Science fiction novel by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot (1962),1 inspired by seminal developments in SETI (see Morrison-Cocconi Conjecture) and the construction of the first giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. Published in the year following Project Ozma, it begins with the accidental discovery of an extraterrestrial signal containing a complex message in binary (mathematics, as a universal language) – instructions, as it turns out, for making an immensely powerful computer. A similar theme was explored later by James Gunn in The Listeners and Carl Sagan in Contact.
Reference
Hoyle, Fred, and Elliott, John A. A for Andromeda. New York: Harper & Row (1962).
