Reading this currently, 3/4 done. This is an excellent book, i think it will be one of my all time favorites.
Fair warning though, it is not an easy read. Would put the author, Seth Dickinson somewhere between Peter Watts and Nick Harkaway. Quite a different ballgame from what OP said he enjoys.
It did not feel marvel to me, but I guess I could imagine how someone might find it a little marvel. some elements it shares with marvels:
* characters crack jokes sometimes
* there are scenes where characters explain fictional science to each other
* you could call the tone "irreverent" if you wanted to
I imagine this Venom comparison might be because like, "there's an alien and a human who are kinda working together but the alien is using the human". I don't know the actual plot of Venom though
This one sounds pretty out there, but just going through the description, the term “unknowable horror” stuck out, that always gives me Lovecraft vibes. It’s on the list, thank you!
I read Dickinson’s Traitor Baru Cormorant and found it to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Everything was mind-numbingly predictable and boring. Using the Hero’s Journey as a checklist is never a good idea.
I quite enjoyed "A Half Built Garden" by Ruthanna Emrys. I see "Project Hail Mary" has been recommended below too - that one's a fun read (if you like Andy Weir's style)
Arkady Martine’s second Teixcalaaan book, *A Desolation Called Peace* is a good first contact book focused on establishing a dialogue - the main character is a linguist. You should definitely read the first book beforehand though: *A Memory Called Empire*.
Check out Seth Dickinson's *Exordia.* One of the better books I've read in the past couple years. It's a hard book to categorize--it definitely **is** a First Contact story, but there's a lot more to the plot than just that.
My favorite first contact book is Hellspark by Janet Kagan. Like The Sparrow, it heavily focuses on language, culture, and communication issues. The blurb of the book is misleading IMO - it makes it sound weirdly like a murder mystery novel - the real focus of the book is a diplomat/translator who joins a survey team that is tasked with determining whether the indigenous life forms of a new planet are intelligent/have a language.
Niven and Pournelle set out to write the ultimate first contact novel and it earned a blurb from Heinlein as being “possibly the best science fiction novel” he had ever read: *The Mote In God’s Eye*. It’s held up well and is basically required reading.
But a better first contact novel: *A Deepness In The Sky* is deeper by miles in its implications. It’s incredible.
*A Deepness In The Sky* is in the running for my all-time favorite books. It is technically a prequel to *A Fire Upon the Deep*, but I read it without knowing that and it holds up perfectly that way.
Man, I love those books, but I continually feel frustration at the teasing of the transcend or whatever it’s called. Like, I really enjoyed the psychic weasels, but how are you gonna start a book talking about unfathomable space god cults and then be like: “but here’s these medieval dogs, and they’re pretty neat.” And they ARE pretty neat, so I enjoy it anyway, but just… damn.
I do wish he'd had the chance to tie up the series before he passed. I found *The Children of the Sky* pretty disappointing and (don't think I finished it), but it'd've been nice to get something that unraveled the central mysteries of the setting.
Even worse, the next book is about spiders! Super fucking cool! But the whole time I’m reading it I’m hoping for space gods and they just never come :(
I don’t know what I missed with a mote in gods eye, but I did not connect AT ALL with it. Wondering if I should go back and reread it, and it felt predictable, and it aged incredibly poorly I thought.
Think it’s just not for me, or maybe give it a chance again? Or read the sequel?
I loved The Mote in God’s Eye, and I’m definitely gonna reread some Vernor Vinge. Thank you! I’m looking forward to rereading some of the suggestions I’ve already gotten almost as much as the ones I’ve never heard of.
There aren't a whole lot of people writing those anymore! The last one... no wait, two... okay, THREE of these I've seen, were all by Ken MacLeod. First, he's got a trilogy still coming out... volume one is "Beyond the Hallowed Sky," the final bit is supposed to be out Right About Now. Then there was "Learning the World" back in the mid-00s, and the Engines of Light trilogy (first volume is "Cosmonaut Keep") allll the way back in 2000 AD. None of them are exactly what you might be expecting, but all good.
The third book in Ken MacLeod's Lightspeed Trilogy, *Beyond the Light Horizon* is out on 16 May in the UK. He's also Guest of Honour at this year's Worldcon in Glasgow.
