A quick scan of Joel Schlosberg’s Carl Sagan meta-post would suggest that the Memorial Blog-a-Thon was a success — by my count, Joel links to roughly 125 blog entries and online essays, many of them in languages other than English (I’m honored to be among them, not too far from Scalzi’s listing), and I imagine there are others around the ‘net that did not get listed by Joel for one reason or another. I’ve read a number of them, and they’re all moving tributes. But the best thing I’ve read in conjunction with all of this is, not surprisingly, the remarks made by Carl’s own son, Nick Sagan. He remembers Carl not as some inspiring idol-figure or media personality, but simply as Dad, a human being with hobbies and quirks, just like the rest of us. I was amused to learn, for instance, that the great astronomer and science advocate Carl Sagan liked to play pinball, that he loved basketball and grew to appreciate The Simpsons after a bad first impression, but never enjoyed Beavis and Butthead or Aliens, and that he “talked” with dolphins in their “native tongue.” And then there was this touching father-son moment:
…my favorite sound of his was the sound he’d make upon discovering something interesting and new, some idea or possibility that impressed him or opened up a fresh way of looking at things. It was a kind of “aaah.” One of my proudest moments: We were watching my first Star Trek episode, “Attached,” [Ed. note: Nick wrote several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.] and within minutes he’d made the sound, turning to me with a beaming smile and saying, “That’s really good.” And this continued for the entire show. The completeness of how much he loved what I’d done, that genuine sense of enjoyment stays with me, a sense of respect and approval I treasure like nothing else.
Nick concludes with one final memory that perfectly captures Carl Sagan as I’ve always imagined him, the one I described when I first wrote about him on this blog:
Though he worried about the state of the world from time to time, it never stopped him. And when we’d talk about what things might be like in twenty-five, fifty or a hundred years, he said he knew there would be difficult challenges ahead, but he believed we were up to the task. He believed in human ingenuity and compassion, in thinking long-term instead of short, in putting our many differences and superstitions aside. He believed in a better tomorrow. He believed in us.
Go read all of Nick’s remembrance. It’s worth your time.
