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I haven't read a good first contact story in a while. Any ideas?

To kick off the thread, my suggestion is The Mote in God's Eye. It won a trifecta of Hugo, Nebula and Locus. It's set in a larger universe (CoDominium) but I was fine not reading any of the rest of it. The aliens are just really interesting. It does have a sequel which I enjoyed The Gripping Hand.

Anyways that's a pretty obvious suggestion, lets hear some more. :)

If you enjoyed Mote in God's Eye, from the same author comes a real old-school page-turning pulp turn, Footfall. Elephantine aliens invade the earth. Hilarity ensues.

some classics would be Rendezvous With Rama, In the Ocean of Night, or A Deepness in the Sky. I also like The Player of Games and Hellspark or Brightness Falls from the Air and since you mentioned Mote also The Legacy of Heorot are by the same guys. Also check into CJ Cherryh's works as she has written alot of first contact stuff.

One of my favourites is Contact with a very strong central character and a nice discussion of the tension between science and religion that leads to an unusual first contact situation. It's way better than the film.

I also absolutely love Rendezvous With Rama

I've got an old short story collection called First Contact edited by Damon Knight. They're old classic stories but they're all good. The 2 that stood out for me were (oddly enough) First Contact by Murray Leinster and Goldfish Bowl by Robert Heinlein.
If you can find it at a used book store or on Amazon I reccommend it.

Robert Heinlein also handled first contact - sort of - in The Puppet Masters.

also thought of this obscure book Invader On My Back / Destination: Saturn I read many, many years ago...

The Forge of God by Greg Bear is a cracking first contact novel.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is an interesting first contact novel but it is very diffrent than The Mote in God's Eye.
Blindsight by Peter Watts is very dark but excellent. I believe you can get it for free on his site.

I agree with Darren, I just recently finished reading Contact by Carl Sagan and I loved it.

Kris wrote: "also thought of this obscure book Invader On My Back / Destination: Saturn I read many, many years ago..."

No kidding that's obscure, doesn't have a single goodreads review. :D

I've read the Rama series and Contact. Good stuff indeed, I wish Sagan had written more fiction. Rama gets a bit weird (though I only vaguely remember it all).

I didn't realize Niven and Pournelle had written other books together, I'll have to check more of that out.

A very good one I read recently was Learning the World: A Scientific Romance, an excellent take on first contact.

You could do well to check out any number of Jack McDevitt novels, I would say his name is the top of the list for "first contact" stories

I would recommend Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh, which is the first of a long space opera series. It has 13 books, with the last book published earlier this year with two more expected to be published in the future. It is a series that has a trilogy making an arc in the overall story.