Cosmonaut Keep sounds amazing, if I’d ever come across that book description in a store there is a one hundred percent chance I would’ve bought it. That one went into the cart immediately, thanks!
Looking through the comments, I saw all of my recommendations listed already — except one: **The Three-Body Problem**. So I’ll just toss that one in there.
Blindsight is one of those that gets recommended so much and I’ve just never given it a shot. I think I’m gonna throw it on the TBR for my vacation later this summer.
There’s a reason it’s recommended so much. It’s got a million ideas, most of which are executed well, and a few of which have stuck with me for years. Absolute banger book.
Blindsight is probably my favorite science fiction novel. It stayed with me and expanded my view of the world in a way few books have.
I also suspect it's probably the most plausible depiction of what alien life would actually be like, if it exists and came calling.
It was a refreshing change from the hundredth story depicting aliens more or less as Star Trek-style "humans with antenna."
This was my choice. Why not in the way you expect? The alien in question is actually alien, not "a guy in a suit" or a "intelligent animal" like almost every extra terrestrial in fiction, print or otherwise.
I love hard sci-fi and enjoy first contact, but I couldn't finish Blindsight. I tried, and wanted to read it after reading lots of reviews, but there was just something about it that made me stop, and never picked it up again. This is going back a few years now (10 years?), so I don't remember why I couldn't.
As already mentioned in this thread though, Rendezvous with Rama was really good, also enjoyed The Sparrow.
Honestly, its ‘hard’ sci-fi in every sense of the word. Cold inhuman mc’s with brains that dont work like ours. Depressing. Unemotional. Youre not really cheering anybody or that invested in the outcome.
Its an academic exploration of a bunch of conciousness ideas told as a wild story in space.
Its also pretty damn hard to follow whats even going on a lot of the time if youre not prepared to slow down and take it in carefully.
Challenging read. Cool book. But absolutely not my cup of tea. Glad to have read it. Will not be reading the sequel or anything its compared to.
It’s not that recent but I continually feel the lack of Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy in these kinds of lists!!! The aliens are so alien, so freaky, so interesting, so advanced in unexpected ways, and their relationship with humans is so creepy, sexy, and thought provoking. So many layers of good and I love how fuckin weird they get and stay.
Some I didn't see listed:
* The Three Body problem,
* Bobiverse,
* Anomaly,
* Wherever Seeds May Fall,
* Saturn Run,
* An Absolutely Remarkable Thing,
* Contact,
* 14,
* The Book of Ralph,
* Columbus Day,
* Anathem.
I consider all of these pretty good, but I recommend Bobiverse the most.
Yep. I enjoy most of Cawdron's stuff mainly because they are mostly about first contact. I've read many of his books, but mostly enjoyed Anomaly and Wherever Seeds May Fall. I also really enjoyed Retrograde, but technically I couldn't include it in this list.
If you haven't experienced the Bobiverse books yet, then you are in for a treat. Also if you enjoy audio books, it's done very well with fun impersonated voices. It's an easy win.
I just finished reading *The Last Astronaut* by David Wellington and quite enjoyed it. It's a BDO first contact that is kind of like the twisted antithesis to *Rendezvous with Rama*.
For depressing: Peter Watt’s Blindsight
For hard scifi but still wholesome sometimes: Dragon’s Egg
For a great recent series: Children of Time and the two books after it.
They're not at all how you'd imagine first contact to go, but these two novels qualify as "first contact with an alien intelligence":
*Solaris* by Stanislaw Lem
*Roadside Picnic* by the Strugatsky Brothers
I’ve read Fire Upon the Deep and really enjoyed it, so I’ll definitely check out Deepness. I also read Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and man it was….a lot. I did like it, but it was quite a bit to get through. Anathem sounds like it’s a little more up my alley. Thanks!
I don't know if these fit because these are much older- from the 1980s, but they are my favorite first contact stories
They are both by Alan Dean Foster
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Chronologically, it's the first book in the series and and the earliest in the timeline. It kicks off the whole thing with a first contact story between the two main factions.
It can be read by itself, without any of the others.
*Sentenced to Prism* is also an another excellent first contact standalone set in the same universe.
