I’m a hard (plausible) science fiction author, born in New Zealand and currently living in Australia. Over the course of my career, I’ve written 26 novels in my First Contact series, looking at all the various different ways in which First Contact might unfold. If you enjoy stories that leave you thinking long after the final page, check out my First Contact series.
This is (possibly) the first ever First Contact story and was written by French philosopher Voltaire in 1752.
The imagery is beautiful. Micromegas glides on a sunbeam between planets, something that, today, we’d call the use of a solar sail. Humanity is reduced to ants scurrying in the dirt before this giant alien. Voltaire uses his fictional story to challenge the prevailing philosophies of his day, including the insistence of humans declaring the universe was made for them (to which Micromegas laughs).
Although this book is long out of print, it can be read for free online as part of the Gutenberg Project.
The story is organized into seven brief chapters. The first describes Micromégas (small/large), an inhabitant of one of the planets that orbits Sirius. His home world is 21.6 million times greater in circumference than the Earth. Micromégas stands 120,000 feet (about 23 miles) tall. When he is almost 450 years old, approaching the end of his infancy, Micromégas writes a scientific book examining the insects on his planet, which at 100 feet are too small to be detected by ordinary microscopes. This book is considered heresy, and after a 200-year trial, he is banished from the court for a term…
I’m recommending this book because everyone has seen the movie, but the book throws in a few curveballs that didn’t make it into the screenplay.
Carl Sagan is known for his Cosmos series and his science communication books challenging the growing anti-science sentiment in society, but it’s in this work of fiction where he really gets to speculate on what First Contact might be like and the motivation of aliens reaching out to us.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
Although this title seems obscure, most people will recognize the classic movie adaptation under the name The Thing.
For a science fiction story written before the Second World War, this book stands up surprisingly well. It’s the First Contact story we don’t want, where instead of meeting an intelligent extraterrestrial species, we come face to face with a monster. And it is intelligence that saves the day, not brute force or strength.
Although it is out of print, this book can be read online.
Who Goes There?, the novella that formed the basis of the film The Thing, is the John W. Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient body of a crash-landed alien.
Although the characters are wooden and the dialogue is stilted by today’s standards, the vision of Arthur C. Clarke to imagine what an interstellar spacecraft would be like is astonishing.
His understanding of the mechanics and physics involved comes through, making the story compelling. And there are unforeseen antagonists in the form of politics and religion. This book is being developed into a screenplay for adaptation by Denis Villeneuve (who also directed Arrival and Dune).
I’d highly recommend reading the book before seeing the movie.
In the year 2130, a mysterious and apparently untenanted alien spaceship, Rama, enters our solar system. The first product of an alien civilisation to be encountered by man, it reveals a world of technological marvels and an unparalleled artificial ecology.
In an underground coal mine in Northern Germany, over forty scribes who are fluent in different languages have been spared the camps to answer letters to the dead—letters that people were forced to answer before being gassed, assuring relatives that conditions in the camps were good.
Although it is well over a hundred years old, this book is well worth your time to read.
Its insights into the nature of hostile First Contact are far from fictional. H.G. Wells was inspired to write this book after hearing of the genocide of Aborigines in Tasmania, where bounties were put on the heads of natives ($5 for a man, $1 for a child, nothing for women). As Australia was still a British colony at the time, there was a public backlash against the atrocities of these settlers.
This left H.G. Wells wondering what it would be like if England were subject to the same kind of invasion, and he penned this book. The astute reader will pick up on references to the massacre in Tasmania as they read the very first page!
But planet Earth was not only being watched - soon it would be invaded by monstrous creatures from Mars who strode about the land in great mechanical tripods, bringing death and destruction with them. What can possibly stop an invading army equipped with heat-rays and poisonous black gas, intent on wiping out the human race? This is one man's story of that incredible invasion, from the time the first Martians land near his home town, to the destruction of London. Is this the end of human life on Earth?
Five hundred miles from the Mediterranean, deep in the interior of Libya, lost in the heart of the Sahara itself, lies an oasis trapped in the past. With no surface water, Harat Zuwayyah barely supports any life at all. The scorching wind howls across the desert, driving the sand and threatening to bury the village.
Professor Susan Taylor is excavating an Egyptian tomb dated to 4500 BCE. From the back of the cave, red eyes glow in the dark...
"Is this supposed to help? Christ, you've heard it a hundred times. You know the story as well as I do, and it's my story!" "Yeah, but right now it only has a middle. You can't remember how it begins, and no-one knows how it ends."
It's 1943, and World War II has gripped the nation, including the Stilwell family in Jacksonville, Alabama. Rationing, bomb drills, patriotism, and a changing South barrage their way of life. Neighboring Fort McClellan has brought the world to their doorstep in the form of young soldiers from all over the…
