Genres
First contact
The science fiction theme of the first meeting between humans and extraterrestrial life, or between sapient species.
First contact is a common theme in science fiction about the first meeting between humans and extraterrestrial life, or between sapient species from different worlds. The term itself traces to Murray Leinster's 1945 novelette "First Contact", and H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds popularized the idea. Common shapes include alien invasion, discovered alien artifacts, messages from space, and linguistic or communication puzzles; ethics is a recurring subtheme, from Star Trek's Prime Directive to the Strugatsky brothers' progressors.
For novelists the theme compresses everything into one relationship: two entities learning to communicate, where misunderstanding is a plot engine. The translation rules and what each side can know are world rules the serial has to hold steady.