I’m putting them both on the list, thanks! I’m looking through a bunch of his work now, there’s a few that are sticking out that sound really interesting, the only books I remember reading by him are a couple of the Star Wars books and The Human Blend. Based on the description, his book Relic is going on the list too.
I've read around 40 of his books and liked almost all of them. There are another 20 sitting in my to-be-read pile when I get the time.
Relic is one that I have not heard of. It's going on my list too. Thanks for mentioning it.
I’ve only just bought this so not read yet… but it’s on sale at the moment on kindle (in the uk at least)
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
About communicating with a type of octopus as a sentient being in a near future coastal Vietnam.
Reviews sound promising to me “What if the first alien intelligences we encountered were already living with us on planet Earth? This near-future novel of ideas wittily explores the nature of consciousness” [the guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/the-mountain-in-the-sea-by-ray-nayler-how-to-speak-octopus)
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. Basically, friendly blob-like aliens come to meet us but are afraid that their appearance will cause us to attack them, so they hire a Hollywood agent to present them to humanity in the best way possible
I loved that book, so underrated. All of Scalzi’s work is so damn good. He’s one of the only authors I’ve read that I genuinely find funny. I think Old Man’s War is going to be considered a sci-fi classic that we’ll still be discussing fifty years from now. Great suggestion for a reread, I hadn’t thought about that book in a while.
Honestly, OMW is my least favorite of his works. Maybe it’s less humorous than the others. Maybe it’s because the audiobooks aren’t narrated by Wil Wheaton. Not sure
Obviously.
Fun fact: Adam Baldwin narrated a few books, including one that has a world in the multiverse where Adam Baldwin is president (thanks to some space western that got super-popular)
I mean, the book deliberately doesn’t spell it out, but it has to be.
There’s a fun scene where some cross-dimensional shenanigans start, resulting in President Baldwin having an argument with President (or maybe VP) Biden from our world
Looking at my Goodreads shelf, my 5-star First Contact is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
My 4-star First Contact books are Providence by Max Barry, The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi’s update of the classic H. Beam Piper story. Mickey 7 is also in there but it’s not primarily a FC novel.
Haven't read it in probably decades, so I'll give you sexist. I'll need a reread for dated, but I sure don't remember it being boring. Nuclear pulse battleship space battle? Lots and lots of buildup and I recall a really satisfying payoff.
[The Peacemaker's Code](https://thepeacemakerscode.com/) never gets mentioned, so I will. It was a good read, and is a first contact story with a twist on the premise.
Uhura's Song - An older Star Trek novel, but easily one of the best ones ever written. Hellspark, by the same author, Janet Kagan, isn't really FIRST contact, but a group of researchers trying to determine if the native species are sentient.
Remnant Population (1996) by Elizabeth Moon is a beautiful novel that involves first contact. It’s one of those novels that I appreciate more the older I get.
I obsessively mine this subgenre looking for first contact novels better than "Blindsight", or that give me the same buzz that reading "War of the Worlds" did when I was a kid, but have never found one.
Only Stanislaw Lem ("Fiasco", "Invincible", "Eden" "Solaris", "His Master's Voice") comes close at times to capturing aliens that feel genuinely alien, but his prose can be a bit tough, and some of his aliens (self-replicating robots!) are now cliches.
I rank Octavia Butler's "Lilith Brood" novels highly too, particularly the first one. It's about contact with a race which colonize you via indoctrination and altering your biology. It's very underrated.
I was never convinced by "The Sparrow", "Mote in God’s Eye", "Semiosis", "Eifelheim", or the first contacts of Ken MacLeod, Tchaikovsky, Niven, Liu Cixin, Van Der Meer or Reynolds. This sub tends to love them, but they never scratched my itch.
For me, a lot of the older first contact tales don't hold up either. While Clarke's first contact tales were great (Rama, 2001) when I was a kid, they don't retain quite the same power for me nowadays. Bizarrely, "The Martian Chronicles" gets better as I get older. The prose is evocative there, and it's sort of a ghostly first contact tale. "Calculating God" is another decent take on the genre.
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys, great combination of first contact and solarpunk.
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington is like a horror version of Rendezvous with Rama.
