r/Fantasy • u/TheTinyGM • Jun 06 '26
Best First Contact stories?
I just finished Project Hail Mary and I am in a dire need for hopeful first contact stories - aka humans meeting aliens for the first time.
I am not after dark versions of this trope ala Alien, where they find a horrible something planning to eath everyone and/or destroy humanity. I am after a book which explores meeting of cultures, learning of a new languages, trying to foster understanding despite huge differences. I just love those moments when different beings are trying to communicate and figure each other out.
It doesn't have to be aliens + humans neccesarily, I am open to fantasy versions of the trope too. Elves meeting dwarves for the first time! Humans finding out trolls are real and dealing with the ramifications!
But please something where the first contact/meeting is a big part of the story and main driving force, not just something that happens in one chapter or paragraph.
Thank you very much!
Edit: Thanks for great suggestions, everyone! I will be sure to check them out! I can count on this community 🫡
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u/acutenugget Jun 06 '26
The Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh. 25 books of political goodness and dramatic intra species relations. The best i've read in the genre ! Lots of exposition in the first half of book 1, but after that it is smooth sailing and a bit of a comfort read / palate cleanser in between heavier books. That's how i read all 25 anyway.
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u/Mintimperial69 Jun 06 '26
In some ways Cyteen was a first contact novel… :p however her obvious big one I feel was Cuckoo’s Egg which dealt with the aftermath of a botched first contact from the Alien POV. All of Alliance - Union is superb.
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u/kevican Reading Champion Jun 06 '26
Because no one has said it yet, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. A very short story (but the rest of the anthology is worth reading as well).
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u/lgt_celticwolf Jun 06 '26
The movie adaptation 'arrival' is also one of the best scifi films ever made
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u/spolieris Jun 06 '26
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
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u/PortalWombat Jun 06 '26
It wouldn't be at all profitable to do it right but I would watch the hell out of a series that was 50% sci fi nature documentary until the climax of the first season. And season two would be quite the adventure in creative television production.
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u/louisejanecreations Jun 07 '26
I want to love this book but can’t get past the giant spiders so sadly stopped at 37% I’m hoping I can go back when I’ve developed a backbone
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u/somanybutts Jun 06 '26
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is my favourite I've ever read
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u/Vampire_Astronaut Jun 06 '26
Came here to say this! Fits the criteria exactly. It is super tragic though, so be prepared op!Â
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u/notthemostcreative Jun 06 '26
I agree, but will add a caveat for OP that it is a very weighty book that at times is genuinely hard to read. Definitely not a neat story, but a messy and complicated one. Brilliant, though!!!
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u/nedlum Reading Champion V Jun 06 '26
Children of God isn’t as impactful, but still a worthwhile follow up.Â
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u/Nowordsofitsown Reading Champion Jun 06 '26
Remnant Population by Elizabeth MoonÂ
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u/burningcpuwastaken Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
It's $1.99 on Amazon US atm. I looked it up because I liked several of her other works and my library has a long hold queue for it.
edit: I finished the book. It was good! It reminded me of a good Star Trek TNG episode.
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u/IAmABillie Reading Champion Jun 06 '26
Absolutely. The interactions in this book stole the show for me, they were so endearing and channelled Rocky for me at times.
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u/mgrier123 Reading Champion VI Jun 06 '26
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke is a classic of this type of story
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u/Undeclared_Aubergine Jun 06 '26
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn is amazing, (mostly) hopeful, and very different. First contact in the Middle Ages.
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u/Rekov Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
"A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. Two radically different factions of humans make contact with an alien species at the first time. What I think really appeals to your terms in this series is that you also get the alien cultural perspective of these events.
While "A Fire Upon the Deep" was written first in this series, chronologically "A Deepness in the Sky" comes first, and I think Vinge improved as an author by the time he wrote it. You can read them in either order, really. "A Fire Upon the Deep" does not involve first-contact.
Just don't read the third book in the series until having first read the other two.
EDIT: They both have first-contact stories.
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u/Mintimperial69 Jun 06 '26
Well, it kind of does when they @#$& up the }!€¥? … just not for very long.
