First non-fiction steps. This is early stuff, and it shows. The writing is particularly bad, because hey, I was thinking novel science fiction plots, not planning to become the artsy kind of person I will never manage to impersonate, with or without language tuition.
There's space travel, without space ships or wormholes, there are aliens that fell less alien by the page, and there's a lot of US, because that's where all the alien encounters traditionally take place. Apologies for that, later work will blast those borders.