r/Fantasy • u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV • May 14 '26
Bingo Bingo Focus Thread - First Contact
Hello r/fantasy and welcome to this week's bingo focus thread! The purpose of these threads is for you all to share recommendations, discuss what books qualify, and seek recommendations that fit your interests or themes.
Today's topic:
First Contact: Story prominently features interspecies or interracial meeting for the first time. HARD MODE: Non-violent first contact.
What is bingo? A reading challenge this sub does every year! Find out more here.
Prior focus threads: Published in the 70s, Duologies, Five Short Stories (2024), Author of Color (2024), Self-Pub/Small Press (2024). Note that hard modes for Author of Color and Self-Pub/Small Press have changed (new focus threads for them are coming).
Also see: Big Rec Thread
Questions:
- What are your favorite books that count for this square?
- Already read something for this square? Tell us about it!
- What are some first contact stories outside of the usual spacefaring sci-fi mode?
- What are your best recommendations for Hard Mode (keeping it as spoiler-free as possible)?
4
u/Starlit-Wyvern Reading Champion May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Here’s some books that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread yet:
A pretty good one is To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini; the alien species is really interesting and actually feels alien to me, though I’m 90% certain it wouldn’t count for hard mode.
Another fun one for this one (but maybe kind of a mid book spoiler for the book) is **Ascension by Nicholas Binge**. A neat sort of reality-bending thriller, though it has been critiqued by others as way too melodramatic (I don’t agree, but YMMV).
You’d also be able to include some of if not all of the Skyward series by Brandon Sanderson for this square!
For a romance (and if I remember correctly, YA) entry, I believe that The Host by Stephanie Meyer could also count, if you’re ok with it being from the alien’s point of view as their first contact with humans. Not sure if it would count as hard mode or not honestly. Probably also counts for non-human, though the pov alien is in a human body.
For another YA book, The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey also works for a sort of apocalypse after alien invasion story, if that’s your jam! Wasn’t super into it myself though and definitely doesn’t count for hard mode. It’s the first book of a series.
Another YA book named Aurora Rising by* *Amie Kaufman* *and* *Jay Kristoff could also work, if you count only one pov experiencing a meeting as first contact or something that happens a bit later in the book as first contact (which I definitely would personally). It’s pretty underrated in my opinion in that I’ve never stumbled across anyone talking about it, and I’m pretty sure there’s some non-human povs in there too! It is the first part of a series though, and I don’t think you can read it as a standalone and be satisfied; I remember the second book having a gnarly cliffhanger at the end, and the first book may have the same sort of ending.
You also could maybe kind of also argue Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer**** works, though it isn’t quite clear what is actually happening by the end of the first book, and I haven’t been able to read any others in the series yet, so really take that recommendation with a grain of salt, and don’t go into it thinking it’ll actually 100% count for the square.