first contact stories, told from the contactees perspective, were among my favorite kinds of s.f. back in the 60s through 80s when most of them were being written.

i love reading about diverse cultures, as well as solving engineering problems and challenging environments.

i haven't been able to find much of that kind of writing for the past 30 years though.

sf periodicals like analog, back in the 70s and 80s used to give me my fix of it.
but the flood of space wars and space soap operas and fantasies of swords and kings seem to have drowned them out.

sure wish i could still find them. wish there were more people wanting them so there would be more of them.
i said "were", because i can't seem to find them any more, not because they wouldn't still be if i could.

i go to book stores and everything is so expensive and almost nothing is like that at all, so why would i want to spend what they want now,
$16 or even $20 (and that's for paperback) for something that isn't even close to what interests me.
and there aren't that many cheap book stores and the ones were i live seldom have anything like that either.