posted
I'm making a list of stories (books, movies, songs, short fiction, whatever) that deal primarily with human first contact with another sentient species. This is just a beginning. Please tell me what I've forgotten or didn't know about.
Fictional Books Contact by Carl Sagan The Mote in God's Eye and Footfall by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series as well as his 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001 series, and Childhood's End.
Movies ET Close Encounters of the Third Kind War of the Worlds The Day the Earth Stood Still The Alien movies. The Predator movies. Short Circuit - well, not really species per se, but another intelligence. Species
Songs Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by Terry Draper and John Woloschuk (popularized by The Carpenters)
OK, so I had a longer list but left it at home and this is all I can remember off the top of my head. Feel free to post additions. Also, I'm looking for recommendations on any non-fiction books dealing with the subject (well, dealing with the potential of some sort of first contact, anyway).
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Could you count Children of the Mind? That's the book where they discovered the Descolada was sentient, but it wasn't their first contact with them.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Narnia, Certainly, actually, I could count Ender's Game (for the backstory on the buggers), Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide (for Jane, and the piggies), as well as Children of the Mind for the Descolada as you mentioned. I can't believe I didn't think of those.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
If you want to get technical, you could count the Shadow books if we see Bean as a separate species from human. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I don't really count Bean as a separate species. He may be one, technically, but he looks and acts human and he is culturally human so there's no "first contact" aspect to the story, really.
I purposefully left out Star Trek: First Contact because contrary to the title, the story has very little to do with a first contact. It's more of a McGuffin. Star Trek, the series dealt with many first contacts, but not with the first time humans made contact with anyone else. By the time in which the series takes place, humans have had generations of contact with at least 3 other sentient species.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Seems like half of Larry Niven's books deal with first contact, but it's been a while since I've read any of them.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
Kenny Roger's attempt to revive a flagging career by recording a country "song" with the word "Texas" in the title. No one falls for that trick anymore.
and maybe Purple People Eater (wasn't that a song?)
Posts: 524 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Mac, Yeah, but as I said above that wasn't really the point of the movie. It was just a McGuffin - a plot device solely to motivate the action in a film, the film is really about Picard and crew battling the Borg (who they also aren't first-contacting in that movie).
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, a big part of Babylon 5 was the disastrous first contact between humans and the Mimbari, and first contact with the Vorlons, the Drak, The Shadows, and about a billion others.
Posts: 524 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Stranger in A Strange Land could be considered a First Contact novel, as could The Martian Chronicles .
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Alan Dean Foster: "Quozl" "Lifeform" and the "Damned" series.
I'm sure that there's more. He's pretty prolific. First Contact seems to be something he thinks about a lot. He also wrote a book called "Maori", which may qualify as a first contact book, even though is involves no extraterrestrials.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
"Enter Lynne Christie, envoy of Earth Dominion. Her mission: to establish first contact with Orthe's government and evaluate Orthe's readiness for further Dominion relations, a mission delayed mysteriously by her predecessor's untimely death upon the Inner Sea."
Well, maybe she is not the first first contact, but I still think it works.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Several books in the Gateway / Heechee series.
Sphere, Michael Crichton
Armor, John Steakly
I hate dragging Stargate into this, but Stargate (and SG-1)
As for songs, Humans from Earth is a hilarious take on humans meeting beings on other planets (with a very Independence Day style attitude) by T-Bone Burnett.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
"The Color of Distance" by Amy Thomas is another novel about first contact, though on a different planet. The not-as-good sequel is about the same first contact but them being brought to Earth (called "Through Alien Eyes").
Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Anne McCaffrey: Dragonsdawn and one of the Tower books, but I don't remember which offhand. It was somewhat incidental to the plot, in any case.
That very disturbing OSC short that was became one of the three plays in Performing as People. The one with the girl with neither arms nor legs?
quote:Originally posted by MyrddinFyre: "The Color of Distance" by Amy Thomas is another novel about first contact, though on a different planet. The not-as-good sequel is about the same first contact but them being brought to Earth (called "Through Alien Eyes").
I LOVE THOSE BOOKS. And was going to mention them The Xenogenisis series of Octavia Butler.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I didn't include Short Stories, but they can certainly be included. I'd like one caveat, though: Please include title, author, and publication. The problem I have with short stories is that I often remember the story vividly, but can't remember who wrote or or which magazine or anthology I read it from.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
How about The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Nivel and Jerry Pournelle or Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke as candidates.
Also, have you noticed that there are at least two new fall season shows about first contact with aliens. I think one is called Threshold and Invasion is the other. Threshold has Brent Spiner in it as a bit of ST:First Contact connection there. There might be one more, but I can't recall.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, I just remembered another story called "Sandkings" by George R.R. Martin. I've never read the story, but I have seen the Outer Limits episode with Beau Bridges based on it. It is the title story in a collection of short stories he wrote in the 1970's.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
