There is a wonderful book edited by Carl Sagan called Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI), Proceedings of a conference held at the Byurakan

There is a wonderful book edited by Carl Sagan called Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI), Proceedings of a conference held at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, Yerevan, USSR, 5-11 September 1971. The chief aims of the conference were, first, to estimate values for terms of the Drake equation, and second, to devise strategies for contact. So all these top American and Soviet scientists had to discuss a remarkable range of topics—everything from the chemical origins of life, to the anthropology of early civilizations, to the problem of encoding messages in a form comprehensible to intelligences vastly unlike ourselves. It's possibly the most interesting thing I've ever read.