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Title: After Contact
ISBN: 0306456214
Author:
Albert A. Harrison
Publicate Date: 1997-08-21
Publish: 1997-08-21
List Price: $28.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $11.75
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.98
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| Customer Review: |
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1: How will mankind respond to real ETs?
I wanted to enjoy this book. And to a point I did. Mr. Harrison studied the past to give us an idea about how we might react to aliens.
The big problem with this book is about half of it deals with the origins of life, the SETI project and the PAST. Only the last few chapters deal with contact with aliens and how mankind might react. Now, if you picked up this book I would assume you ALREADY believe in aliens, know about SETI and have some idea about the past when it comes to Mars, War Of The Worlds and UFOs.
I DID enjoy it, but much of it had nothing to do with AFTER CONTACT and mostly just trying to prove many of the author's own ideas - aliens exist, UFOs don't, so on.
Get it used or ask a friend to get for you during one of those made up, third rate, Holidays.
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2: Where did God go?
I read this book simply for pleasure. I am a science teacher by eduaction so why not get a few fresh ideas about exo-biology.
The problem human searches for intelligence is we are seeing it around us everyday and disgrading it as life on Earth. For example how probable is it that molecules can conspire to generate a living system, then advance to a level where the molecules now build a complex living system ? How probable is it that the sum could so exceed its whole? A conscious being arises from a system of what we believe is dead and lifeless atoms.
We should behold the World about us, as it is as close as we will ever get to seeing what alien life is all about.
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3: STOP! FOR GOD'S SAKE STOP!
A very good book but....consider this: Two workers are about to begin bulldozing. They notice a couple of ant hills. One comments,"Gee, they're clever little guys." The other agrees. Then, a few minutes later, they begin work and completely destroy the colony without a thought. By now, we all agree that the cosmos is downright filthy with intelligent life. A super-advanced intelligent life form would be all too aware of this. If their projects called for it, they would think nothing of eliminating far lesser life forms. They would be no more malcious or evil than the two workers mentioned above.Someday, we will indeed discover other intelligences.When we do let us assume the "Mother of all low-profiles" Contact,assuming we haven't \ been detected, is the LAST thing we want until after one incredibly profound investigation.
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4: Facinating Book!
Professor Harrison's treatment of this topic was excellent and the book was really fun to read! As a psychology student I really enjoyed this book, not because I'm a fan of SciFi, (I am), but because Harrison's points are so well supported and tied in to existing research in psychology and many other fields. By the end of the book, you start to think you'd want Al Harrison to be on the team that made first contact with ET. (I wonder if the writers of the movie Sphere where aware of this book.) Harrison's After Contact made me consider many practical aspects of contact with intelligent life from another world. Even as a long time Star Trek and Sci Fi fan, this book was full of new and facinating ideas to consider, all the more facinating because the decisions outlined in the book that we'd need to make regarding contact are real. Bravo.
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5: Why Not Both?
No book review, merely a reply:SETI research these days is supported almost entirely by private funds, companies and individuals. If Mr. Carlberg feels that's a problem, a more constructive solution might be for him to work towards finding funding for the projects he prefers. It's hardly as if greedy astronomers are somehow snatching public funds away from primate research, after all.
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