOSTER in CONTACT (1997), directed by ROBERT ZEMECKIS. Credit: WARNER BROTHERS / Album

Jodie Foster in Contact (1997)

Warner Brothers/Album/Alamy

THE only science fiction that ever really caught my attention when I was growing up, besides Star Trek and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, was the novel Contact by Carl Sagan. When I was 15, I saw the 1997 film version of this, which he and his wife Ann Druyan had helped adapt for the screen. Later, as a 17-year-old navigating my first semester at university, I read the book, having accepted that I couldn’t just read Mansfield Park on a loop …

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