First Contact Web Novels

First-contact novels on Tellura stage the first meeting between humanity and something else, whether alien, artificial, or long hidden. The encounter may be peaceful, catastrophic, or so strange that no one can agree what happened. Pairs with space-opera, artificial-intelligence, and horror.

The genre is about the limit of understanding. Translation fails, assumptions mislead, and the two sides want things the other cannot name, which is why the strongest entries keep the aliens genuinely alien. Pair with political for the treaty negotiations and with survival when the meeting goes badly from the first page.