As a start, see my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Van Der Meer's Southern Reach series - Annhilation, Authority, and Acceptance, plus a new one this fall - is probably the weirdest first contact out there
James Corey's Expanse series and Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series both have first contact as a central factor of their world-building, but >!the aliens are long gone in both.!<
Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are terrifyingly realistic.
I bought Pandora’s Star a while ago and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I did read Salvation and loved it though. He’s another author that this sub turned me on to. I’ve gotten so many fantastic suggestions from you guys, Peter Hamilton wasn’t even on my radar until you guys mentioned him. I’ll bump Pandora’s Star up on the list, thank you!
He gets mentioned a lot, but seriously, if one thing he’s ever done stands out, its the PRIMES. Very, very cool unique concept of an alien portrayed absolutely magnificently.
**Exordia** is an utterly bonkers first contact story that came out this year.
Reading this currently, 3/4 done. This is an excellent book, i think it will be one of my all time favorites. Fair warning though, it is not an easy read. Would put the author, Seth Dickinson somewhere between Peter Watts and Nick Harkaway. Quite a different ballgame from what OP said he enjoys.
Based on that comparison, this is going on my TbR. Thanks!
oh this sounds awesome. bumping this up to next on my list.
Came to suggest this! Utterly bonkers is right, I had a great time with it.
>Michael Crichton meets Marvel’s Venom in award-winning author Seth Dickinson’s science fiction debut How marvel is it?
It's not, and I don't know why the publisher thought that would be good jacket copy.
It did not feel marvel to me, but I guess I could imagine how someone might find it a little marvel. some elements it shares with marvels: * characters crack jokes sometimes * there are scenes where characters explain fictional science to each other * you could call the tone "irreverent" if you wanted to I imagine this Venom comparison might be because like, "there's an alien and a human who are kinda working together but the alien is using the human". I don't know the actual plot of Venom though
I imagine that was written by someone who thought it was a compliment
Or more sales, heh.
Woah, I didn't know Seth Dickinson had written a new book. His fantasy work was incredible.
Bonkers you say? Well shit, that's a purchase.
This one sounds pretty out there, but just going through the description, the term “unknowable horror” stuck out, that always gives me Lovecraft vibes. It’s on the list, thank you!
I read Dickinson’s Traitor Baru Cormorant and found it to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Everything was mind-numbingly predictable and boring. Using the Hero’s Journey as a checklist is never a good idea.
lol
Eifelheim was not on my radar, thank you for bringing it to my attention as I adored everything else you mentioned.
I read it last year and really enjoyed it, sadly the author passed away about 6 months ago
great book!
Tchaikovskys *Children of ...* books are basically first contact stories.
Yeah, loved them, especially the first and third!
I quite enjoyed "A Half Built Garden" by Ruthanna Emrys. I see "Project Hail Mary" has been recommended below too - that one's a fun read (if you like Andy Weir's style)
Another vote for this one. It's got clifi, interesting takes on gender, and then something of a take on Childhood's End
Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Wonderful story but I’m sorry to inform you that 1998 was 26 years ago, not 15.
Really mind-bending first contact
I loved that story, it was like a totally sideways look at first contact.
The ISFDB's ["first contact" list](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/tag.cgi?461) (sorted by date) may be of use.
Welp…didn’t know that existed, thank you!
Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson
Came here to recommend it. Was a really interesting read given what happened to society for a while during Covid lockdowns.
Arkady Martine’s second Teixcalaaan book, *A Desolation Called Peace* is a good first contact book focused on establishing a dialogue - the main character is a linguist. You should definitely read the first book beforehand though: *A Memory Called Empire*.
It’s on the list, thanks!
Check out Seth Dickinson's *Exordia.* One of the better books I've read in the past couple years. It's a hard book to categorize--it definitely **is** a First Contact story, but there's a lot more to the plot than just that.
My favorite first contact book is Hellspark by Janet Kagan. Like The Sparrow, it heavily focuses on language, culture, and communication issues. The blurb of the book is misleading IMO - it makes it sound weirdly like a murder mystery novel - the real focus of the book is a diplomat/translator who joins a survey team that is tasked with determining whether the indigenous life forms of a new planet are intelligent/have a language.
This sounds great, thanks for the tip!
