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Best first contact story
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natpowers
Posted 2012-05-03 1:49 PM (#3197)
Subject: Best first contact story



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It suddenly dawned upon me that in spite of having read so much of SF, I've read relatively few first contact novels. Any suggestions? The most recent SF novel dealing intelligently with aliens was Mieville's Embassytown, and I had to literally slog through the second half of the novel. But I appreciate what he tried to do there - its always difficult to write aliens properly because one has to strike a balance between defamiliarization and at least enough 'humanness' to not make it seem too ludicrous and arbitrary. I've heard good things about Peter Watt's Blindsight. I'd like to try it next...did anyone here enjoy it?

Edited by natpowers 2012-05-03 1:51 PM
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Administrator
Posted 2012-05-03 2:51 PM (#3198 - in reply to #3197)
Subject: RE: Best first contact story



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A good place to start would be to peruse the list of 106 books that have been tagged as First Contact novels.  There are surely more in our database that have not been tagged yet but there are some great books in that list.

Here are a few that I would recommend:

The Sparrow is one of my all time favorites as is A Deepness in the Sky but I enjoyed all of these.

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whargoul
Posted 2012-05-03 2:53 PM (#3200 - in reply to #3197)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: Dallas, TX		For some reason Peter Watts is a bit of a tough read for me but so far the stories have been worth it. Blindsight was my introduction to Watts and I really enjoyed it (I believe I have it marked as a favorite in my profile). It was hard and gritty with socially dysfunctional outcast characters that you don't really want to like but suck you in anyway. It's set in the same universe as his Rifters series (which so far hasn't dealt with alien contact) and I liked it enough that I decided to start my way down the Rifters road - so far I haven't been disappointed.

Rendezvou with Rama (Arthur C Clarke) is good one too but I'm not sure I'd consider it true First Contact.
Others I'd suggest would be Calculating God (Robert J Sawyer), Protector (Larry Niven) , Chindi (Jack McDevitt), books 1 & 2 (so far) of The Heechee Saga (Frederick Pohl), The Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven) and Learning the World (Ken MacLeod)

A good place to start is to search by the First Contact sub-genre: - https://www.worldswithoutend.com/searchwwe.asp?st=&t=1&at=All&gid=11...
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natpowers
Posted 2012-05-04 9:05 AM (#3205 - in reply to #3197)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Thanks!
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charlesdee
Posted 2012-05-05 3:48 PM (#3208 - in reply to #3205)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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I highly recommend The Dark Light Years by Brian Aldiss. (It is not in the WWEnd database.)
Aldiss's novel is a very short, very dark comedy about humankind's disastrous encounter with the Utods, a race in every way man's equal and in many ways our superiors. Unfortunately they resemble six-legged hippopotami and wallow in their own dung. Things do not go well.
I reviewed The Dark Light Years on my own website

http://potatoweather.blogspot.com/search/label/aldiss

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Case Kipple
Posted 2012-05-10 2:35 PM (#3209 - in reply to #3208)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: UK probably at work if I am online.		I found The Heechee saga allot of fun.
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-06-01 11:16 AM (#3283 - in reply to #3197)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: UK		I loved C.J.Cherryh's Foreigner universe books.The actual first contact seemed fine,but it ended in a disastrous war,and now the humans who desperately landed on the Atevi planet have to live isolted on an island,and only one human acts as an liaison between the two races,trying to integrate the humans superior technology with Atevi society with the least disuption possible.Excellent.
Are there any C.J.Cherryh fans on here? She is not an author for everyone,but I like her books.The theme which seems to underlie her books is the need for finding a home,a family of sorts,which can turn out to be among your enemies or even an alien race.One factor I also enjoy ith her books is the restricted view of events.We see things only from the protagonists point of view,which can be partial,or even wrong.One of my all time SF authors,though she has another whole set of fans for her fantasy books,which I am not familiar with yet.
The fact that she has had 24 award nominations and three winners says a lot,yet she has never been really high profile.Someday I will get round to reading her fantasy.Not enough hours in the day to read everything.Does anyone want my husband,four kids and six granddaughters,plus three step granddaughters? Imagine how many great books I could get through without real life obligations! ;0)
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Scott Laz
Posted 2012-06-01 2:00 PM (#3288 - in reply to #3283)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado		Hi, d.d.! C. J. Cherryh is an all-time favorite of mine, and should be given "Grand Master" status at some point, I hope. Agreed that her portrayal of alien races/cultures are among the best, for anyone looking for first contact (or just alien contact) stories. The Foreigner series is one of the few things of her that I have not read. I'd like to, but the number of volumes is a little daunting at this point. I think her relatively low profile these days may be in part because she is so prolific. She maintains consistently high quality, but since those Hugo winners in the '80s, hasn't done anything that stood out enough to get attention much outside of her fan base, and as her current series gets longer, it becomes less an less likely that new readers will jump on. More recent SF fans might look at her output and not know where to start! Sometimes prolific and consistent writers get taken for granted, and end up writing for their dedicated fans. I'd like to look at the Morgaine fantasy series (Gate of Ivrel, etc.) for the blog at some point...
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-06-01 3:31 PM (#3291 - in reply to #3197)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: UK		Hi Scott,good to talk to you.Please call me Dusty! :0).Yes she is very prolific,but because there are so many different story arcs to her tales,you can always isolate a thread and follow it.I would start a newbie off on the Alliance/Company Wars books,seven books,so not too daunting,and starting off with her Hugo winning Downbelow Staion,The Chanur series is very interesting too,here there is a lion like race of space explorers encountering their first human,and the human is always at a disadvantage.,five books. Then there is the Foreigner series.They are written in trilogies,so anyone can get an idea of her style and content in three books.I really love the first three,and book six,the rest are really for Cherryh aficionados,but I would recommend reading perhaps one thread of her books to at least get to know her. I highly recommendthese Sf series,but I think some of her stuff is more on the fantasy side Cuckoo's Egg is supposed to be good,have you read it?.

Edited by dustydigger 2012-06-01 3:36 PM
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Scott Laz
Posted 2012-06-02 6:43 PM (#3298 - in reply to #3291)
Subject: Re: Best first contact story



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado		Dusty: I read all of Cherryh's books as they came out, up through Cyteen (1989). Cuckoo's Egg is definitely one of the best. The story is of a human raised by aliens, told from the alien point of view (so the human is the alien in the story). Agreed that the Company Wars sequence is the core of her science fiction, and a great place to start. Considering I haven't read them since they were released, the others that are memorable to me (along with Cuckoo's Egg) are Brothers of Earth, the Faded Sun Trilogy, the Morgaine trilogy, and Forty Thousand in Gehenna...
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