The First Contact Protocol

Gary DeFalco is a scholar, critic, and writer whose work occupies the intersection of science fiction studies, astrobiology, and strategic communication. He holds a PhD in Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his dissertation examined the construction of posthuman diplomacy in twentieth- and twenty-first-century alien contact narratives. DeFalco has served as a visiting researcher at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, contributing to public outreach and interdisciplinary workshops on the ethical implications of messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. His essays have appeared in *Science Fiction Studies*, *Extrapolation*, *The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts*, and the online magazine *Lightspeed*. He is a frequent speaker at academic conferences such as the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) and the Contact Conference, where he has led seminars on translating fictional protocols into real-world policy frameworks. DeFalco lives in Portland, Oregon, where he curates a small lending library of vintage and radical SF and continues to write about the cultural logic of cosmic encounter. *The First Contact Protocol* is his first book.