First Contact (Cawdron)

HELLO WORLD represents a decade of science fiction by author Peter Cawdron. This collection of sixteen short stories and novellas, including four previously unpublished stories, will take you out of this world.

"But the stars that marked our starting fall away. We must go deeper into greater pain, for it is not permitted that we stay." Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 1301 AD At the start of the 22nd century, the starship Acheron is in orbit around WISE 5571 only, unbeknownst to the crew, the ship has been overrun by telepathic extraterrestrials. How do you fight an enemy that distorts everything you see? What do you do when you can't trust your own senses, let alone anyone around you?

The Prince of Darkness is coming. Comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn. Rather than being drawn into the gas giant, it skipped back out into space. With the comet heading for Jupiter, speculation is mounting it's an alien spacecraft making its way to Earth. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis and Dr. Kath McKenzie are caught between an angry public and an anxious President as they grapple with the scientific, social, and political implications of first contact. First Contact is a series of standalone novels that explore humanity's first interactions with extraterrestrial life.

Cold Eyes is an original First Contact novel, written as a tribute to the 1974 science fiction classic, The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The UN warship Magellan is twelve light-years from Earth, exploring a cold eye, a tidally locked super-Earth called Bee. At least two advanced intelligent species evolved on the planet, but the crew's attempts at radio communication result in garbled replies. No one is waiting for them in orbit. The crew has to figure out why. Any misunderstandings could lead to war.