First Contact: Difference between revisions

Since man has known what sort of sphere we live on, we have looked at the stars and wondered: are we alone? In this vast, empty Universe, are there any other intelligences gazing up at our star from under an alien moon?

 

 

The name for the trope and the term itself comes from the 1945 Murray Leinster novelette ''First Contact''. This is not the same as first contact, lowercase, which describes any first contact between two cultures.

Speculation about First Contact scenarios has led many scientists and philosophers to consider that the human race may not be ''ready'' for such contact -- they often make anvilicious statements that the multitude of armed conflicts and the pollution of our own world as reasons that an extra-terrestrial lifeform may pass Earth by, which Hollywood will pick up on when they feel their movie needs a message.

 

 

Not to be confused with a [[Phineas and Ferb]] Fanfic entitled ''[[First Contact a Gemini Story (Fanfic)|First Contact: A Gemini Story]]''. For the film, see ''[[Star Trek First Contact (Film)|Star Trek First Contact]]''.

''Note that this trope only deals with an absolute First Contact occurring in the near future, not with any subsequent first contacts with other species, nor with an interstellar human civilisation making first contact.''

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* Movies like ''[[Alien (Film)|Alien]]'' and ''[[Independence Day]]'' use this theme to build action/horror movies in the spirit of ''[[War of the Worlds]]''.

* ''[[Close Encounters of the Third Kind]]'' -- especially the sequence where humans try to communicate with the UFO.

* ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still]]''

* The film ''[[Transformers Film Series|Transformers]]'' has a sort-of [[First Contact]] when the explorer Archibald Witwicky discovers a slumbering Megatron in the early 20th century. Though Megatron is kept insensate, humanity gets a technological jump start from what they learn of his workings. More commonly seen first contacts take place later, when the Decepticon Blackout and his little friend Skorponok flatten a US military base in the Middle East, and the Autobots track down Archibald's descendant, Sam, and ask for an artifact from his ancestor. They learned their command of English from the Internet. Despite battling with the Decepticons in public, the Autobots are presumably covered up by the government, and they remain on Earth, in disguise, watching and protecting and waiting for their fellows to join them.

* ''[[Co Dominium|The Mote in God's Eye]]''. Inverted in that humans have the star-spanning empire, while the aliens are trapped on one single world.

* The Contact section of the Culture in [[Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks']] novels, described as the "good works" agency of that society, apart from Contact's "Special Circumstances" division, who interfere in other civilisations if it looks like they'll be trouble to the Culture. A kind of Reverse [[Alien Non-Interference Clause]].

{{quote| '''[[Encyclopedia Exposita]]''': ''Prepping. A very long-established practice, used lately by the Culmina amongst others, is to take a few examples of a pre-civilised species from their home world (usually in clonoclastic or embryonic form) and make them subject species/slaves/mercenaries/mentored. so that when the people from their home world finally assume the Galactic stage, they are not the most civilised/advanced of their kind (often they're not even the most numerous grouping of their kind). Species so treated are expected to feel an obligation to their so-called mentors (who will also generally claim to have diverted comets or otherwise prevented catastrophes in the interim, whether they have or not). This practice has been banned in the past when pan-Galactic laws (see Galactic Council) have been upheld but tends to reappear in less civilised times. Practice variously referred to as Prepping, Lifting or Aggressive Mentoring. Local-relevant terminology: aHuman & rHuman (advanced and remainder Human).''}}

* Sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton discusses the devastating effects on the economy of an advanced alien technology in ''The Nano Flower'' and the short story ''Escape Route''.

* [[Ivan Yefremov]]'s novella ''Cor Serpentis'' is essentially a one big [[Take That]] at Leinster's spin on the theme. Both Yefremov and [[Author Filibuster|his characters]] take it as extremely distasteful and, believing that no spacefaring civilization might be hostile, meet the aliens with open hands, in one of the most touching description of contact ever written.

* Subverted with extreme prejudice in the Harry Turtledove story "The Road Not Taken", in which Earth has first contact in the form of an alien invasion.... by Aliens that are less advanced technologically than Humanity in ''every single aspect'' other than space travel. They literally attack with flintlocks and swords. It turns out that basically Anti-Gravity is ridiculously simple and most species discover it during roughly the Age of Sail. Although the ending of the story makes it appear that Humans are a [[Mary Sue]], a sequel subverts the premise by having Humanity be the less advanced one.

* ''[[Halo|Halo: Contact Harvest]]'' details the UNSC's first contact with the Covenant from the perspective of both human and alien characters.

* ''[[Blindsight]]'' by Peter Watts features an interesting subversion. {{spoiler|The alien Scramblers turn out to be hyperintelligent but not conscious or self-aware, and can only parse human languages as space-wasting cognitive viruses designed to hurt them. "How do you say "We come in peace" when the words themselves are an act of war?"}}

* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', first contact with aliens leads to a war with the Turians, which is then dubbed the 'First Contact War' (though this happens several decades before the start of the game). The causalties on both sides of the war is the cause of much conflict between Turians and humans. It was basically a classic example of [[Poor Communication Kills]] coupled with an inability to communicate and horrible judgment. The Turians found a human merchant group of ships opening a mass relay--something that's illegal by Citadel law, but also something that humanity would not know of. Because randomly opening mass relays lead to a costly [[Bug War]], the Turian patrol opened fire on the merchant ships, but one got away. Cue a short but heated conflict in which the number of casualties is altogether very low for an interstellar war, but allows humanity to prove its military prowess despite having absolutely no experience with space combat.

** To elaborate the fact that humanity WASN'T completely curb-stomped and actually managed to inflict fairly significant harm on the Turians made the Citadel go "Holy shit! Maybe we should be nicer to these pink meat-sacks." {{spoiler|Inversely, while the Citadel was impressed with the human method of waging war, Humanity was only saved by the fact one of the key races of the Citidel stepped in before the Turians fully mobilized for war.}}

* Inverted in the first three ''[[Star Ocean]]'' games, in which we focus on an alien species who learns that they are not alone in the Universe.

** The prequel, ''[[Star Ocean the Last Hope]]'', features Earth in the beginning of its spacegoing existence. Not only does it feature Earth's [[First Contact]] (with Eldar via subspace radio), but the main character initiates and/or encounters the aftermath of so many [[First Contact]] situations that go/went horribly, horribly wrong that he persuades Earth to set up a prime directive.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

** We later learn that her people's first contact with Earth's [[Ultraterrestrials|pre-human]] civilization of [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons|dragons]] went very, very [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20100518.html badly.]

* In ''[[Freefall (Webcomic)|Freefall]]'' humanity has made contact with a few alien races, though mostly aliens of the [[Starfish Aliens|starfish]] variety so relations are limited. Also many humans were wary of accidentally causing an interstellar incident when first meeting Florence or Sam (until they realized that Florence wasn't an alien and Sam was annoying).