This book is considered a science fiction classic, but somehow I'd never read it; now corrected! It was written in 1972 but didn't feel particularly dated. I found it a bit slow going at times; the middle really grabbed me but the start and end were a bit dense. However, it was still a brilliantly told imagining of humanity's future first contact with a very alien race. It's told mainly from the perspective of the humans, but with intervals where you get to see what the aliens are thinking also.

I felt as if the authors had really questioned every single aspect of the meeting, and as a result nothing was just assumed, or stereotyped, and the difficult decisions faced by both races were addressed face on and in very realistic detail. Some of the choices the authors made interested me too - why for example did they decide that humanity of the future would be an imperial empire, and a very misogynistic one at that? I've read some other books by these authors and that's not a standard scenario they assume so I'm curious why they decided on it for this setting.

Definitely hard science fiction, and not a light quick read, but very thought-provoking.