All Questions
Tagged with first-contact story-identification
66
questions
35
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1
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Old story where aliens sell humans some machines to heal anything, and then disappear with their loot before we realize we've been scammed
I remember the story fairly well; I've just forgotten the title. (And the author.) I have the impression that the story goes way, way back to the 1950s, but that may be inaccurate. I first read it in ...
- 27.4k
32
votes
1
answer
3k
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I am trying to locate a story about first contact where the aliens want to talk to the ship's dog instead of the contact team, any ideas?
The premise is that the dog can tell the aliens more about the real nature of human beings. I've been looking for the story for weeks now.
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28
votes
1
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Short Story About How 2 Astronauts Who Stop for Lunch Unknowingly Destroy the Only Lifeform on an Arid Planet
In the 70's or 80's I read a short story in which 2 astronauts looking for a nice place to eat lunch choose a spot at the pole of a small desolate planet, overlooking the world's only pool of surface ...
24
votes
1
answer
294
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SF Novel: Task force tries to fake sentience in a humanoid species to protect a planet from exploitation
I'm certain it was published before 1998, fairly sure before 1994, in paperback.
The background setting of the novel was the distant future, when humanity was part of an interstellar, possibly ...
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22
votes
1
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Short story about a hole to another universe that pulls in metal
This question reminded me of a story I read in the 90s.
A woman is caught shoplifting a bunch of metal items by throwing them into her purse. She has no memory, and the purse is empty. Anything metal ...
- 2,047
21
votes
2
answers
3k
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Novel involving the destruction of Jupiter, two alien species, and a neat star drive
The novel, which I read in the 1980's or so, opens with the arrival in the Sol system of a huge starship that ignores Earth and starts to refuel using way too much of Jupiter's atmosphere.
Expeditions ...
- 509
21
votes
3
answers
2k
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That's what's unique about humans among all species—"they die"
My friend read this science fiction story as a kid, probably written prior to 1970. Forgive me it's a second hand description: Earth is visited by aliens. The aliens note that every race in the galaxy ...
- 211
21
votes
2
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2k
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Short story about alien transmission which ends with the aliens' star exploding
Read this story online a few years back but I am quite sure it was far older, maybe from the 1970s or even earlier.
It has a pair of scientists receiving a transmission from a distant star system. ...
- 1,040
19
votes
3
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3k
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Can't remember name of Sci Fi first contact Novel, "solution to the Fermi paradox"
I'm looking for the name of a "first contact" novel, where humans (in the future, who are fairly advanced) receive a signal from an alien world. There's debate about how to respond, or if they should ...
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19
votes
1
answer
2k
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Trying to identify a short story about a dog and how it's being left behind resulted in a human /alien race alliance [duplicate]
This is a story - likely from the mid seventies - that I read (maybe even have) in an anthology paperback. The premise is that humanity is threatened by a malevolent alien race. A military (?) space ...
- 191
18
votes
2
answers
636
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Looking for a sci-fi novel about first contact
Male author who did not typically write science fiction.
Novel came out in the 1990's I think.
It seemed initially to be a story about a serial killer but it turns out the protagonist was merely ...
- 181
17
votes
1
answer
2k
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Looking for SF short story about first contact and humans have to destroy evidence before aliens reach Earth
I read a really great SF short story published in an anthology from the late 1990s (maybe 1996-1997?) that involved humans making first contact with a more advanced alien species whose ambassadors are ...
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16
votes
1
answer
2k
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A short story (possibility written in the 80's), where humans visit an alien race that evolves fast?
I was from a wikipedia article. Humans discover a primitive race of aliens that are very small, whose sense of time is much more accelerated. Communication with the aliens can take hours for humans, ...
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16
votes
1
answer
668
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Humans Stumble Upon Low-Tech Aliens
More than five years ago, I started reading a sci-fi book about advanced humans making first contact with (definitely pre-industrial but might specifically be iron-age, medieval-era) humanoids. I don’...
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15
votes
1
answer
869
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Distant aliens receive signal with instructions on how to construct humans, long after Earth is extinct
I'm looking for a specific scifi book that I read years ago, I only partially remember the story, and I don't remember the author or the title.
What I remember of the story is:
An alien race picks ...
- 503