In this revised paperback edition, a retired veteran L.A. Times copy editor who has shared in a Pulitzer Prize reports on a coalition of humans and aliens engaged in extensive interplanetary diplomacy -- with a goal of open contact between the two species. Krapf, the designated writer and herald for the first phase of this epic project, shares the daunting challenges this role has forced upon him. In this third book about his unprecedented experiences, Krapf narrates the story of his three on-board contacts with an advanced ET race that has, amazingly, proposed the induction of Earth into an intergalactic federation of planets--and has for some years been in secret dialogue with hundreds of human leaders, known as 'Ambassadors'. The book significantly updates the hardback edition of 'The Challenge of Contact', which went to press in the spring of 2001. This new edition shares the tragic news of the interruption of the contact project that resulted from the terrorist events of September, 11. Readers will learn that the fully-approved plan for public disclosure by the Ambassadors has been set back -- though not curtailed. This new edition serves to keep the torch of interspecies diplomacy burning -- until that historic day when the contact, aborted on September 11, 2001, may once again be sanctioned by the interspecies coalition.