When mysterious spacecraft touch down around the world, a team ,including linguist Louise Banks, is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers, and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

David has an extraordinary adventure aboard a futuristic spacecraft. He returns possessing vast, undiscovered knowledge about the farthest reaches of the universe.

Radio astronomer Zane Zaminsky believes he's picked up a cosmic noise that is signaling extraterrestrial intelligence. But after turning over the tape to his boss Phil Gordian, Zane's fired, his girlfriend gets transferred and his partner is found dead from an apparent suicide. Zane's desperate search for answers leads him to Mexico and a mysterious power plant that is generating more than electricity and is run by people who are not what they appear...

Sixteen-year-old Cassie Sullivan is trying to survive a world devastated by the waves of an alien invasion, while trying to save her five-year-old brother Sam from a training camp that was created by the Others (the aliens).