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Monk
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I don't think we're in Brønshøj anymore
Jan 1970
time: 06:32
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The first thing that comes to mind is that I'd leave out the "What interests me is that it recorded approximately 18 hours of it" line in the movie Contact, thus allowing for an ending you could interpret as you wanted to.
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Vesayen
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How did the book end? I never finished it.
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Vesayen
How did the book end? I never finished it. |
Well, they took out a couple of important parts in the novel, but here goes:
When Ellie met her "father" she actually asked him if the aliens believed in God. He said that in the hundreds of millions of years that they've been investigating the universe, it seems obvious that it has been designed (he gives some examples of mathematical ratios, also claims that the "subway system" that Ellie went through is part of the original design) but they've yet to figure out who or why.
End of visit, Ellie and the others (dropped from the movie) get back to Earth where the same thing happens as in the movie: they don't seem to have gone anywhere, the recordings are blank, etc.
However Eleanor Arroway does NOT ask people to take her on faith - that is the entire point of the book, for Gods sake*. She doesn't come out and insist that she's correct: rather, she tells Palmer Joss
quote:
"... if I had hard evidence, I'd speak up. But if I don't have any, people like Kitz will say that I'm lying. Or hallucinating...." (she hands him a manuscript detailing the voyage, JT) "...When we find what we're looking for, that manuscript will confirm our story. If we find evidence of a double black hole at the galactic center, or some huge artificial construction in Cygnus A, or a message hiding inside pi, this" - she tapped him lightly on the chest - "will be my evidence. Then I'll speak out." |
Taking a hint from her "father" she programs her computer to factor Pi far beyond anything that mankind has attempted before. The book ends with the following passage:
quote:
The Argus computer was so persistent and inventive in its attempts to contact Eleanor Arroway that it almost conveyed an urgent personal need to share the discovery.
The anomaly showed up most starkly in Base-11 arithmetic, where it could be written out entirely as zeros and ones. Compared with what had been received from Vega, this could be at best a simple message, but its statistical significance was high.
(Sagan then describes how the computer plots the numbers on a square raster and what the raster looks like - a bunch of 0's and 1's that, plotted correctly, form a circle.)
Hiding in the alternating patterns of digits, deep inside the transcendental number, was a perfect circle, its form traced out by unities in a field of naughts.
The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle - another circle drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages futher in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers** and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.
The circle has closed.
She has found what she had been searching for. |
*yes, I know.
** "Caretakers" is the name that Ellie gave the aliens.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:32
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Well, that's fine, but having God explode a nuclear weapon in the middle of Las Vegas seems sort of a letdown. I dunno.
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shawnmmcc
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The animated flick "Wizards."
I was waiting for it to be an allegory about the beautiful elves taking all the best land while the dirty, no-good mutants get stuck with the wastelands. I found the ending mucho disappointing.
Instead of the stupid movie projector, I would have had Black Wolf, the bad half-brother, whipping his mobs into a frenzy after rotoscoping Hitler's mannerisms (when giving speeches) onto Black Wolf. Black Wolf is using a "Book of Wisdom" to lead the evil, mutant hordes.
When Avatar, the good guy alchoholic half-brother, pulls out the gun at the end and shoots Black Wolf, Black Wolf holds up his hand and, and the bullet splashes against some magical force shield. He laughs, and as he exits laughing, still holding his "Book of Wisdom" you see the title along the spine. "Mein Kampf." Go to credits.
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30-11-2003 05:46
JohnT 
JohnT
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