SOURCE: "The Cosmic Explainer," in Time, October 20, 1980, pp. 62-3, 65-6, 68-9.

In the following essay, Golden provides an overview of Sagan's career and his production of the television program Cosmos.

Scene: A living room in Brooklyn, circa 1946

Grandfather: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Boy: An astronomer.

Grandfather: Yes, but how will you make a living?

Flashing through the heavens like an extraterrestrial Tinker Bell, the spacecraft looks like something by H. G. Wells out of Walt Disney. At the helm is none other than the boy from Brooklyn, now fully grown and, among several other things, a real astronomer. With a nonchalant gesture over his magical controls, he guides the ship on a voyage made possible only by the imagination, with the help of a Hollywood special-effects crew. Into the arms of giant galaxies he goes, through halos of stars, past a blinking...