Alien Artifacts

One of the things I find most interesting in SF is the discovery of alien artifacts. In particular reverse-engineering these things is intensely interesting. In fact several SF "universes" centered around this. Notably the Xeelee and Heechee series of books by Stephen Baxter and Frederik Pohl spring to mind.

A discussion of alien artifacts my be fun.

Larry Niven had some stuff on this in the Known Space series, from a hand weapon (in a story called "The Soft Weapon") to the Ringworld.

Cool: The Incompleat (sic) Known Space Concordance.

I believe Charles Sheffields 'Heritage Universe' books are about Alien Artifacts.

Summertide
Divergence
Transcendence
Convergence
Resurgence

The first four are now collected in Mass Market paperback Omnibus editions from Baen Books as Convergent Series and Transvergence (the latter with a few revisions)

They're on my reading list for this year.

Also, check out the short by H. Beam Piper called Omnilingual which is about discovery of Artifacts on Mars.

The Lewis Padget short story "Mimsy were the Borogoves"

Inherit the Stars by Hogan

Clarke's short stores "The Star" and "The Sentinel"

The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In the Stargate movie and TV series the stargate is an alien artifact.

There is Piers Anthony's Cluster series. I didn't like it much but it does fit the bill.

Doesn't the first Uplift book by David Brin, Startide Rising, center around the discovery of a wrecked starship loaded with secrets from an ancient "lost race"?
The whole theme of artifacts left behind by extinct or gone-away, highly advanced species, pops up over and over. An early example that comes to mind is Andre Norton's forerunners, but I'm sure I've seen it other times. I know some of the Culture novels by Banks feature ancient, powerful artifacts.
Of course, Lovecraft in his more science fictional mode has entire cities left by aliens (predictably, horrible aliens).

And then there's Jack McDevitt's work, and Alastair Reynolds has alien artefacts and archaeology as a theme in the Revelation space sequence.

(Edited - twice! - to try to fix touchstones.)

Pushing Ice is another Alastair Reynolds alien artefact opus.

8: RobertDay

I tried reading one of the Alastair Reynolds but I thought it was bloated, and was bored rigid half way through.

#10 try Reynold's Diamond Dogs / Turquoise Days back-to-back novellas. Or his Galactic North short-story collection. He's definitely worth reading.

Clarke's Rendevous with Rama is a meeting with a very large alien artifact...

Foster's The End of the Matter and The Tar-Aiym Krang.