In honour of First Contact Day (April 5), let’s take a moment to celebrate Lily Sloane, the woman without whom the first warp flight – and First Contact with the Vulcans – may never have been possible. Although in First Contact the Enterprise crew seems to have no idea who she is, the novels clarify she is an aeronautical engineer, and later considered a legend in the same league as Cochrane, with a statue outside the Sol Museum of Aeronautical Science.
