Lindsay Ellis

"By the fall of 2007, one well-timed leak revealing that the U.S. government might have engaged in first contact has sent the country into turmoil, and it is all Cora Sabino can do to avoid the whole mess. The force driving this controversy is Cora's whistleblower father, and even though she hasn't spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government-and redirected it to her....

First Contact has not been going well. Earth is rapidly militarizing against the arrival of the Superorganism, an alien civilization that promises to destroy humanity before it can develop into a real threat. But the alien Ampersand and his human interpreter Cora Sabino are done with trying to save humanity from both the Superorganism and itself; to them, this is a civilization that does not deserve to be saved. When a strange new form of communication...