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![Anomaly (First Contact) by [Peter Cawdron]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/413RLsZCgPL._SY346_.jpg)
Anomaly (First Contact) Kindle Edition
Peter Cawdron (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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ANOMALY examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth. The technological gulf between humanity and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is using science, but not everyone is so patient. Humanity's first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. With a technological gap of millions of years, mankind is barely able to recognize the arrival of an alien spacecraft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.
Like BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE, the FIRST CONTACT series is based on a common theme rather than common characters. These books can be read in any order. Technically, they're all first as they all deal with how we might initially respond to contact with aliens from the perspective of science, society, politics and religion.
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- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 20, 2011
- File size2431 KB
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From the Publisher

First Contact

First Contact
First Contact is a unique series that explores plausible ways in which humanity may have its first interaction with an intelligent extraterrestrial species.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Independent book review - TJ Hapney
★★★★★ - "Thoughtful Science Fiction At Its Best" Brian's Book Blog
★★★★★ - "Cawdron is like the Freddie Mercury of writing, his repertoire is broad and he appears equally at home, whether the subject being space, aliens, zombies, crime, love or humor" Claus Bernth
★★★★★ - "Cawdron is the master of first contact books." J. Lew
★★★★★ - "My science fiction reading history is based on the Clarke, Asimov and Sagan realism. No light sabers, no space ship battles or heroic military victories. Just plausible and realistic situations" John E. Larisch
★★★★★ - "You pretty much know, 'Oh, here goes an all-nighter' if you start any of Peter's books"Shawna Newton
From the Author
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B005OJF0ZC
- Publisher : Peter Cawdron at Smashwords; 2nd edition (September 20, 2011)
- Publication date : September 20, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 2431 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 287 pages
- Lending : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #24,956 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #129 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #200 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #522 in Science Fiction Adventure
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Peter is an Australian science fiction writer, specialising in making hard science fiction easy to understand and thoroughly enjoyable.
His FIRST CONTACT series is topical rather than character-based, meaning each book stands alone. These novels can be read in any order, but they all focus on the same topic of First Contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms. In this regard, the series is akin to BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
Hard science fiction is a misnomer as far as categories of literature go, as it sounds harsh and difficult to understand, but that is far from reality. Hard science fiction is simply plausible science fiction, fiction that is written in such a way as it conforms to the known laws of science, and that makes it more interesting, as there's no magic wand the protagonist can wave to get out of trouble. Peter's forays into hard science fiction could best be described as informative science fiction or enjoyable science fiction.
Peter is a fan of such classic science fiction writers as Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton and their influence on his style and story lines is readily apparent. You can follow Peter on Facebook or Twitter or find him posting some interesting tibit on his blog http://thinkingscifi.wordpress.com/
Customer reviews
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Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2018
Top reviews from the United States
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I found the premise appealing. What turns out to be aliens who are vastly superior in technology (and maybe more) to us discover Earth. This is the polar opposite of a typical space opera fare where they either are mostly English speaking comely females longing to mate with the captain or grotesque monsters bent on our destruction. These guys want to chat.
The majority of the book is not only the difficulties chatting with an alien and a side note business about the worldwide civil unrest the existence on Earth of an alien causes. Curiously, the author dismisses the John McClane character from movies such as Die Hard as a figure not to admire anymore due to his method of conflict resolution. However, there are two scenes in the book where John McClane would have saved the day but the protagonist does nothing of the sort.
The book starts out in a roar, maintains its pace for a bit and then wanders until the very end where a crisis creates an ending. The text is rampant with typos and word misuse. The thing which really bothers me is, at the very end, the protagonist gets a message which can be interpreted in many ways. He chooses a way that I doubt anybody would guess and in the end, there wasn’t any reason for the vagueness of the message anyway. It cratered the book for me.
My idea of a protagonist is not some cowering metrosexual who has to have his girlfriend bail him out of a major crisis. Give me John McClane.
5 out of 5 stars
Sometimes a book will leave me speechless for good or bad reasons. Anomaly left me speechless for a couple days because I couldn’t find the words to describe how great of a story it really was. The end of the entire book Cawdron explains a little about what spurred him to write the story the way that it was written — and I love it even more. I had just finished the book. I was in that post-great-book-euphoria and then that part comes on and just solidifies my love for the story, characters, and overall way that the story was told.
I think the thing that I liked the most was that the person who was least qualified to make hypothesis was the one that they kept coming back to for answers. Sometimes you can have all the degrees in the world but it won’t help you see something that a school teacher would see.
I also felt that Cawdron did a great job going through the different reactions by different types of people. From religious to government types — everyone had a different feeling about it and Cawdron explained it in a way that both made sense and made the book feel incredibly realistic.
Cawdron is quickly becoming my go-to for Science Fiction stories because they remind me of some of the stories that got me into reading Sci-Fi in the first place. It just has that “old school” feel to it without feeling old (if that makes sense).
Overall, Anomaly will stick with me for a long time. The story was that memorable and well told. Cawdron is a master of his craft and I’m glad I have some other books of his to read soon.
The narration by PJ Ochlan really put the cherry on top of this. He was able to give voices to the character in such a way that they felt real. I love that about a good audiobook.
Top reviews from other countries

Anomaly is self-published and I have to say it is one of the few self-published books that I have found both enjoyable and remarkably free of editing errors; there are a few but these days even the best traditionally published authors rarely get their books out without a few typos still floating around. His prose could have used a bit of additional gentle editing, however, it frequently felt clumsy and in places drifted off into inconsequential detail whilst in others omitted important detail. But this does appear to be one of Cawdron’s earliest works so I have hopes that this will improve as he gains experience.
The anomaly itself, the science of the investigation and communication attempts are all well-handled and maybe Cawdron should have confined the story to just these aspects but he also chooses to look at the religious, social and political aspects of first contact and here the book is altogether weaker; he raises these issues as a background to the main story but I found the events associated with them to be both unlikely and given so much less coverage than I felt they warranted. Ultimately the questions they raised were neither addressed nor concluded, feeling more like a rather scruffy wrapping around the main events of the story.
For the most part that story worked well and had a satisfyingly conclusion. The writing, though mediocre, has promise and is better than most of the other self-published writing I have so far read. The core ideas and science are generally well presented despite some of the peripheral aspects getting rather less attention than they deserved. All in all a good book, though, and I will be reading more of Cawdron’s work in the future.

The characters were quite attractive and there was a naïve logic about the way they interacted, even if it was inconsistent from time to time. I have to say I struggled with 'visualising' the anomaly sometimes and the writer could go into some depths about flags hanging or blowing in the breeze. It also would benefit the reader if they were intimate with the layout of New York as there are some detailed references to roads, building, parks that made no sense at all.
This is a quite thought provoking story that takes a reasonable approach to dealing with alien first contact. There is a bit of shooting and massacring, that is required to make it believable for US readers (standard operating procedure in the US), but not much.
This was a story about assumptions and logic and that is what made it interesting.
This is a complete book and is not a trick to make you buy the ending in a 'sequel'.



I'm just buying and reading the rest of this series - his take on this subject is really very new.
Finally - Give it a whirl - you won't be sorry - especially if like me, you've had enough of ray guns & drooling monster, militaristic soap operas in space.
Well done Mr Cawdron Sir I hope they make these into films for you !