Carl Sagan is your god, GUTS. I can see how he is a bastard outside of Cosmos, but Cosmos was just so awesome to be passed up and his theories were rad, even if physicsts make fun of him. The sweet thing about the TV sereis of Cosmos (not the books) was how it blended intruiging physic facts along with a 80's touch. By the way, I didn't read the book for Contact nor even see the movie, so I don't know how much the book relates to the movie even though Sagan did do some kind of production for the movie but died during it (I think). Contact is supposed to be shitty though, but for how awesome Cosmos was, I think Carl Sagan easily pays off as being a hero in my books.
By the way, I have this theory of how Carl Sagan isn't actually dead, but actually faked his death and time traveled to a different time to escape from some kind of government issues due to secret discoveries.