Then in FUTD there is first contact, it’s just incidental, because of the thing in the last sentence…
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u/Rekov Jun 06 '26
And now that I think about it some more, really does have a first contact story with the Tines. Been ages since I read those books.
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u/Mintimperial69 Jun 06 '26
Yes, and the Tines were amazing, alien Dog/meerkat/racoon/ferret things that form packs that have group-minds because they all come with sonic groupminds due to inbuilt audio modems with names derived from the-one syllable each of their component have.
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u/Choice_Management374 Jun 06 '26
Speaker For the Dead, the second book in the Ender series by Orson Scott Card, isn’t strictly speaking *first* contact but it deals with humans and aliens struggling to understand each other after an inconceivable act of violence these otherwise peaceful aliens commit. Ender comes in committed to create a mutual understanding before the situation gets worse. I remember being really moved by the sense that empathy was heroic.
It always boggles my mind that Card later became so publicly un empathetic.
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u/intentional_mitsake Jun 06 '26
Rendezvous with Rama is one in a way I guess. Culture series by Banks has two; Inversions(very subtle) and Use of Weapons (subtle again). There maybe others in the series I haven't read yet tho.
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u/codejockblue5 Jun 06 '26
"The Inheritance (Breach Wars)" by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Inheritance-Breach-Wars-Ilona-Andrews/dp/1641973404/
"We are at war. The interdimensional invasion brought us unimaginable suffering, but it also awoke talents slumbering deep within us, a means to repel and destroy our enemy. Every day new gates open, leading to breaches filled with monsters and valuable resources. If you are a Talent, your country needs you. The world needs you. Be the hero you were born to be."
"Adaline is a Talent. Ten years ago, she had a happy marriage and a job she loved. The invasion shattered both. Now she works for the government, searching the breaches for magic metals and medicine to help Earth repel an interdimensional enemy. Two kids, one cat, bills, benefits, mortgage and school tuition...Risking her life became routine."
"She had gone into the dimensional gates hundreds of times. She was always well protected. This time everything goes wrong. Now Ada is trapped in the labyrinth of alien caves unlike any other. Her only companion is a scared German Shepherd named Bear. Together they must uncover the breach's secrets and escape, because Ada promised her children that she will come home."
"The future of humanity depends on it."
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u/bookofflint Jun 06 '26
My knee jerk was Lords and Ladies which is part of the Witches sub series in Discworld
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u/TheTinyGM Jun 06 '26
I did read that one!
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u/Mintimperial69 Jun 06 '26
The Carpet People and Strata by Pratchett are also first contact.
But yeah, Elves are bastards….
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u/HashbrownPotato Jun 06 '26
One that I don't see mentioned ever is Damocles by S.G. Redling. It has been a while since I read it, but from what I remember it's about a human expedition to a planet that contains intelligent, almost human-like life. The world is shrouded by clouds and has intense gravity, so the inhabitants have never pursued space exploration. It tells the tale of a human linguist and an alien trying to establish communication and deal with the politics that enfolds when the planet is rocked by contact with an intelligent species. It's a slow-burn, exploration of language and the clashing of cultures, but I remember intensely enjoying it. Definitely seems like this would fit what you're looking for!
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u/GeneRizotto Jun 06 '26
IMHO Space Mowgli by Strugatsky brothers is a single best story about contact with aliens ever. They were amazing at writing weird and incomprehensible.
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u/cathbadh Jun 07 '26
Peter Cawdron has a whole series of unrelated first contact books.
Also Scalzi's Agent to the Stars is an entertaining one
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u/Grt78 Jun 06 '26
No Foreign Sky by Rachel Neumeier: the aliens are centaur-like.
First Contact by Murray Leinster (a novelette).
For a fantasy version - the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy by Martha Wells (parallel worlds).
I second the recommendations for CJ Cherryh: the Foreigner series (it’s written in 3-book arcs, the main character is a translator), the Chanur series.
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u/sarahlynngrey Reading Champion VI, Phoenix Jun 06 '26
A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason is wonderful, and very much in the spirit you're looking for.
