"A Pale Blue Dot" is not fiction - it is incredible insightful scientific musings and a walk through planets and moons of our solar system - but it feels like fiction. Sagan's writing style is full of amazement, wisdom and poetry, and just like a great fiction book it is hard to put down.

When that's said, he spends the first part of the book beating on the Church / centrists views in all forms but mostly the Church. I find that somewhat unnecessary - at least to beat that much, but it appears to be his pet peeve, so I put up with it.

The fascinating parts of the book starts after that. They are about the worlds in our solar system, how planets and moons form, and the vision for human Space exploration. Fantastic. If it was science fiction it would be great science fiction (just add characters), but it is science which just makes it even greater.

The book is of course 20 years old, and a lot has been discovered since it was written, but mostly not described as eloquently as Sagan can do it. My husband and I read the book together (I read it up for him as goodnight story), and used Wikipedia on my tablet to update ourselves about the later discoveries after each chapter, so when we finished reading about a planet or moon we would go to Wikipedia to get the latest space exploration updates about it before moving on. I can recommend that strategy.