Just Who Was First?

So there’s this Robert Zemeckis-Jodie Foster movie coming out called “Contact” (“Your Next Contact May Be From a Lawyer,” In the Know, July 7) and it was derived from Carl Sagan’s book “Contact,” which Francis Ford Coppola claims came from his story “First Contact,” and he’s suing everybody in sight about it.

Well, here’s another “brief.” Coppola probably “borrowed” the story from a highly praised and much anthologized science-fiction novella called “First Contact” written by Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins) that was published in 1945.

Maybe Leinster’s estate should sue Coppola.

LOUIS C. KILGORE

Redondo Beach