For frequent visitors here, my interest in the
the First Contact theme will come as no surprise. My fiction has explored the
possibilities fairly extensively, for example in Moonstruck, the InterstellarNet series,
and, most recently, Déjà Doomed. In "Alien AWOLs: The Great Silence," a chapter in Trope-ing the Light Fantastic: The Science Behind the Fiction, I address the absence of contact -- so far -- in a nonfiction sense. (Click on cover thumbnails on the blog RHS if you're curious about these titles.)
Why am I so interested? First, there’s the Big
Question of are we alone. Whatever the answer, the implications are profound.
But beyond that, there’s just so much great SF on the topic. A reader recently
challenged me to name my favorite First Contact fiction. So: here 'tis! (And as hard as it was winnowing the candidates to a few, the
order within my list is not a further ranking.)
(Oh, and please excuse Blogger's odd word-line spacing of this post.)
The list? Drumroll please ...
The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells
How could a list of
First Contact novels not include the masterpiece that started the genre? The story
that famously caused widespread panic in 1938 when Orson Wells produced it as a radio
drama? And, on a more personal note, the 1953 movie adaptation was perhaps the
first SF movie I ever saw. (Not first run – I’m younger than that.) Like most
everything Wells wrote,
The War of the Worlds was creative and clever.
Contact, Carl Sagan
Where Wells introduced the public to the notion
of up-close-and-personal encounters with aliens, Sagan’s Contact popularized
the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) through radio astronomy.
And what adventure ensues!
It has since been my pleasure to visit the New
Mexico radio-astronomy observatory made famous by the 1997 film adaptation and
the West Virginia radio-astronomy observatory that’s home to the world’s
largest steerable radio telescope – the latter place having much earlier been
host to the first-ever SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence)
conference. Both were awesome.
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
Another variation of First
Contact storytelling is: how might humans achieve meaningful communication with
aliens? We’ll likely have little in common with them. Our psychologies, even
the senses with which we perceive the world, may be very different. “Story of
Your Life” is an exemplar of the challenges – and joys – of tales in this
subcategory.
Analog editor John Campbell famously challenged
his authors to “Write me a story about a creature which thinks as well as a
human but not like a human." In the novella “Story of Your Life,” Ted
Chiang met that goal in truly outstanding fashion. I’m originally a physicist,
and especially enjoyed that a philosophy of physics played a key role in the
story. Arrival, the 2016 movie adaptation, omitted the physics wrinkle –
but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.)
(The collection includes several more Chiang
stories. While those aren’t on the First Contact theme, all are excellent.
Chiang is, simply, a fine SF craftsman.)
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
How about aliens we don’t quite meet, but whose
presence is palpable? When well done, that can be intriguing. IMO, the finest
example of this version of First Contact comes as we readers explore the
wondrous artifact/world that is Rama as it hurtles into our solar system.
Who made it? Why? Where is it going? What will it mean to us?
(Clearly I’m not the only SF author intrigued by
the First Contact theme. I struggled to chose among three Clarke novels with a first-contact aspect. The others are Childhood’s End and 2001.)
The Mote in God’s Eye,
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The “Moties” (as this novel’s aliens are
nicknamed) are among the most memorable fictional aliens I’ve ever encountered.
They certainly meet the John Campbell challenge (see my #3 pick). It never
hurts when the stakes in an adventure are existential. Unlike my other picks,
this time it’s humans reaching out to the aliens, not the other way around. And
that outreach turns out not to have been the wisest of ideas ….
You needn’t take just my word for this final pick.
Robert Heinlein dubbed it, “possibly the best contact-with-aliens story ever
written."
(Unfamiliar with any of these gems? Amazon links were helpfully provided under the cover thumbnails.)
Oh, by the way, look forward to yet another take on the theme from me later this year. I call it On the Shoals of Space-Time.
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