"Contact" by Carl Sagan

    "Contact" is the only fiction  book that the great Carl Sagan has written and even as such should be on the reading list of every SciFi enthusiast.  "Contact" has much more scientific detail than most science fiction works out there since it was written by one of the greatest astronomers and scientists of our time.

    The book talks about a possibility of a contact with an alien civilization through radio telescopes based on the fact that once a civilization is sufficiently advanced it will produce radio and TV signals powerful enough to leave the planet's ionosphere and be detected by another civilization .  For our planet this happened during the 1930s Olympics in Berlin, during the rule of the Nazis.

   Ellie, the main protagonist, who's the director of the Project Argus, an array of radio-telescopes in New Mexico related to SETI engaged in listening for alien transmissions, receives a message from outer space which is the first confirmed contact of intelligent aliens with humanity.

   When the message is decoded, a transport machine is built which transports five chosen human representatives to the constellation of Vega, 26 light years away, where a federation of inter-galactic advanced alien civilization has one of their outposts, their main station being near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, with it's central mega black hole.

   I always found it very curious, and breaking with stereotypes, obviously on-purpose, that Sagan chose his main hero and protagonist to be a woman, and middle aged and unmarried, without ever having children (or wanting to).  That must have been too progressive even for the 1980s, when the book was first published.  Also, having the rest of the characters as a very international bunch (including women, and women of color, imagine!), without being the paper-thin stereotypes of other nations and races, makes this novel a social statement as well.

   The scientific accuracy of the plot is simply astounding.  From the message being encoded in the amplitude and frequency of the carrier wave, but also in its polarization, all the way to exhaustive quantum physics descriptions of the properties of black holes and wormhole tunnels. This might at times detract from the human drama going on, unlike, for example, Dan Brown's novels, where the drama never stops and cliffhangers are the norm, but then again, this novel is not just a passing entertainment.

   The film staring Jodie Foster is really good as movies go, but Jodie at that time is much younger than what Ellie should be in the book and several main components of the book were changed, like the international team that goes to Vega.  The book is still much better and has much more depth.

   In conclusion, a great novel, with original, scientifically-plausible plot, which should be part of every educated person's general knowledge.  The fact that it came from the mind of the amazing Carl Sagan just makes it a double-gem!

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

I have never read this American classic until now, and it was an experience to be had.  Not as gripping as Murakami's works, nor as page-turning as Dan Brown's literary offspring, it is nevertheless an interesting and beautiful account.   The book depicts the Joad family as the move out of Sallisaw, OK to California along route 66.  Tom Joad, the eldest son, just released from prison for homicide is one of the most important characters in the book, though Mother Joad is a striking character on her own. 

The book depicts the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s, together with the Great Depression forced thousands of people from the south-east to move to California, mostly on promises of great climate and great jobs.  The promises vanish when families arrive in California.  Even though the family is cheated and hated during the entire trip to California, it is only when they arrive and pass the state police road block - that they realize the extent of hatred that exists in California towards the newcomers.  The local gas station attendants call the newcomers 'non-human' and 'animals' and 'different species' because of the lowly poor conditions under which they are forced to travel, eat and live, since their money was taken by the banks back east and everybody on the road tried to get as much money out of them as they could, regardless of the life and death consequences. 

Once in California, they realize that the evil local landowners cheated them into coming in huge numbers so they can manipulate the pay rate and pay next to nothing for hard labor, even down to 2.5 cents for a basket of peaches - impossible to even buy food on such wages.  Tom Joad gets involved with some local strikers, who are derogatorily called 'reds' by the sheriff deputies and the landowners.  Tom gets injured when trying to defend a preacher who gets killed because is helping organize a strike. 

At the end of the book Rose Sharon, the eldest daughter of the Joads, who had still birth, after her husband left her, gives her breast milk to a man dying of hunger in an abandoned barn amidst hellish downpours that lasted for weeks - in that wonderful land of California.