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"Orion: First Encounter" is a short children's book written by Kyle Nagle. It begins with a spacecraft, the [[TitleDrop Orion]] landing in a small bayou behind a suburb. Soon after it is discovered by two young students: Jake and Erin. The only thing is, they seem to know quite a bit about the spacecraft, and it seems to be made just for them. Things get even weirder when Erin's cat tells them they've been chosen to pilot the Orion.

The next thing they know, they, along with Henry, a neighbor who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have blasted off into space. Earth behind they run into junkers, [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Space Pirates]] and [[AIIsACrapShoot killer robots.]]

It is currently available on the [[http://www.amazon.com/Orion-First-Encounter-Kyle-Nagle-ebook/dp/B00KPFJFQA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401661039&sr=8-1&keywords=Orion+First+Encounter Kindle]] and in paperback form.

!!Provides examples of:
* AcePilot: Erin quickly becomes a master at the helm of the Orion. This is justified due to the Orion rewiring her and Jake's brain.
* AIIsACrapshoot: Played straight with the ship's AI, which responds to their impending death with a polite message. Possibly subverted with the Techno Droids. It's never made clear if they are AI gone wrong or if they were just programmed to boil people into oil.
* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: The ship reshapes itself to fit whomever is flying it.
* CoolShip: The Orion, which can travel interstellar distances in seconds, understand multidimensional physics and uses holographic boxing gloves and tiny bugs as weapons.
* MsExposition: Sam, the cat, falls under this. She spends most of the book explaining just how things work. Or at least, she tries to explain how things work.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Mostly averted. Any time space is mentioned it's in thousands of miles or more. Played more straight with how many different aliens seem to run into Gee-Bob, though that was justified by the Orion's FTL system being "noisy."
* SufficientlyAdvancedAliens: The makers of the Orion. They can jump from one end of the galaxy to the other, rewire people's brains and have created a weapons that makes you dance.
* TranslatorMicrobes: Actual microbes in the form of the Yacker Virus that lets the crew understand alien languages.
* RecycledINSPACE!: This is discussed by the crew briefly. However there are space pirates, space junkers, space cows, and [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot space attack spider Santas]]
* RuleOfFunny: What the universe seems to run on.
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