On Carl Sagan Day

[krpalmer]

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.

Comments

[may-child.livejournal.com]

I have "Cosmos" on DVD, and before that, on VHS. (I gave the VHS set to my mom after I got the DVDs.) Back when "Cosmos" first aired on PBS, I was 8 or so, and we had "'Cosmos' Nights" at our house...meaning my mom, my sister, and I would watch that week's episode. I even have some memories of "'Cosmos' Nights," though of course at the time I was too young to understand much of what was being presented. Nonetheless, the series wormed its way into my psyche. When I was 20 or so, I spotted the VHS set on sale, and though I could only afford to buy one or two cassettes at a time, I was thrilled.

I still re-watch the series from time to time. And it even helped me one time when I was in an anatomy class in college...one day we were discussing the human brain, and the teacher brought out a model of one. (Later we dissected the real thing. I remember getting a severe nosebleed from the formaldehyde.) She asked, "Does anyone know why the brain has all those furrows and channels?" I replied, "Because it increases the surface area." I'd learned that from "Cosmos."

"Carl Sagan Day"? Sounds good to me.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

When I was collecting my thoughts for this post, I remembered you posting a quote from the series, and went looking a few Novembers back to see if your post had been on a 9th of November... In any case, you may take some small interest in this bit (http://www.saramayhew.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/jedi-master-sagan/) of art.

[may-child.livejournal.com]

Hehe! That fan art is a scream. Sagan himself probably would have liked it...I don't know if he was a SW fan per se, but in "The Demon-Haunted World," the book he co-wrote with his wife Ann Druyan, he mentioned the famous misuse of "parsec" as a unit of time, rather than a unit of distance, but then he said that the film was "in many other ways exemplary."

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's a continuum between "people like us" and "those who have no (positive) interest in Star Wars whatsoever," so I suppose we can at least hope Sagan would understand the reference and appreciate it. I know Isaac Asimov also pointed out the "parsec misuse," but that does bring to mind how there are two different yet "official" explanations, George Lucas saying in the DVD commentary Han was referring to "clever navigation" and printed transcripts claiming he was trying to impress Ben Kenobi with "obvious misinformation"... although, of course, that's more something "people like us" would know about in the first place.