Transcend or Die

What if our first contact with aliens wasn’t about trade, war, or exploration — but salvation?

Transcend or Die begins with a premise that hits like a revelation: technologically advanced alien missionaries arrive in Earth orbit with a chilling message — evolve according to their doctrine, or face extinction. And that’s only the beginning.

From the very first chapter, protagonist Maya Chen, an AI alignment specialist, is caught in a cascade of escalating events that pit human agency against alien certainty. The Varzani preach the “Left Helices,” a mysterious path to transcendence. They build temples, disable weapons, and convert minds. But when a second, rival sect — the Tambori — arrives proclaiming the “Right Helices” and raining destruction upon their brethren, Earth becomes collateral damage in an interstellar holy war.

This novella feels terrifyingly plausible. The aliens are not monsters — they’re serene, persuasive, and utterly convinced of their moral superiority. Their war isn’t over territory but ideology. It’s a war of belief systems literally encoded in alien biochemistry — a clever fusion of science, religion, and speculative xenogenetics.

The emotional core of the novel lies in Maya’s relationship with her sister Sarah, whose conversion to the Varzani path becomes a poignant symbol of the broader human divide. The dialogue is intimate and fierce, the stakes both global and deeply personal. Firesmith avoids tired tropes of alien invasion and instead explores the seductive power of belief and the quiet resilience of resistance.

By the time the rival motherships destroy each other in orbit and the true war begins on Earth’s scarred surface, Transcend or Die has transcended typical sci-fi fare. It’s a meditation on faith, autonomy, and survival in the shadow of godlike technology.

If you liked Childhood’s End, Arrival, or The Three-Body Problem, you’ll appreciate this blend of deep philosophical inquiry and pulse-pounding alien drama.

Genres

Science Fiction: First Contact, Alien Invasion, Social Science Fiction, Biopunk, Philosophical Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic / Near-Future Dystopia, and Techno-thriller

Book Trailer

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Excerpts

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Awards

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Quotes from the Book

• “You are not merely flesh. You are intention shaped by biology into a chrysalis, just waiting to emerge in your true form.”
• “Hope doesn’t make something true. And believing in something doesn’t make death any less final.”

Author’s Commentary

I got the idea for this story when I considered the question, “What would happen if our first contact with intelligent aliens were with alien missionaries?” Surely, their religion would be alien to us. Traveling to Earth would imply that their technology was vastly superior to our own. How would their religion, based on faith, interact with their science and engineering, based on hard evidence?

Our own history is replete with examples of technologically advanced cultures forcing their religion onto the conquered, such as the Spanish conquistadors bringing Catholic priests to convert the Native Americans of the southwest and United States slave owners bringing Christianity to their enslaved Africans. Perhaps aliens would do the same.
What if the aliens brought two opposing sects of the same religion, such as Catholicism and Protestantism? Would the two groups of aliens end up fighting each other over which religious sect to convert? Would humanity end up being collateral damage in such a sectarian war?

Finally, what would be a plausible basis on which to explain the alien religious sects? This led to the idea that alien genetic molecules — XNA, as opposed to DNA — might be incompatible because both DNA and XNA can theoretically exist in both left- and right-handed versions.

Once I had laid this foundation, it was a relatively straightforward matter of placing distinct characters in the situation and seeing how they would act and interact.

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