Basically, humanity finds SOMETHING out there, and must figure out what it is.
Best example off the top of my head is James P Hogan's "Inherit The Stars".
We find a human corpse in a spacesuit on the moon. Dating of it shows that it's at least 50,000 years old.
Book then follows up on where did this guy come from? What was his language like? Etc.
Anymore like that?
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Hmm, it's stretching a little, but Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds is something like this. A fair amount of the novel is spent investigating the mysterious extinction of an alien species.
Ironically, I read the sequel to that Hogan book, but not the origional. I loved "Code of the Lifemaker" though, although his later books get a bit... nutty.
Its a Dr Who spin off novel staring a companion from one of the series of Novels Bernice Summerfield. She is an archologist from the future and this is one of the few books that runs with that showing future techniques.
The general plot is investigating a new colony world and trying to piece together what the previous inhabitants looked like and what culture they had.
Fred Pohl's Gateway springs to mind —the entire plot turns upon a cache of FTL-capable spaceships found on Venus, left there by a race long gone and unknown.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
—Abraham Lincoln
People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
—Dr. Gregory House
Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
Wheelers might suit you. Bit of an odd story, fun little details. Centres around mysterious objects brought back from one of jupiter's moons by a profiteer (goes after everything from old scrap to sulfur crystals of enormous size on other worlds). All in the sol system, no FTL travel. Pretty decent read.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Oh, yes, Sphere is definitely a most have. Agreeing with Hongi here - it's actually very good, despite being written by Crichton.
Everything in it is full of this sort of deal, from the initial discovery to those that follow on, and they have interesting ramifications.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Saturnalia by Grant Callin. Its an old one from the 80s. An alien artifact is found on one of Saturn's moons which when deciphered, points to a second major atifact floating on the surface of Saturn. A race develops between Earth based interests and off planet interests to get to the artifact first.
Pandora's Star and it's sequel Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. Astronomers in the 23rd century detect two stars simply vanish. A crew is sent to see what happened and discover an enormous barrier has been erected around the system. Really, it's only the first half of the first book that is xeno-archaelogy. The rest is more about dealing with what they find. The books are a lot of fun.
Post 666: Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 12:51 am
Post 777: Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 6:49 pm
Post 999: Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:19 am
Alan Dean Foster has written a number of books in that genre, usually having much to do with the anthropological and archaeological studies humanity exacts on primitive alien races.
Try the Icerigger series; an excellent example of both survival SF AND archaeo-SF, plus it's got advanced-tech humans teaching medieval aliens how to make explosives to blow the ever loving shit out of other medieval aliens.
Note: I'm semi-retired from the board, so if you need something, please be patient.
Charles Sheffiled's Heritage Universe revolves around attempts to decipher artifacts left behind by a mysterious alien civilization.
The Excellent Prismatic Spray. For when you absolutely, positively must kill a motherfucker. Accept no substitutions. Contact a magician of the later Aeons for details. Some conditions may apply.
Thomas Harlan's In the Time of the Sixth Sun series. Currently two novels (Wasteland of Flint and House of Reeds), with Land of the Dead coming out next year. Some xenoarchaeology, some politics, some military stuff.
Stanley Hauerwas wrote:[W]hy is it that no one is angry at the inequality of income in this country? I mean, the inequality of income is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Why isn’t that ever an issue of politics? Because you don’t live in a democracy. You live in a plutocracy. Money rules.