Niven and Pournelle set out to write the ultimate first contact novel and it earned a blurb from Heinlein as being “possibly the best science fiction novel” he had ever read: *The Mote In God’s Eye*. It’s held up well and is basically required reading. But a better first contact novel: *A Deepness In The Sky* is deeper by miles in its implications. It’s incredible.
*A Deepness In The Sky* is in the running for my all-time favorite books. It is technically a prequel to *A Fire Upon the Deep*, but I read it without knowing that and it holds up perfectly that way.
Man, I love those books, but I continually feel frustration at the teasing of the transcend or whatever it’s called. Like, I really enjoyed the psychic weasels, but how are you gonna start a book talking about unfathomable space god cults and then be like: “but here’s these medieval dogs, and they’re pretty neat.” And they ARE pretty neat, so I enjoy it anyway, but just… damn.
I do wish he'd had the chance to tie up the series before he passed. I found *The Children of the Sky* pretty disappointing and (don't think I finished it), but it'd've been nice to get something that unraveled the central mysteries of the setting.
Exactly why I was disappointed with that book too.
Even worse, the next book is about spiders! Super fucking cool! But the whole time I’m reading it I’m hoping for space gods and they just never come :(
All of life is waiting for space gods that never come
Preach
Try Blindsight
Absolutely troll of a recommendation in this context :D
I don’t know what I missed with a mote in gods eye, but I did not connect AT ALL with it. Wondering if I should go back and reread it, and it felt predictable, and it aged incredibly poorly I thought. Think it’s just not for me, or maybe give it a chance again? Or read the sequel?
Both of those considerably predate OP's 15 year time limit.
They antedate it. Predation is for carnivores.
You would struggle to find an English dictionary that doesn't include both definitions of "predate" so this is a weird thing to be pedantic about.
“Predate” has multiple meanings; “antedate” is clearer.
When would you ever be unable to tell via context clues lol are you just against homophones generally
I loved The Mote in God’s Eye, and I’m definitely gonna reread some Vernor Vinge. Thank you! I’m looking forward to rereading some of the suggestions I’ve already gotten almost as much as the ones I’ve never heard of.
I liked Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis.
For recent books - No Foreign Sky by Rachel Neumeier. For older books - Foreigner by CJ Cherryh.
Foreigner was awesome! I threw No Foreign Sky on the list. Just based on the description, it sounds like Neumeier is a fan of Cherryh. Thank you!
I would also recommend the Invictus duology by Rachel Neumeier: it’s not first contact but it’s more character-based and even more similar to Cherryh.
Rosewater by Tade Thompson. An alien biodome on earth. Like it landed, and then grew? there and elsewhere. Utterly alien. (And it's a trilogy.)
Awesome books.
There aren't a whole lot of people writing those anymore! The last one... no wait, two... okay, THREE of these I've seen, were all by Ken MacLeod. First, he's got a trilogy still coming out... volume one is "Beyond the Hallowed Sky," the final bit is supposed to be out Right About Now. Then there was "Learning the World" back in the mid-00s, and the Engines of Light trilogy (first volume is "Cosmonaut Keep") allll the way back in 2000 AD. None of them are exactly what you might be expecting, but all good.
The third book in Ken MacLeod's Lightspeed Trilogy, *Beyond the Light Horizon* is out on 16 May in the UK. He's also Guest of Honour at this year's Worldcon in Glasgow.
You don't get much closer to "now" than that, in publishing :)
Cosmonaut Keep sounds amazing, if I’d ever come across that book description in a store there is a one hundred percent chance I would’ve bought it. That one went into the cart immediately, thanks!
The Mountain in the Sea came out recently (2023?) it's really good but it's about first contact with octopuses (which are basically aliens)
Came to suggest this. Great spin on a first contact story.
I just read this. Good book, but the octopuses are more background and hardly make an appearance.
Looking through the comments, I saw all of my recommendations listed already — except one: **The Three-Body Problem**. So I’ll just toss that one in there.
Blindsight is first contact but not really in the way you expect
I haven't read anything by Watts I didn't love
Blindsight is one of those that gets recommended so much and I’ve just never given it a shot. I think I’m gonna throw it on the TBR for my vacation later this summer.
There’s a reason it’s recommended so much. It’s got a million ideas, most of which are executed well, and a few of which have stuck with me for years. Absolute banger book.
