First Contact Short Story

In the short story “First Contact”, Leinster approaches the notion of ‘othering’ through the element, vision, and its related elements, light and darkness. According to Dr. Stephen E. Palmer’s textbook Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology, “vision relies on three basic elements, adaptation, sensitivity, and perception”(5). Eyes adapt to various levels of light in order to sense and perceive any figures within the environment. As light decreases, the eyes adapt up to a point until the range of sensitivity drops to a level that eyes can no longer perceive the surrounding environment. In Leinster’s short story, the variation and intensity of the several light sources continue to be mentioned, and reacted to by the characters. Out of the five …show more content…
Light comes from several sources throughout the story, from the stars themselves to the artificial red light that comes from technology. Drawing on the mission that brought both man and alien to the nebula, Leinster creates the presence of that specific nebula’s light several times throughout the short story. Coming to study a nebula that formed from an explosion of light, both man and alien travel through a nebula contains both a pair of vivid pair of stars and a dying white dwarf star among deep pockets of mist. “Examination–including the survey of a four-thousand-year column of its light—was worth while…but the finding of an alien spaceship upon a similar errand had implications which overshadowed the original purpose of the expedition”(Leinster 262). In coming to study the light of two different types of stars, both alien and men are enlightened by the fact that they are not alone in the cosmos. The chaos that brought forth the double star presents itself as a beacon to the mutual existence of both man and alien in the short story. Perhaps the existence of this nebula’s stars is merely presented as mere set dressing, or perhaps not. The emphasis on the nebula, and its stars, seems to go much further than set dressing, or even coincidence, simply from the realization that this story is speculative, and therefore relies on imagination. As Leinster’s short story is based upon imagination rather than reality, the odds that the nebula would just accidentally contain two types of stars, one a double star that shines brightly and the lone white dwarf star that fades into the mists together with two ships who must decide between cooperation or annihilation appears in retrospect, as the only one of the intentional details Leinster applies through light imagery in the short