Contact by Carl Sagan
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After two recently published novels of dystopian (near) future, a different direction I hope you'll enjoy or at least want to talk about. Contact is a 1985 "hard" science fiction novel by the scientist Carl Sagan.
"When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. What follows is an eye-opening journey out to the stars to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?"