text: It began with concerns about contaminating the moon. As our species struggled to escape the gravity well of the Earth, precautions where taken to ensure that when moon rocks and moon dust where collected and returned at such expense, that they remained free of earthly microbes. A process had begun, that would be glimpsed at work in film and fiction, in science and culture, spreading throughout human conciousness. It was a process that lead to the Andromeda strain, to star wars, to Kubriks masterpieces. Bit by bit, the human race got used to certain ideas, certain concepts. A slow strangulation befell religion. Its shrill voice silenced and ridiculed by science and the stars. Ufo death cults appeared, conspiracies and Area 51, reptiles and alien governments. We proposed ever new variations to each other - allowed ourselves to consider the alien in so many new ways. Manga, Hentai, tentacle shit, of course, but also other, richer, higher imaginings - we could see the alien through any lense we choose - the big brother - the fatherly figure- the noble savage- or the semi-divine. And in so many of our versions, contact with the alien meant war. In time, serious thought was given to this issue, governments paid for reports, for contingency plans. Universities carried out studies, Authors and philosophers wieghed in. As our technological progress continued its relentless conversion of sci-fiction into fact, so did grow the economic and social value of such concerns. Soon we would be littering our solar system with brave and lonely robots, sending us pictures of some rock to which we exiled them. What if we did finally find the alien? the Question needed answers. Gentle Contact Theory was developed as part of a NASA study in August 2002, and was initially unremarkable. The usual tropes where trotted out - Sterilising all tech they sent into space was routine by now, by the concept of ideological sterilisation gaining ground. Minimising the information that humanity would reveal through contact with aliens. Framing our questions to avoid revealing information about ourselves. Creating false or sanitised descriptions of humanity. Deciding, in advance, how truthful we might be. As it turned out, the process was quite revealing. We all lie on CV's, but if you had to apply for a job on behalf of humanity, you might hesitate. But the report needed writing, and its authors felt it was .. "taking shape" ... a guide-book or manual format of sorts- strange flowcharts: "Is the alien ramen or varalese?" "Is it a memetic hazard?" are you human? (sorry). *PART TWO* On August 27th, the first of a long series of contact games was held. By mid october a number of strategies had emerged, and discussions about them led to the first draft of the GCT paper. Caution was a popular choice, and many teams exploited a concealment and study approach, which was effective against a number of the more hostile alien models, but contact itself remained problematic. NASA didn't want a plan that involved orbiting an alien world indefinitely. Assumptions were discovered in the game mechanics, artifacts of the technological costs of space travel. Our visiting starship would have to enter orbit, would have finite resources to sustain human crew or AI systems, it would require communication systems, a landing vehicle, and so on. Cautious strategies rapidly encountered limits on their success. In essence, they seemed to simply delay the inevitable failure of contact.