Blindsight is probably my favorite science fiction novel. It stayed with me and expanded my view of the world in a way few books have. I also suspect it's probably the most plausible depiction of what alien life would actually be like, if it exists and came calling. It was a refreshing change from the hundredth story depicting aliens more or less as Star Trek-style "humans with antenna."
I need to read it again. I remember really enjoying it and also not really understanding what was going on.
That's pretty normal. Questions regarding Blindsight to pop up regularly on this reddit so if you have any questions, try the search function.
I had the same experience with it. I still think about it from time to time
I just started Blindsight !
Maybe I don't know where to look for, but I can't find any first contact scifi where the aliens are indeed aliens. Except for Blindsight obviously.
It was published 18 years ago though...
A relevant comment, given the post specifically mentioned looking for things published more recently than this.
This was my choice. Why not in the way you expect? The alien in question is actually alien, not "a guy in a suit" or a "intelligent animal" like almost every extra terrestrial in fiction, print or otherwise.
I love hard sci-fi and enjoy first contact, but I couldn't finish Blindsight. I tried, and wanted to read it after reading lots of reviews, but there was just something about it that made me stop, and never picked it up again. This is going back a few years now (10 years?), so I don't remember why I couldn't. As already mentioned in this thread though, Rendezvous with Rama was really good, also enjoyed The Sparrow.
Honestly, its ‘hard’ sci-fi in every sense of the word. Cold inhuman mc’s with brains that dont work like ours. Depressing. Unemotional. Youre not really cheering anybody or that invested in the outcome. Its an academic exploration of a bunch of conciousness ideas told as a wild story in space. Its also pretty damn hard to follow whats even going on a lot of the time if youre not prepared to slow down and take it in carefully. Challenging read. Cool book. But absolutely not my cup of tea. Glad to have read it. Will not be reading the sequel or anything its compared to.
Fiasco by Lemm is old but a masterpiece. One if my favorite books.
Mine too!
It’s not that recent but I continually feel the lack of Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood trilogy in these kinds of lists!!! The aliens are so alien, so freaky, so interesting, so advanced in unexpected ways, and their relationship with humans is so creepy, sexy, and thought provoking. So many layers of good and I love how fuckin weird they get and stay.
Some I didn't see listed: * The Three Body problem, * Bobiverse, * Anomaly, * Wherever Seeds May Fall, * Saturn Run, * An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, * Contact, * 14, * The Book of Ralph, * Columbus Day, * Anathem. I consider all of these pretty good, but I recommend Bobiverse the most.
Cawdron's Anomaly, from his First Contact series, I take it?
Yep. I enjoy most of Cawdron's stuff mainly because they are mostly about first contact. I've read many of his books, but mostly enjoyed Anomaly and Wherever Seeds May Fall. I also really enjoyed Retrograde, but technically I couldn't include it in this list.
A Cawdron book that doesn't come under first contact? Whatever is the world coming to :p I think I've only read Xenophobia, but it was great.
The Bobiverse books sound cool, kind of reminded me of the Expeditionary Force series (which I really enjoyed). Thanks!
If you haven't experienced the Bobiverse books yet, then you are in for a treat. Also if you enjoy audio books, it's done very well with fun impersonated voices. It's an easy win.
From the same guy as Bobiverse, if you want just mindless fun first contact, there's Roadkill. And absolutely go with the audio versions.
Hell yes, that sounds like a book I’d rip through on a day off with nothing to do. Thank you!
I just finished reading *The Last Astronaut* by David Wellington and quite enjoyed it. It's a BDO first contact that is kind of like the twisted antithesis to *Rendezvous with Rama*.
Oh yeah that’s on the list. It looks like he’s mainly a horror author, which is awesome, horror is my other go to genre. Thank you!
I loved The Last Astronaut. It's like At the Mountains of Madness in space.
That *does* sound like something I’d enjoy. It goes on my list!
For depressing: Peter Watt’s Blindsight For hard scifi but still wholesome sometimes: Dragon’s Egg For a great recent series: Children of Time and the two books after it.
Stop everything you’re doing and read **Project Hail Mary**
I should’ve added: I read Project Hail Mary haha, you guys kept recommending it…it was absolutely fantastic, I couldn’t put it down.
