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Contact

Carl Sagan · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Out of the Silent Planet

C.S. Lewis · 174 pages

The first book in Lewis's Space Trilogy, *Out of the Silent Planet* tells the story of Dr. Elwin Ransom, a philologist who likes to explore the English countryside on foot. Seeking out a place to stay the night, he ends up at the estate of a colleague who is away in London. However, the house is not empty. Ransom stumbles upon the plot of a megalomaniacal scientist and his collaborator, who jus

First ContactSpace ExplorationScientist ProtagonistSlow-Paced
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Seveneves

Neal Stephenson · 861 pages

"What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers th

Space ExplorationWomen in STEMScientist ProtagonistTechnology and Society
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Xenocide

Orson Scott Card · 562 pages

On Lusitania, Ender finds a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together. However, Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entir

First ContactSpace ExplorationFaith CrisisPlot-Driven
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Sixty Days and Counting

Kim Stanley Robinson · 512 pages

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the n

Scientist ProtagonistWomen in STEMTechnology and SocietyHopeful
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The Mote in God's Eye

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle · 560 pages

Science fiction classic about the rise, fall and subsequent rise of a civilization where the peak catastrophe is known as the "crazy eddy point". Introduces the concept of frictionless toilets that don't have any water in them but I suspect the authors didn't think it all the way through - I don't recall a negative air pressure that would keep odours in their rightfull place. Nevertheless a fascin

First ContactSpace ExplorationTechnology and SocietySlow-Paced
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2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke · 240 pages

A novel that proposes an idea about how the human race might have begun and where it might be headed...given a little help from out there. A colaboration of ideas with director Stanley Kubrick in the late 1960's it begins at "the dawn of man" and then leaps to the year 2001 where a mission to Saturn (Jupiter in the film) is mounted to try and answer questions raised by the discovery of an ancient

First ContactSpace ExplorationSlow-PacedScientist Protagonist
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First ContactScientist ProtagonistSpace ExplorationHopeful
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The Three-Body Problem

Liu Cixin · 408 pages

Cixin Liu's trilogy-opening novel about first contact with aliens and the clandestine struggle with them over Earth's future, and its scientific progress in particular. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military prject sends signals into space in an attempt to make contact with aliens—and they succeed. An alien civilization on the brink of descruction captures th

First ContactScientist ProtagonistTechnology and SocietyPlot-Driven
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We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Dennis E. Taylor · 322 pages

Space ExplorationFirst ContactScientist ProtagonistHopeful
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Sphere

Michael Crichton · 384 pages

A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defines their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old

First ContactScientist ProtagonistSpace ExplorationTechnology and Society
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Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir · 496 pages

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of mile

First ContactSpace ExplorationScientist ProtagonistHopeful
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Remanence

Jennifer Foehner Wells · 450 pages

First ContactSpace ExplorationWomen in STEMScientist Protagonist
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Solaris

Stanislaw Lem · 223 pages

The cult-classic by Stanislaw Lem that spawned the movie is now available for your Kindle! Until now the only English edition was a 1970 version, which was translated from French and which Lem himself described as a "poor translation." This wonderful new English translation (by Bill Johnston) of Lem's classic Solaris is a must-have for fans of Lem's classic novel. Telling of humanity's encounte

First ContactScientist ProtagonistSpace ExplorationSlow-Paced
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Caliban's War

James S.A. Corey · 608 pages

The second book in the NYT best-selling Expanse series, Caliban's War shows a solar system on the brink of war, and the only hope of peace rests on James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante's shoulders. Now a Prime Original series. We are not alone. On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a

First ContactSpace ExplorationTechnology and SocietyPlot-Driven
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The Voyage of the Space Beagle

A.E. van Vogt · 192 pages

First ContactSpace ExplorationScientist ProtagonistScience Fiction
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The Hercules Text

Jack McDevitt

First ContactScientist ProtagonistTechnology and SocietyFaith Crisis
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Nimisha's Ship

Anne McCaffrey · 417 pages

When it comes to sheer imagination and storytelling prowess, Anne McCaffrey is in a class by herself. Few writers have created characters more deeply loved or futures more intensely lived. For more than thirty years, she has reigned as one of the premier talents in science fiction and fantasy, flying above the crowd on the glittering wings of such masterworks as The Dragonriders of Pern and Crysta

Space ExplorationScientist ProtagonistWomen in STEMFirst Contact
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The Garden of Rama

Arthur C. Clarke, Gentry Lee · 441 pages

Book 3 of Clarke's Rama series is about an alien ghost ship that enters the solar system. This book picks up with the story of the crew who stayed aboard Rama at the end of Rama 2.

First ContactSpace ExplorationSlow-PacedScience Fiction
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Foundation's Edge

Isaac Asimov · 426 pages

After the defeat of the Mule by the Second Foundation, Terminus enjoys a period of prosperity and stability which is publicly attributed to the Seldon Plan, but which some feel is the work of the Second Foundation. A search is begun to determine if the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile, the Second Foundation finds that there is evidence of an independent force acting against the Mule to

Space ExplorationSlow-PacedTechnology and SocietyPlot-Driven
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Factoring Humanity

Robert J. Sawyer · 343 pages

First ContactScientist ProtagonistWomen in STEMScience Fiction
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First ContactScientist ProtagonistSpace ExplorationPlot-Driven
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Dark Orbit

Carolyn Ives Gilman · 303 pages

"From Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated Carolyn Ives Gilman comes Dark Orbit, a compelling novel featuring alien contact, mystery, and murder. Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was onc

First ContactScientist ProtagonistSpace ExplorationScience Fiction
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Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Robert A. Heinlein · 256 pages

Space ExplorationFirst ContactHopefulPlot-Driven
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Boundary

Eric Flint, Ryk E. Spoor · 544 pages

Scientist ProtagonistFirst ContactSpace ExplorationScience Fiction
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