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First contact was at it most popular and innovative in the Golden Age of pulp science fiction -- the 1930's and 40's.
This is because rocket-based space travel was then a new and exciting concept and it sure beat its predecessor! -- prior to the 30's, space travelers were going to be shot from cannons.
(Ironically, the cannon's high tech successor, the rail gun, does offer interesting contemporary possibilities for launching from places with no atmosphere, such as the moon.
) The 30's and 40's were also when planetary science had determined that planets were like Earth, in the sense of all being massive and rocky objects that orbited the sun, but the details of the environments of each planet were still not well determined.
This was the era when it was considered a real possibility that there could be alien-made canals on Mars, and Venus could be a jungle planet under all its clouds.
It was a rich time for first contact stories.
By the 1960's the Golden Age era had come to a close.
With what we learned from the American/Soviet Space Race, it became clear that boost-and-coast rocket technology (the kind we use today) also put hard limits on practical space traveling just as cannon shooting had -- the stars were still a really, really long way away if you had to use a rocket ship that coasted for 99.
9% of the journey.
Even Mars was still far, far away.
We also learned through advancing planetary science that Mars, Venus and the other solar system planets were not alien civilized life-friendly.
In response to this better understanding, first contact stories were displaced from the center of SF mainstream, by more introspective ideas such as cyberpunk and VR adventuring.
Popular space travel stories transformed from first contact stories into warp-drive equipped space opera stories of which the Star Trek and Star Wars formats became iconic.
But first contact stories are not dead.
They are still very fun to read and write.
One popular example of contemporary first contact stories is the Stargate series where the world-visiting device is a massive teleporter.
So, if you want to write about a first contact, what are the big challenges? What must you figure out? Here is a starting list: o How do the humans and aliens come in contact? o How are the aliens different from humans? o What's the point of the story? Each of these has a big impact on how your story will be structured.
How do the humans and aliens come in contact? These days, there are three common choices: warp drive, alternate universe/magic or teleporter.
What these three have in common is that the transit time is fast -- from days to hours to essentially instantaneous.
These are FTL solutions -- faster than light speed.
The advantage of these is that in all of them the story line can chug along at full speed as the characters move from one interesting world to another.
The Star Wars series takes full advantage of this capability.
The first disadvantage of these FTL solutions is that they are completely divorced from our real world -- they are all fantasy solutions.
(This, by the way, is why so much of contemporary science fiction is now called speculative fiction.
) Since they are fantasy, there is no hard constraint on what the author can bring into the story, so there is a powerful tendency for the story to get silly or internally inconsistent which makes it weak.
To avoid silliness and inconsistency, you, the author, need to make hard choices about what is possible in your world, and what is not possible.
This should be the first step in your story making process.
Make your limits, make them consistent limits, then explore what you can and can't do within those limits.
Take some time at this because you will discover that within any limitation you set, there will always surprises.
One example of not setting consistent limits is Star Trek teleporter and holodeck technologies -- these got famously silly as the franchise evolved.
The second disadvantage is a bit subtler: all these FTL solutions mean that the alien world is very close to our world -- Planet Xenon, or where ever, is now a suburb of Los Angeles.
This leads to the problem of: If it's as close as a suburb of LA, why shouldn't it act like a suburb of LA? Why aren't there immigrant Xenonians tending the gardens in LA?, and so on.
In sum, if you are going to write good first contact stories that have fast travel in them, you need to face up to these two issues and have good, internally consistent, answers for both of them.
An example: Stargate solved these problems for a while by making the travel process new, secret and expensive.
But as the seasons rolled on, this collection of premises got shakier and shakier: these worlds being discovered were so interesting that other parties, such as commercial interests, should have become involved, and as they did the whole structure of the program would have changed dramatically.
For instance, the launch platform area should have become a shipping dock, and the defense system consisting of people lining up and pointing guns at the portal started to look real silly.
They were hinting at changes in the relation in the later seasons, but they never let it really happen.
An alternate solution to fast travel is the one I use in many of my stories: Do without, don't have FTL travel.
This changes the nature of the story structure a whole lot.
It is a challenge because the characters in the story cannot just chug along from planet to planet and solve crises in a few minutes or days.
This means, for instance, that there is no Galactic Empire or any equivalent.
Think about it: What does it mean to rule a distant star system when it takes ten, twenty, a hundred years to just send a simple "Hello? How are things going today?" message and get a reply? So if you take on the challenge of STL space travel, you end up with very different stories, and that can make them groundbreaking -- you will be writing in a style that few other people are currently embracing.
The other advantage is that what you are writing about doesn't have to be fantasy.
You can be writing some real science fiction, you can be writing about a real possible future.
How are aliens different from humans? This issue is as big an intellectual field as any can be.
Alien portrayals can range from being just like humans, to god-like, to so different that they are incomprehensible.
This range can apply to how they look, how they act, and how they think...
lots of choices! Once again, if you don't plan well first, you will end up with silly.
And, very much a part of your planning is the issue covered next: What is the point of your story? Holding off on that point for a moment, what can help you shape your aliens? The other element that can shape how you design your aliens, beside what is the point of your story, is human emotion: What are easy ways for readers to think about aliens? The easiest aliens for readers to identify with are those that are as close to human as possible: If the aliens look like humans and act like humans and live like humans, readers can say, "Ah...
I can identify with those aliens.
" and they are usually very comfortable with the choice.
This emotional level relation explains the popularity of alien portrayals in movies like the recent District Nine (2009) and its older version Alien Nation (1988).
In both these movies the aliens were living like people and acting like people.
If the point of your story is to make an editorial comment about an existing condition on earth, human-like aliens are a good choice -- both of the above movies were making editorial comments on poverty and racial discrimination.
Another emotionally comfortable role for aliens is to be gods -- they are coming to earth to tell us right from wrong, and to tell us that we should mend our ways.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 and 2008) is an example of that.
And yet another, they can be conquering monsters, with War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005) being one very comfortable arch-typical version of that portrayal.
These are examples of the emotionally easy ways of portraying aliens.
They are not real, but they are easy for readers to identify with, so they are common and comfortable.
If you want aliens that are not as easy emotionally, not one of the above, then you get into the next point: What is the point of your story? So let's go there now.
What's the point of the story? Why are you telling this story? What is it that you want your readers to get from this story? You should be thinking about these at the beginning, middle and end of your story writing.
It is all important..
..
However, the answer to these questions can change.
You can change your mind has your story evolves.
But, you should always have an answer, and it should be a short and snappy one.
o Is this about a neat science idea? -- Mommy, Why Am I here? (my story) o Is this editorializing about some current human condition? -- District Nine o Is this moralizing about some human weakness? -- Stranger in a Strange Land o Is this a hero's quest story with an alien world setting? -- Star Wars Something to keep in mind is that what you put into a story may not be what readers take away from it.
War of the Worlds was written by H.
G.
Wells to moralize about how the British Empire was not as invulnerable as it seemed at the time.
What people since have take from it is a general purpose conquering alien invasion story where the aliens die because of a disease -- in later versions a disease inflicted by a human hero.
Whatever your point is, be sure to double check that you have made your point when you finish each draft.
This is something you can easily check with a reader on: ask them, "Did you see that I made this point?" In reality, this is a lot easier question for a reader than, "Did you like it?" So those are the big three to keep in mind: How do the humans and aliens come in contact, how are the aliens different from humans, and most important, what's the point of the story?
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