Dans l'océan de nuit

... that I read in english, in my case. A book about a first contact that is special in the way it goes wrong, even if all first contacts in human history and in SciFi always go wrong. In this case, contact happens to a robot spaceship. Scientists talk with it for a long time, yet something goes wrong and the thing runs off. But it turns out it might have been a scout sending out calls for bigger reinforcements now that the human answers have left a certain impression. Some want to prepare for war, others get religious about the entire experience (which sees some sort of bot intelligence downloading to humans), and yet others think we need to go after the scout to continue the discussions we already had, because there is so much to learn from those intelligent robots. Of course, this being a novel about humans, guess which way the humans lean?

The plot is fast-paced. The protagonist is not easy to be liked. But the story also touches on profound philosophical issues about what it means to be human, to live in the universe, to have first contact etc. I go and order the rest of this series, too, for it's unexpectedly good and nice to read.

Also, I was just looking for another SciFi series to start.

This is the kind of book that on its own is not a masterpiece, though it is interesting enough. The main character, Nigel Walmsley, is an astronaut who stumbles across an alien derelict and it changes his life. The setting is a future that has some elements of dystopia, but they are mostly offstage and just refered to in passing. Walmsley is Brit who is also employed by NASA and ends up working at the JPL in the middle of the book, then manages to get assigned to a moon base when more alien technology is discovered there. The way he gets involved in all of this stuff is just little unrealistic, but you have to suspend disbelief. The thing about this novel is that it is setting up the rest of the series. After all, the Galactic Center makes no appearance here, but it will show up later. So all in all it is worth your time if you want to read a sereis that is considered a classic in the genre.