Wherever Seeds May Fall

First Contact

By: Peter Cawdron

Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann

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.

©2022 Peter Cawdron (P)2022 Podium Audio

First contact goes nuts

Whenever seeds may fall is another book in the First COntact series by Peter Cawdron. The story begins, as usual, with the detection of an unusual comet that approaches the inner solar system. After showing incredible space navigation capabilities, the comet reveals to be a humongus starship....Spaceship woith a crew of superinteligent astronauts are sent and Humans are about to meet their first outter space visitors....And here is where all similarities with Rendezvous with Rama by ARTHUR C. CLARKE end. The story is decorated with hard science that entertains and excites true Sci-fi connoisseurs. In particular, the part of the story when the spaceship goes through Earth´s atmosphere, is fast paced, well written and makes you believe this is the book you were waiting for since Rama.... However, right when you are ready and salivating for the conclusion of the story and to know who are our visitors and why have come to Earth, ..Cowdron´s book goes space monsters from outter space are here to eat you...Overall, the story is really suited for a B movie adaptation..It seems that, after 20 First Contacts books, Peter Cowdron has ran out of ideas (good ones) and should throw in the towel picking up a different topic for his next story. For those who gave this book more than 1 or 2 stars, I invite you to read any book by Arthur C. Clarke...Finally, I can´t end ths review without mentioning Gary Tiedemann narration. He does a superb job in bringing the characters to you...

You want to listen to this one

As a scientist, I grit my teeth when an SF book gets anything scientific wrong, but this one gets it all right and does it in a fascinating way. You won't regret listening to this .

Interesting concept mostly well executed

It took me a while to work out that although this book was in a series, 'First Contact,' that was more of a category than a strict definition. The author has taken the idea of humanity's first contact with aliens and applied it to a variety of takes. I found nothing in this book that belied that, it was easily read without need for any of the author's other works.

That said, my only slight hesitation was that I found the ending abrupt. Not that there wasn't an ending, but it seemed to just suddenly happen. So that and a couple of other confusing (to me) items are why I'm giving the story four stars, not five, but still an overall five (the narrator was very good.)

The inconsistencies were in the main characters, For Lt. Colonel, then Brigadier General, Nolan Landis, his career trajectory was an ongoing question. An apparently throw-away line said he'd walked into a recruiting center, but that would make his reaching even Lt. Col. quite the story in itself, not having attended the Air Force Academy. For Cath McKenzie, I kept getting odd contradictions in her description (tall, not tall, etc.) as if the author wasn't sure.

But those are specific to me. The science was first rate (as I understand it, not being an astrophysicist, just an interested onlooker) and other characters were solid (Andy and the president, mainly). But the ending seemed to have been meant as a twist, but one thing I took from it was that it seemed to somewhat validate the 'crazy conspiracists' (led by Andy) who the author had had nothing positive to say prior to that. I'm not sure if it was intentional on the author's part. But there wasn't much in the book that set it up.

But it was an entertaining ride.

Preachy righteousness wrapped in Sci-Fi

At some points the cringe was too much, had to fast forward few times.

Peter Cawdron has knack for First Contact stories

After the comet skips past two gas giants, slowing dramatically with each near collision, Earthlings figure out it's coming to us next...and it's trajectory is planned. So, if it wanted to kill us, it would simply collide with Earth. Otherwise, why slow down? So, it must be aliens.

How humanity deals with that, with less than two months to prepare, is predictable. But can we come together with a single unified plan? President Ashton of the US (a woman president!) is determined to lead the charge to meet the aliens, whether friend or foe.

Cawdron is from New Zealand, yet he manages to perfectly capture American society in each book that he places here. I think I've read about 5 of his First Contact novels, and he must have written 30 by now. Clearly, I need to catch up! "The Artifact" is next on my hit list.