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eBook Category: Science Fiction Aurora Award Nominee
eBook Description: Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed, an alien being, beams a series of encoded messages to Earth, where they're picked up by Darren Hamasaki, an amateur astronomer. It's a multiple-choice exam, and all Darren, and the rest of humanity, has to do is get the answers right, before the aliens arrive in the flesh. A hard-SF first-contact scenario, involving optical SETI.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2004

49 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [270 KB], eReader (PDB) [43 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [31 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [28 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [85 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [100 KB], hiebook (KML) [77 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [64 KB], iSilo (PDB) [26 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [32 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [60 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [46 KB]
Words: 8634
Reading time: 24-34 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Robert Sawyer's 'Ineluctable' illustrates the dangers inherent in a First Contact situation. The problem is: How do you answer the question correctly if you don't understand what is being asked in the first place? The story highlights perfectly the potentially disastrous consequences that can arise in a meeting of two alien cultures before they have the chance to learn more about each other. I haven't read any short fiction by Robert Sawyer before, although I'm very familiar with his novels, but I enjoyed this one. It's a traditional yet entertaining piece, containing nothing earth-shatteringly new, but a solid story nevertheless. I liked the depiction of the aliens, who seem to share some of our own more negative traits despite the great physiological and cultural differences between the two species. Something like this makes me very apprehensive about the human race's potential ability to handle a real First Contact situation properly."--Phil Friel, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

What to do? What to do?

Darren Hamasaki blew out air, trying to calm down, but his heart kept pounding, a metronome on amphetamines.

This was big. This was huge.

There had to be procedures in place. Surely someone had thought this through, had come up with a--a protocol, that was the word.

Darren left the observatory shed in his backyard and trudged through the snow. He stepped up onto the wooden deck and entered his house through the sliding-glass rear doors. He hit the light switch, the halogen glow from the torchiere by the desk stinging his dark-adapted eyes.

Darren took off his boots, gloves, tuque, and parka, then crossed the room, sitting down at his computer. He clicked on the Netscape Navigator icon. Oh, he had Microsoft Explorer, too--it had come preinstalled on his Pentium IV--but Darren always favored the underdog. His current search engine of choice, which changed as frequently as the current favorite CD in his stereo, was also an underdog: HotBot. He logged on to it and stared at the dialog box, trying to think of what keywords to type.

Protocol was indeed appropriate, but as for the rest--

He shrugged a little, conceding the magnitude of what he was about to enter. And then he pecked out three more words: contact, extraterrestrial, and intelligence.