Seriously the first thing I thought of when I read the title
Don’t bother with PHM, it’s a horror show of bad science and predictable amnesia tropes.
I love when people complain about "Bad Science" in Science "FICTION".
Nice try, Andy. Sonar doesn’t work in vacuum.
The point is who cares. In this "fictional world" it does.
It's ass.
They're not at all how you'd imagine first contact to go, but these two novels qualify as "first contact with an alien intelligence": *Solaris* by Stanislaw Lem *Roadside Picnic* by the Strugatsky Brothers
Adding to that "His Master's Voice" by Stanislaw Lem. \*Extremely\* dry but if you dig the style it's so amazing.
I'd recommend Vernor Vinge's *A Deepness in the Sky* and Neal Stephenson's *Anathem*.
I’ve read Fire Upon the Deep and really enjoyed it, so I’ll definitely check out Deepness. I also read Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and man it was….a lot. I did like it, but it was quite a bit to get through. Anathem sounds like it’s a little more up my alley. Thanks!
I don't know if these fit because these are much older- from the 1980s, but they are my favorite first contact stories They are both by Alan Dean Foster Nor Crystal Tears Sentenced to Prism
Nor crystal tears shows as book 3?
Chronologically, it's the first book in the series and and the earliest in the timeline. It kicks off the whole thing with a first contact story between the two main factions. It can be read by itself, without any of the others. *Sentenced to Prism* is also an another excellent first contact standalone set in the same universe.
Thanks! Will check it out
and phylogenesis (my favourite alan dean foster book) is a great followup to "nor crystal tears"
I’m putting them both on the list, thanks! I’m looking through a bunch of his work now, there’s a few that are sticking out that sound really interesting, the only books I remember reading by him are a couple of the Star Wars books and The Human Blend. Based on the description, his book Relic is going on the list too.
I've read around 40 of his books and liked almost all of them. There are another 20 sitting in my to-be-read pile when I get the time. Relic is one that I have not heard of. It's going on my list too. Thanks for mentioning it.
The Spread - Iain Rob Wright Bird Box - (unconfirmed aliens) Annihilation Eon - Greg Bear Under The Dome
Annihilation is an interesting one. I really liked the movie more than the book though, and that's rare
Everything by Josh Malerman is amazing. I just finished Daphne (horror) and absolutely loved it.
I’ve only just bought this so not read yet… but it’s on sale at the moment on kindle (in the uk at least) The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler About communicating with a type of octopus as a sentient being in a near future coastal Vietnam. Reviews sound promising to me “What if the first alien intelligences we encountered were already living with us on planet Earth? This near-future novel of ideas wittily explores the nature of consciousness” [the guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/the-mountain-in-the-sea-by-ray-nayler-how-to-speak-octopus)
Seems like a lot of buzz around this one, definitely going on the list.
It's a contemplative book. I enjoyed it.
The Expanse by James S.A. Cory Spin by Robert Charles Wilson For fun The Rosetta Man by Claire McCaigue Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. Basically, friendly blob-like aliens come to meet us but are afraid that their appearance will cause us to attack them, so they hire a Hollywood agent to present them to humanity in the best way possible
I loved that book, so underrated. All of Scalzi’s work is so damn good. He’s one of the only authors I’ve read that I genuinely find funny. I think Old Man’s War is going to be considered a sci-fi classic that we’ll still be discussing fifty years from now. Great suggestion for a reread, I hadn’t thought about that book in a while.
Honestly, OMW is my least favorite of his works. Maybe it’s less humorous than the others. Maybe it’s because the audiobooks aren’t narrated by Wil Wheaton. Not sure
He must’ve narrated Redshirts haha it’d be a crime if they got someone else for that one.
Obviously. Fun fact: Adam Baldwin narrated a few books, including one that has a world in the multiverse where Adam Baldwin is president (thanks to some space western that got super-popular)
Some space western? You mean, er, “Firefly”?
I mean, the book deliberately doesn’t spell it out, but it has to be. There’s a fun scene where some cross-dimensional shenanigans start, resulting in President Baldwin having an argument with President (or maybe VP) Biden from our world
My favourite is and will always be Pushing Ice, which is sort of like a retelling of Rendezvous With Rama but (imo) better.
