A Unique First Contact Novel from the Point-of-View of the Aliens.
The last thing the factfinders—who call themselves Life—expected to find while traveling in space in The Curious on a mission from their planet, The Living World, was “other” life. But one day, they stumble upon the third planet out from a backwater sun and find it teeming with a vast diversity of life, including one sentient and cognizant, if primitive, species that they dub: Otherlife.
Being not only from The Curious but inherently curious themselves, they begin to study the Otherlife and their alien culture, discovering such strange things as marriage, intoxicating drinks, weapons of minor and mass destruction, the gleeful inhaling of toxic substances, two-parent families, layered language, genocide, non-nude bathing, and—the strangest thing of all—religion.
This first contact between Life and Otherlife, disconcerting for both, has moments of humor and moments of horror—and neither escapes the encounter unchanged.
