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Hi! I’m Becky Ferreira. Welcome to the very first installment of the BeX Files. a newsletter about aliens, dinosaurs, roadside attractions, dead people (and sometimes alive ones), and all other manner of detritus that happens to be floating through my mind.

I’m a science reporter with 15 years of experience covering space, archaeology, paleontology, climate change, and the roiling intersections between science, culture, and technology. 

Today, I’m officially announcing the upcoming publication of my debut book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, which will be out from Workman Publishing on September 30, 2025. Available for preorder now! 

I’m so proud of this book, which is a concise primer for the many meanings of “alien” to people of the past, present, and future—from sky gods to The X-Files to the nuts-and-telescope-bolts of the search for extraterrestrial life.

Humans have suspected that otherworldly beings inhabit the skies, and that some might even walk among us here on Earth, for tens of thousands of years. This suspicion that we are not alone in the universe is as much a part of human identity as our dexterity with tools or our versatility with language. 

First Contact tells the story of this ancient obsession from its earliest roots in prehistory to its modern incarnations in popular culture, social movements, and as a major topic of scientific inquiry. It is a flashy visual tour with sections devoted to promising places to look for life and creative ways that people have imagined alien-human copulation (naturally, Jeff Goldblum is implicated on that last point).

Flipping through the colorful pages, readers will encounter major milestones in the search for alien life, including a recent explosion of exoplanet discovery. The book explores why we have so far failed to achieve contact, and speculates about how this long-sought discovery might impact humanity—and what it would mean if we never get there.

First Contact is a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to brush up on all the myriad ways that aliens have excited our imaginations across time, and who is curious about what the future might bring.

In addition to updates about the book as we approach its release into the wild, this newsletter will include links to my latest stories. Some of my favorite ones recently are about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test project this month, an alien-hunting experiment in the 1920s, the dream of offshore spaceports, a caterpillar that wears the bones of its victims, and the surprising saga of poop on the Moon. I also write the weekly Abstract column, a roundup of fascinating science studies, for 404 Media (sign up here).

I also plan to weave original work into this newsletter about books I’m reading, thoughts I’m thinking, and places I’m going, or would like to go. I will publish monthly until September when I’ll go weekly as we prepare for the book’s liftoff. And if you happen to be in the Finger Lakes region on September 30, stop by the Barnes and Noble in Ithaca, NY, for my book launch (more details on that in the August newsletter).

Subscribe to keep up to date with the BeX Files, and shoot me a line with praise (preferred) or constructive feedback (courteously accepted) at thebxfiles@gmail.com. I’m excited to share my work with you!

Rockets and raptors,

Becky