First Contact
Several times daily
I look up at the sky
expecting an alien spaceship
to suddenly appear.
Logically it shouldn’t be
invaders or traders,
but eager explorers
urgent for discovery.
If we are fortunate,
their advanced technology
will stimulate our sciences
for rapid innovation,
so when the merchants and soldiers
arrive for the next visit
we are not as ill prepared
as primitive tribesmen
who were devoured
by Western appetites.
The term "first contact" to describe the 1st human-alien encounter is derived from the title of Murray Leinster's novelette which appeared in "Astounding Science Fiction" (May 1945). However, the theme dates back even before science fiction became a literary genre: between 1895 and 1897 H. G. Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds," which was serialized in the UK by "Pearson's Magazine" in 1897. As he reported, "across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."
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