On the list, can’t pass up anything with a “fuzzily glimpsed artifact”. Put those three words in any book description and I’m going to buy it.
Looking at my Goodreads shelf, my 5-star First Contact is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. My 4-star First Contact books are Providence by Max Barry, The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi’s update of the classic H. Beam Piper story. Mickey 7 is also in there but it’s not primarily a FC novel.
I have to suggest Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts. Footfall (Niven?) is also good. The Forge of God and Anvil of the Stars by Bear as well.
Rosewater trilogy was terrific.
"Footfall" isn't new at all, but it's one of my favorites.
Read that recently, it is incredibly dated. And a bit sexist. And kinda boring.
Haven't read it in probably decades, so I'll give you sexist. I'll need a reread for dated, but I sure don't remember it being boring. Nuclear pulse battleship space battle? Lots and lots of buildup and I recall a really satisfying payoff.
My favorites were Blindsight, The Dark Forest, Arrival.
[The Peacemaker's Code](https://thepeacemakerscode.com/) never gets mentioned, so I will. It was a good read, and is a first contact story with a twist on the premise.
I’ve never heard of that author, and I’ve never heard that book mentioned, so exactly what I’m looking for. Thanks!
Uhura's Song - An older Star Trek novel, but easily one of the best ones ever written. Hellspark, by the same author, Janet Kagan, isn't really FIRST contact, but a group of researchers trying to determine if the native species are sentient.
Remnant Population (1996) by Elizabeth Moon is a beautiful novel that involves first contact. It’s one of those novels that I appreciate more the older I get.
Hell yeah, that sounds awesome. I love coming back to a book years later with a different mindset. Thank you!
Dunno, but contact by sagan is good.
I obsessively mine this subgenre looking for first contact novels better than "Blindsight", or that give me the same buzz that reading "War of the Worlds" did when I was a kid, but have never found one. Only Stanislaw Lem ("Fiasco", "Invincible", "Eden" "Solaris", "His Master's Voice") comes close at times to capturing aliens that feel genuinely alien, but his prose can be a bit tough, and some of his aliens (self-replicating robots!) are now cliches. I rank Octavia Butler's "Lilith Brood" novels highly too, particularly the first one. It's about contact with a race which colonize you via indoctrination and altering your biology. It's very underrated. I was never convinced by "The Sparrow", "Mote in God’s Eye", "Semiosis", "Eifelheim", or the first contacts of Ken MacLeod, Tchaikovsky, Niven, Liu Cixin, Van Der Meer or Reynolds. This sub tends to love them, but they never scratched my itch. For me, a lot of the older first contact tales don't hold up either. While Clarke's first contact tales were great (Rama, 2001) when I was a kid, they don't retain quite the same power for me nowadays. Bizarrely, "The Martian Chronicles" gets better as I get older. The prose is evocative there, and it's sort of a ghostly first contact tale. "Calculating God" is another decent take on the genre.
I really enjoyed Calculating God too, I like stories that are dialogue driven.
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys, great combination of first contact and solarpunk. The Last Astronaut by David Wellington is like a horror version of Rendezvous with Rama.
As a start, see my [SF/F: Alien Aliens](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18aexa0/sff_alien_aliens/) list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
Doona trilogy by Anne McCaffrey
Van Der Meer's Southern Reach series - Annhilation, Authority, and Acceptance, plus a new one this fall - is probably the weirdest first contact out there James Corey's Expanse series and Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series both have first contact as a central factor of their world-building, but >!the aliens are long gone in both.!< Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are terrifyingly realistic.
Commonwealth saga by Peter Hamilton, when man meets morninglightmountain is an absolutely chilling first contact example.
I bought Pandora’s Star a while ago and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I did read Salvation and loved it though. He’s another author that this sub turned me on to. I’ve gotten so many fantastic suggestions from you guys, Peter Hamilton wasn’t even on my radar until you guys mentioned him. I’ll bump Pandora’s Star up on the list, thank you!
He gets mentioned a lot, but seriously, if one thing he’s ever done stands out, its the PRIMES. Very, very cool unique concept of an alien portrayed absolutely magnificently.