[Shady]

Looked through the recommendation thread and tried doing searches but couldn't find anything. I'm looking for some good 'first contact with alien species' novels. Preferably set fairly contemporarily, but doesn't have to be. Also alien invasion is Ok but not quite what I'm looking for. Books in this topic I've read already are..let's see.. Contact, Mote in God's Eye, Childhood's End, the Rama series. Books like Contact and Rendezvous with Rama are good examples of what I've really liked.

[MeTa|]

Why don't you try some Lem novels like "Solaris" or "The Invincible". To me, these First Contact scenarios seem more realistic for some reason.

[ArthurFrayn]

I second Solaris.
A heavyweight in the brainpan department, but worth the trouble as it is a serious novel about the very notion of communicating with something truly alien.
If first contact means that you expect that the experience might be truly challenging to your very notion of who and what you are, then this is definitely a read for you.


I also have a particular fondness for the first contact that occurs in James Blish's short story "Common Time"

[Priestvyrce]

Larry Niven's Footfall was pretty engrossing 'first contact' and invasion novel. Of course, H G Wells' The War of the Worlds is still pretty cool.

[Shady]

Thanks...anymore out there?

[Michael B]

Quite a few of Jame White's Sector General series involve a lot of first contacts from the bizarre to the perilous to the "if they had had brains they would have been dangerous."

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

Many people consider the seminal work of First Contact science fiction to be, not surprisingly, "First Contact," by Murray Leinster. Here's what noted author Barry N. Malzberg had to say recently:

"First Contact", the first and still best story of humanity's first intersection in deep space with an intelligent, spacefaring alien race, was [published] in Astounding in 1945, [has been] reprinted hundreds of times and is regarded as not only an extraordinarily effective work of fiction and speculation but as a blueprint, a virtual manual, for how such contact might be accomplished safely and in a way which protects the parties who are alien to one another.

This quote is from the introduction to the newest Leinster omnibus from Baen Books, A LOGIC NAMED JOE, edited and compiled by Eric Flint.

The Locus Index of Science Fiction should show you where you can find this story (it'll probably be a used-book store).

[Postaurch]

Octavia Butler's Exogenesis (sp?) series.

Mary Doria Russel's Sparrow and its sequel.

Julian May's prequel series following the alien Celts (forgetting the names - I think one is Metaconcert).

Not her best work but some interesting concepts, Sherri Tepper has a book about several alien species with advanced nanotech incorporating us into their empire (forget the name).

David Brin has this as a theme, but not sure an entire book was dedicated to it (think it was more a section of a book, or short story set in the same milieu).

Several series by C. J. Cherryh, most recently the Foriegner series, but also

[Ropie]

Someone already mentioned Lem: his 'Eden' is a strange and easy-to-read book about first contact on an alien world.

Similarly, and also from "behind the Iron Curtain" is 'Roadside Picnic' by the Strugatsky Brothers (see my avatar). This is first contact with the remnants of an alien visit (so I suppose that's first contact of the second kind really(?)) that makes for a fascinating read - one of my favourite SF novels. Also available to read online/print out if you search for it.

And if you liked 'Rendezvous with Rama', then Greg Bear's 'Eon' is fairly close to it in terms of basic premise. However, it's written with a very heavy hand - this review of it is quite accurate: http://www.sfsite.com/07b/eon132.htm

Finally, not a great book in my opinion, but worth reading as it is one of the earlier ones with some pioneering ideas, is A E Van Vogt's 'Voyage of the Space Beagle'. It's very dated though.

[ArthurFrayn]

That review is spot on about the antiquated cold war crap that Bear uses a a starting point. That irritated me to no end. Would that was the only problem with the book.

Here's a bit from my favorite review of Eon from Amazon that I thought was hilariously on the money.I love this guys mock Bear description sentence. All too painfully true. I fell off the chair when I read it:

The Eon Enigma. Great SF or complete bollocks?
Something inbetween perhaps. The ideas in Eon earn 9/10, however Bear's writing style gets a 4. For starters, he describes the different locations in overtechnical geometric language. Sentences like "Patricia stood parallel to the vortex so that she formed a toroid at 90 degrees to its summit" tells the average reader nothing. I made this sentence up but its not an overexageration. The book is full of these sort of descriptions. Great for a hard geometry test, terrible for anything but. In my opinion Larry Niven's geometric descriptions in Ringworld are about as far as a writer should go. Its a shame because if Bear had used simpler language I probably would have been amazed by the pictures my imagination formed. I think Bear's characterisation is ok. ........ The problem is that Bear spends too much time describing some things and not enough entertaining. I am not asking for a shorter book or for his characters to do a tap dance. I was simply hoping that Bear's characters would play more of a key role in the events that shape the 2nd half of the book rather than just being the unwitting cause of what unfolds...