#firstcontact

Jarvis came hoping to rebuild an old alliance.

Instead, the negotiations shifted the moment danger gathered beyond the settlement walls.

Negotiations explores fragile diplomacy on a hostile world where survival may matter more than trust.

Now live on YouTube:

The wind shifted beyond their walls.

They thought they knew what that meant.

They were wrong.

Reunited follows a mission that steps into the unknown and finds something waiting on the other side.

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Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Orbit, 2025. 9780316579025. 464pp.

This is my favorite first contact novel. It's set in a post-Earth interstellar future where humans function as assets for expansion across the galaxy. A ship has arrived at an unexplored star system to start exploiting local assets in order to create a waystation for humanity.

The most notable body in the system is a large moon. It’s a dark, inhospitable place where light has never reached the surface (if it has one). But it is alive with a cacophony of radio signals. Scientists began studying and, via drones, exploring the moon. They discover life there. And as they begin to plan to send humans to the surface to try to make sense of what their cameras are seeing, the novel turns into a tale of survival, as well as one of trying to recognize a truly alien intelligence. (The book is told from both alien and human points-of-view).

A foreword to the impossible but necessary tale of the Red Hearts. Full foreword at https://tinyurl.com/5bvchanr

It’s about first contact in the modern day.  Not the past.  Not the future.  Now.  Contact with a different version of ourselves.  An ancient civilization of humans transplanted from our distant past to be born anew among the stars.  

It’s not about invasion.  

It’s not about the apocalypse.  

It’s not about a utopia.

They don’t want or need our labor or resources.  

They need our culture, our emotion, our identity.  

Because they’ve lost theirs.

This story most likely cannot exist.  But it should exist.  And it will exist. 

This story cannot exist for one simple reason:

The idea that nations shaped by centuries of exploitation would choose to partner with extraterrestrials with god-like resources to exchange culture for emotion, healing for humanity, is preposterous. 

The notion itself is alien—difficult to even wrap one’s mind around.

Any one who has lived through the brutality and betrayal of colonization is unlikely to cooperate with such ridiculously advanced “aliens”, no matter how peaceful their intentions, no matter how benevolent the visitors are, no matter how many lives could be saved.  After 50 years? 100 years? Maybe some progress could be made.  But a week?  A month?  The time-table of this story?  It would be… an unreasonable expectation.  

But that would make this story impossible.  

So join me in suspending some disbelief.

Here are the conditions that make this preposterous story have potential:

First, they leave.  Well, not exactly.  They ask for permission to move from orbit near the moon to geosynchronous orbit.  The UN tells them no, so they stay in the further orbit.  For as long as it takes for the governments of the World to let them approach.  Despite an imminent threat from their enemies, from Earth enemies, they don’t care.  They’ll wait.  As long as it takes.

They have the hardware to level the planet.  But they don’t.  They wait.  They do nothing without consent. 

They unify:  a hostile force would seek to divide and conquer.  It would want us weaker.  To the extent the Red Hearts are welcome to get involved in such things at all, they seek and encourage unity and collaboration.  The Red Hearts want us stronger.

They lay out very specifically what they want, what they have to offer, and their motivations and reasoning.

They woke up empty. No joy. No wonder. No pain. No emotion.  No feelings.

They lost their souls.