Staying in 'Contact' with Carl Sagan

Though one of my personal heroes has been deceased for many years, he still touches base with me every so often through the amazing body of work that he left behind.  Carl Sagan, science guru extraordinaire, penned some tremendous science non-fiction, from Cosmos to Demon-Haunted World, but also a fair bit of science fiction.  I just finished reading Contact (1985), his first novel, which would eventually become a feature film (1997, the year after he passed) that I have yet to see.

Contact is a tremendous novel by many standards, but one measure is the extent to which it has permeated my consciousness, and it has a great deal.  While reading this tale of a message from an alien civilization and an eventual visit, and in the weeks since, I have stared a bit longer at the stars at night, captivated by the scale of the universe.  I wonder if there are beings on another planet looking up in similar awe at a view not so different from mine.