I write high-speed, strategy-driven Military Sci-Fi & Space Opera, where cunning commanders, elite soldiers, and alien warlords fight for survival on the fringes of space. Subscribe to my newsletter for my latest updates!
First Contact Thoughts
First Contact Thoughts(4-5 minute read) The idea arrives quietly at first, like a ripple crossing a still lake. It has followed humanity through every age of discovery, hiding in campfire stories, drifting through the corridors of ancient libraries, whispered by astronomers staring through trembling glass. It is the thought that refuses to go away, because somewhere in our bones we know the universe is too old, too immense, and too full of possibility to leave us wandering alone forever. What happens in the moment we are found? Not conquered. Not judged. Not warned. Picture a morning when the familiar hum of our world falters for a heartbeat. Satellites catch a signal so clear that even sceptics hold their breath. There is no threat buried in it, no coordinates or demands. Only a single phrase shaped with patient light. We see you, friend. In that instant the sky feels wider. The air feels different. The noise of daily life seems to fall away as if the world is listening with one shared breath. The old debates about blurry radio distortions vanish. Every dismissive shrug at strange telescope readings fades. A message this clean is not an argument. It is a recognition. A deliberate moment of eye contact across a gulf of stars. And then the great question rises like a tide. Some would be afraid. It is impossible to avoid. Fear is stitched into our earliest memories as a species, a holdover from nights spent watching the tall grass for moving shadows. News anchors would tighten their voices. Markets would jitter. Online forums would erupt with theories that flash and burn like sudden sparks. Yet fear is never the whole story. Alongside it something deeper stirs. Awe lifts the chin as easily as fear lowers it. A signal from another mind would force us to look up, the way early humans once tilted their heads toward a sky crowded with stars and realised the world was larger than any story they had told themselves. It would peel our attention away from arguments that feel enormous on ordinary days and shrink them into something small beside the magnitude of being noticed by another intelligence. It would make ambition expand in ways we had forgotten to consider. The moment we are seen becomes a mirror. It reflects more than alien curiosity. It reflects us. Our impulses. Our fractures. Our unspoken hopes. The way nations would scramble to respond first, the way scholars would argue over interpretation, the way leaders would attempt to claim ownership of the moment. And beneath all of that noise, another truth would begin to surface. Millions would look up with a quiet, shared thought. Finally. We have always been explorers, not because we lacked space at home but because curiosity has been our oldest compass. The signal would not transform us. It would reveal us. It would show that connection has always been our instinct, long before we understood the word. Humanity has been preparing for alien friendship far longer than it realises. We reached across species boundaries before we even learned to write. Wolves became companions that walked beside our fires. Horses carried our weight across continents. Dolphins played at the edges of wooden boats. Even the octopus, strange and bright and utterly alien, became a creature we tried to understand rather than fear. If microbes were found on a distant world tomorrow, half of the scientific community would greet them with something close to affection. On some level we treat anything that answers our attention as a companion. Dogs. Machines. Whales rising from the deep with patient eyes. Even the insects we study with quiet fascination in laboratories. The truth is simple. We befriend anything that seems to look back. This tendency would shape our response to a cosmic greeting. If the message contained more than a single phrase, perhaps a mathematical pattern or a fragment of shared physical law, curiosity would rise faster than fear. We would want to know who sent it. We would want to understand how they live, how they think, what they see when they watch us. We would want to know if they are alone, or if the universe is humming with many voices, waiting for ours to join the chorus. And beneath all those questions another would form, softer and more human. Friendship is not an accessory to human life. It is the spine of our story. It is the reason we crossed oceans in fragile ships and built languages rich enough to hold the full weight of our emotions. If an alien civilisation reached out with something as gentle as recognition, our instinct would not be wariness. It would be closeness. The urge to lean in. To ask. To understand. To explore. Some dreamers imagine that contact would unite every nation overnight. It is unlikely. We are complicated creatures, shaped by centuries of memory and pride. A signal from the stars would not erase that. But it would stretch our perspective. Conflicts that seemed enormous would lose their gravity. Problems we ignored would suddenly feel urgent. The horizon of possibility would widen in a single breath. Humanity does not unite easily, but it unites quickly when confronted with the scale of the universe. The first clear signal would remind us that we are not a species trapped in a hall of mirrors, endlessly watching ourselves. We are a species standing at a window. And beyond that window lies something ancient, patient, and waiting. Because the moment we are found will not be an ending. It will be a beginning shaped by questions and humility and wonder. It will challenge us to grow in ways we did not expect. It will ask us to listen. It will demand that we become better than the people we were the day before. Above all, it will remind us that the universe is not empty. And when that first true signal arrives, humanity will not stand alone in fear. We will stand curious. We will stand hopeful. We will stand ready for the friends we have not met yet. Somewhere out there, someone is waiting for us to answer. The only question is what we will say when the moment finally comes. Until Next Time, BA Gillies ***If you've been meaning to dive into the Return to the Galaxy Universe, now’s your chance!Whether you're a new reader or just haven’t grabbed your copies yet, now’s the time to catch up on the award-winning series readers are calling “better than Scalzi” and “the best book since Heinlein died.” There is still time to catch up with the first book. You can also read the series free anytime in Kindle Unlimited:
***To everyone in this community, thank you. Your support, your messages, and your willingness to step straight into another chapter of this universe, have lifted the book far higher than I imagined. Almost five hundred copies have been bought or read in KU in less than three days. Because of you, Book Five has reached Number One in Amazon’s Planetary Colonization category. I know how rare that is. A fifth book in a series almost never climbs that high, and seeing it there left me genuinely moved. I want you to know how much that means to me. This series began with a blank page and the hope that readers might care about Ewan, Velal, Beryn, and all the others who have become so real in my mind. The fact that you have stayed with the story, through every battle and every moment of loss or triumph, is something I will never take for granted. Your enthusiasm is the reason I work as hard as I do, and the reason I keep pushing myself to make each book stronger than the one before it. So, thank you, truly, for carrying this series with such generosity. Thank you for picking up Book Five, for giving it a chance, and for helping it achieve something almost unheard of for a later book in a series. I am already deep into Book Six, and I promise to keep giving you stories worthy of the trust you have placed in me. With Thanks, BA Gillies ***Discover More Sci-Fi Adventures Each month, I’ll team up with a group of talented sci-fi authors to bring you an incredible selection of books. Whether you’re looking for thrilling space battles, deep space mysteries, or first-contact encounters, these books are packed with stories to fuel your imagination. Author Spotlight: |
BA Gillies
I write high-speed, strategy-driven Military Sci-Fi & Space Opera, where cunning commanders, elite soldiers, and alien warlords fight for survival on the fringes of space. Subscribe to my newsletter for my latest updates!
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