26 years

October 27, 2022 5:22 PM

In Contact, the book, what was the explanation (was there an explanation?) for why the message suddenly stopped without a time delay?

I can't remember, and unfortunately left my kindle at home so can't flip through it to check, and for some reason this is The Thing That Is Bothering Me Most right now and it's all I'll be able to think about. I'm struggling to google it.

posted by phunniemee to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: As best as I can recall, there was no explanation. It's one of the things that is suspicious and requires faith to believe wasn't indicative of a near-earth signal source.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 7:02 PM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I just grabbed my copy to check, and I think this is the only hint at an answer:

(Secretary of Defense Kitz:) "[...]Even if the transmitter knew instantaneously—through the black hole, if you like—that the Machine had been activated, it would be twenty-six years before the signal stops arriving on Earth. Your Vegans couldn't have known twenty-six years ago when the Machine was going to be activated. And to the minute. You would have to send a message back in time to twenty-six years ago, for the Message to stop on December thirty-first, 1999. You do follow, don't you?"

(Dr. Arroway:) "Yes, I follow. This is wholly unexplored territory. You know, it's not called a space-time continuum for nothing. If they can make tunnels through space, I suppose they can make some kind of tunnels through time. The fact that we got back a day early shows that they have at least a limited kind of time travel. So maybe as soon as we left the Station, they sent a message twenty-six years back into time to turn the transmission off. I don't know."

Naturally, Kitz doesn't find this theory too persuasive.
posted by teraflop at 7:13 PM on October 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you 🙏
posted by phunniemee at 7:33 PM on October 27, 2022

If you bought it on Amazon, you should be able to read through Amazon's web reader.
posted by lhauser at 8:45 PM on October 27, 2022