Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: first contact

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  Rama: Book 1

  Rendezvous with Rama

  by Arthur C. Clarke

  At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter... (more)
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  Childhood's End

  by Arthur C. Clarke

  When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. But, although the Overlords kept themselves hidden from man, they had come to unite a warring world and to offer an end to poverty and crime. When they finally showed themselves it was a shock, but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of... (more)
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  Blindsight

  by Peter Watts

  Two months since the stars fell... Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown. Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears... (more)
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  The Mote in God's Eye

  by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  Writing separately, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are responsible for a number of science fiction classics, such as the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Ringworld, Debt of Honor, and The Integral Trees. Together they have written the critically acclaimed bestsellers Inferno, Footfall, and The Legacy of Heorot, among others. The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of... (more)
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  Contact

  by Carl Sagan

  In December 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who — or what — is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future — and our own.
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  Sparrow: Book 1

  The Sparrow

  by Mary Doria Russell

  In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it... (more)
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  Eifelheim

  by Michael Flynn

  In 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and has never been resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical physicist girlfriend Sharon, become interested. Tom indeed becomes obsessed. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn't and that violates everything Tom knows about history. What's was special about Eifelheim that it utterly disappeared more than 600 years ago? Father... (more)
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  Agent to the Stars

  by John Scalzi

  The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity’s first interstellar friendship. There’s just one problem: They’re hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish. So getting humanity’s trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal. Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He’s one of Hollywood’s hottest young agents. But although... (more)
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  Rollback

  by Robert J. Sawyer

  Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to deciphering this one, too . . . if she lives long enough.       A wealthy industrialist offers to pay for Sarah to have a rollback—a hugely expensive experimental rejuvenation procedure. She accepts on condition that Don, her husband of... (more)
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  Zones of Thought: Book 2

  A Deepness in the Sky

  by Vernor Vinge

  After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds. The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But first, both groups must wait at the aliens' very doorstep for their strange star to relight... (more)
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  Existence

  by David Brin

  Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence. Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and... (more)
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  The Martian Chronicles

  by Ray Bradbury

  Ray Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor -- of crystal pillars and fossil seas -- where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -- first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars. . . and... (more)
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  Sparrow: Book 2

  Children of God

  by Mary Doria Russell

  From the acclaimed author of "The Sparrow" comes an imaginative novel featuring Father Emilio Sandoz and his quest for the secret of God's immortal plan.
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  Space Odyssey: Book 3

  2061

  Odyssey Three

  by Arthur C. Clarke

  Arthur C. Clark, creator of one of the world's best-loved science fiction tales, revisits the most famous future ever imagined as two expeditions into space become inextricably tangled. Heywood Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monoliths, must again confront Dave Bowman, HAL, and an alien race that has decided that Mankind is to play a part in the evolution of the galaxy whether it... (more)
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  Foreigner: Book 1

  Foreigner

  by C. J. Cherryh

  With a new introduction by the author The first book in C.J.Cherryh's eponymous series, Foreigner begins an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient alien race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey, following a civilization from the age of steam... (more)
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  Footfall

  by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star. The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and... (more)
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  Manifold: Book 2

  Space

  by Stephen Baxter

  The year is 2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: a gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter allowing virtually instantaneous travel over vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out. Yet he will... (more)
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  Calculating God

  by Robert J. Sawyer

  An alien shuttle craft lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A six-legged, two-armed alien emerges, who says, in perfect English, "Take me to a paleontologist."It seems that Earth, and the alien's home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling on the alien mother ship, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at about the same time (one example of these... (more)
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  Factoring Humanity

  by Robert J. Sawyer

  In the near future, a signal is detected coming from the Alpha Centauri system. Mysterious, unintelligible data streams in for ten years. Heather Davis, a professor in the University of Toronto psychology department, has devoted her career to deciphering the message. Her estranged husband, Kyle, is working on the development of artificial intelligence systems and new computer technology utilizing quantum effects... (more)
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  Rama: Book 2

  Rama II

  The Sequel to Rendezvous with Rama

  by Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee

  Decades have passed since Commander Norton and his crew met with the enormous alien ship dubbed Rama and declared it an intelligent robot with no interest in the creatures of our solar system. But now another ship has been sighted near Earth, and this time, humanity will discover startling--perhaps deadly--differences.