krpalmer | On Carl Sagan Day (Reply)

It was pointed out that today could be called "Carl Sagan Day," it being the anniversary of his birth, and that got me thinking. Unlike many of the other people offering their own comments, I didn't see his TV series "Cosmos" at the beginning of the 1980s (to this date, I've only seen one of its episodes, borrowed on videocassette from the local library, I suppose just to get a sense of what it was like)... but I did happen to read the companion book of the series at a quite early age, signing it out from my home town library again and again to tour through the solar system (as of the Voyager encounters with Jupiter) and beyond (one of the most memorable images from the book for me are four paintings showing the Earth boiling away as the sun turns into a red giant billions of years in the future), until one unfortunate day it wasn't in the collection any more. Years later, I managed to get my own copy of it from a used bookstore.

The book, I suppose, keyed into a general early interest in "space" (the first space shuttle launches, and even seeing the movie Star Wars, might have had something to do with that too) and "science" beyond that, rather than sparking it all by itself, but I wouldn't underrate Carl Sagan's importance in helping to explain science to the world at large; I also appreciate the modern works of others. To mark the day, I started reading a copy of his book "Comet" that I bought at the annual library used book sale just last week. Very similar in format to "Cosmos," but tying into the return of Halley's Comet, it was on my home town's library shelves for longer than "Cosmos" itself, although I do have to admit it didn't seem an adequate consolation at the time. Now, though, it seems a worthwhile companion. I also happened to notice a whole page of essays for the day.