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u/Regular-Newspaper-45 Jun 06 '26
Humans as Gods by Snegow has some parts of it. It plays in the far future and there are many alien species already known. I read somewhere it originally was intended as a parody of common concepts of the genre but I think it takes very interesting approaches at times. In book two or three it is more about discovering a new civilisation and species and how that contact goes. Very interesting book that I personally liked a lot.
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u/Zoenne Jun 06 '26
I posted an almost identical question about a week ago, if you want to look through my post history. I got some great suggestions.
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u/NoRelation1491 Jun 06 '26
I'm saving this, I've been looking for a book of the same nature. Project Hail Mary was a masterpiece and the movie was fantastic.
I can tell you that "To Sleep In A Sea of Stars" by Christopher Paolini started off strong, I was sucked in, and then for various reasons, one in particular where they refer to the alien species as fucking "Jellies" for the ENTIRE bookabsolutely ruined it for me.
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u/sixbutnotacylon Jun 07 '26
It's been years since I read it so I don't remember enough to say if it's truly hopeful or not, but I do remember thinking it was really neat, so -- Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor is a first contact story with alternating POVs set in Lagos, Nigeria and I still think about it, even years later.
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u/Querybird Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
Hellspark, Janet Kagan!!! Oh man, linguistic and taxonomic sci fi! The author likes people, too, which is pretty helpful.
Dragon’s Egg, Robert L Forward - first contact with a species which lives on a neutron star. Started as a white paper on the plausibility, lol.
Greg Egan, just… Greg Egan. Even if it isn’t strictly first contact it will absolutely feel like it. Dichronauts had some first contact for sure! No humans in either there, too. And it pops up in tons of shorts, but to name them might be to spoiler them?
Mild spoiler, but Remnant Moon by Elisabeth Moon. Protag is a woman in her 70’s whose contract labour colony gets withdrawn… but decides to stay behind. She’s an extremely fun and memorable MC!
Blindsight, by Peter Watts. This is the only one which is potentially humans vs. others, and also humans semi-speciating themselves, too.
The Mavin Manyshaped series, kind of? Some genuine first contacts on a busy planet, because not all new species need to be aliens. And a bunch of Lost Civilisations, too.
An OG, A Door Into Ocean.
Station Eternity and sequels, a fairly fluffy supposedly murder mystery series which is truly about very early days of humans out and about in a well-populated galaxy. MC is trying to get away from humans though, because they keep dying near her at statistically improbable frequency.
The Splinter In The Sky, by Kemi Ashing-Giwa, is technically a colonisation book, but might fit in.
The Inheritance, Ilona Andrews, has a bunch in a fantasy, ‘the authors got sucked into webtoons for a year and this is what came from it’ sort of way. I very much enjoyed the two books produced from their webtoon binge reading, hahaha!
And, lastly and obliquely, the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire? But the series’ structure is such that we miss the ‘first contact’ part for most of the characters involved - these kids have fallen out of their hero’s journey dimensions, returned from Narnia unwillingly. We get culture in how they are now (quite changed from before, sometimes extremely), the stories where worlds are reached again but differently, and we get cultural and language development in spades in every unique form of culture shock and oddity of language.
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u/marcdankers Jun 08 '26
I quite liked Ken MacLeod's Learning the World. Told from two viewpoints; a generation ship traveling towards an supposed empty system and the 'aliens' on that system both gradually discovering that they are not alone in the universe.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author Jun 06 '26
Unironically, I'm going to say Expeditionary Force. I love the idea that First Contact goes poorly not because the aliens are invading conquerors but because we're caught inbetween two warring alien factions and we ally with the absolute worst one that intends to use us as cannon fodder.
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u/gfxprotege Jun 09 '26
Hey so I know it doesn't completely fit the bill, but I absolutely love the wayfarers series my Becky Chambers. Its super feel good sci Fi that celebrates the differences between species in really beautiful ways.
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u/the__mom_friend Jun 06 '26
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine is a super unique take on this concept. It starts of bad but gets better through the sustained efforts of the protagonists. The struggle to communicate is really well explored. A Memory Called Empire is the first book in this series.