For decades, science fiction writers have tried their best to prepare us for eventual contact with aliens. Their efforts are dominated by several recurrent tropes. There's the invasion by a warlike ...

We've all grown up dreaming of aliens landing on the Earth or laser beaming across the sky; well, either way, it's sci-fi and dramatic. But what if the real first "hello" from space isn't from a ...

A megacorporation's research ship returns from a 65-year mission into deep space loaded with gooey alien specimens. But—and stop me if you've heard this one before—something goes wrong. The ship ...