First Contact, 1946 Novellette by Murray Leinster

First Contact, 1946 Novellette by Murray Leinster

 

First Contact is an interesting take on interstellar travel due to the fact that the humans who make first contact with alien life forms do so accidentally. They're on a scientific expedition to study the Crab Nebula when out of the nebula an alien ship is seen. I feel like this is a more accurate representation of how first contact will happen as opposed to the film in the Star Trek franchise of the same name. A lot of major scientific discoveries were accidents as well.

Strangely enough, when reading this I kind of thought it was an examination of the motives behind the Cold War, the mutually assured destruction of it all ("It's a shame we have to kill you, we could have been friends" - Buck.) However, the timing doesn't quite line up, since this was shortly after World War II and a year before the widely accepted start of the Cold War. So, if I had to say this was making commentary on some other wartime event, I would say that it most likely refers to how, generally speaking, the foot soldiers of the war don't hate or even dislike the enemy combatants they fight. This can be seen in our own Civil War, brother fighting brother, and the Christmas truce of 1914, where all along the eastern front German and English soldiers laid down their arms in an unofficial cease fire and took part in caroling and other forms of celebration.

My other favorite thing was how intricately they described the science behind the aliens home world and how even in 1946 they used the concept of evolution not as theory but as fact to explain how these creatures were so different from humans.

On a sort of side note, I like how the main character at the end said "We'll be good friends with the aliens at some point"(paraphrase) and when queried on why he felt this way, he said "Because for the last two weeks me and buck were exchanging dirty jokes"(paraphrase). That was just a humorous ending to an otherwise tense read.