In a short story I'm writing, things like this are sent every few hundred years to stars with life. Your species is invited to the galactic community once you can spot it, catch it, and utilize the tech without killing yourself.
You may want to read Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. That's basically the plot.
As I recall the first two books are pretty good, after that the novel series kind of goes off the rails.
As I recall, the original novel is vintage Clarke of the better kind, and then the rest are [co-]authored by some entity named Gentry Lee and basically unreadable.
You are right... In this case I think it might be a good example of how serious scientists are not always the best fiction writers.
Shame on me. I never knew, and I never bothered to look it up.
It is not an unreasonable assumption to make, there are a lot of novel series where the 3rd, 4th, 5th novels are ghostwritten by some third party hired by a publishing company that owns the rights, to cash in on a well known novel's name and author.
The first book is certainly very different from the rest. If not for other reasons then simply because it is a self-standing short novel while later books tell a continuous story spanning three books, with each book being about 2-3 times longer than the first one. Calling them unreadable is a bit harsh though. I still found them to be good sci-fi reading.
This sounds suspiciously like some concepts involved in the three body problem.
I'd love to read it.
love it! Send me a link to my email (it's in my profile) when you finish it.