Last And First Contacts: v. 2: Imaginings (edition 2012)

Stephen Baxter's great. I love his novels, but it's in his short stories where he gets to play with the big ideas for just as long as he needs to in order to tell a story. So each one feels like a nice, neat shot of Baxter. ( )

I am slowly working my way through Baxter’s large list of novels and have for the most part really enjoyed all that I have read but up till now I had not read any of his short stories. Each of these stories has an idea or world that has been created that could probably have supported a novel but are just as brilliant in their small form and even though they only took a short amount of time to read individually it took me quite a long time to finish the collection because I wanted time to think about the stories afterwards and so left long gaps between readings.

Stand out tales for me were “Children of Time” with its long strides across “history” the brilliant “Pacific Mystery” and the ultra brief but very cool “The Long Road” that I really would be interested in seeing in a longer form which I suppose is quite weird seeing that a road is the main character!

It should, however be noted that some of these stories, especially two of my favourites “Children of Time” and “The Long Road” will be almost familiar to people who have read Olaf Stapledon (as admitted fully by Baxter himself) and even Baxters own work, especially Evolution but having hugely enjoyed both these authors work I don’t personally find that disappointing in any way.

Erstkontakt ***
In the abyss of time ***
Halo Ghosts ****
Tempest 43 ****
The Children of Time *****
The Pacific Mystery *****
No More Stories ***
Dreamers' Lake****
The Long Road *****
Last Contact ****

LAST & FIRST CONTACTS: 4 ( )

A collection of mostly recent short stories by Baxter. A good number of the stories cover Baxter's familiar territory of vast sweeps of time and the fate of humanity as a minor part of a large universe. My favorites in here were "The Children of Time" (human survival over the next billion years), "The Pacific Mystery" (alternate history with a rift in the middle of the Pacific that prevents circumnavigation of the globe), "Last Contact" (cosmic inflation leads to the end of the universe", and "In the Abyss of Time" (time travel to the end of time). Some of the other stories are fairly minor, but the whole collection is worth reading. ( )

I enjoyed these stories for the most part, but most of them were pretty depressing. A lot of them deal with the end of the universe and/or life as we know it (or life at all). Many of them describe the same event happening throughout history, no matter what advances humanity has made in the meantime. A lot of them were pretty bleak. Quite of few of them describe the kinds of stretches of time that diminish the lifetime of our sun to the blink of an eye, and that just gets me thinking things like "what's the point to life if time is so huge anyway?"

The stand out stories for me in this collection were The Pacific Mystery and Last Contact. I enjoyed the first because I do love a steampunky-alternate-history with a spunky heroine. If you liked Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, you might like this one. I enjoyed the latter because I enjoyed the contrast between the extremely serious subject matter and the mundane day-to-day things that just continued on through the course of the story. If you enjoyed PD James's Children of Men it would be worth your time to read this one as well. ( )

The title Last and First Contacts is a play on Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Stapledon's influence is evident in several of the stories in this collection. I enjoyed the sweeping cosmological scale against which pieces like "In the Abyss of Time" are set, but also the more intimate atmosphere of some of the other stories.

I hadn't read anything by Baxter before, but his style here struck me as something of a throwback to an earlier, classical (?) form of "situational" sci-fi, where the emphasis lies more on the exploration of a core concept than on the resolution of the action ... very much along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey or Rama books. That's not necessarily a bad thing in itself; I quite enjoy that style. In this collection, however, several of the stories ended with me thinking, "Yes, and ...?" There seemed to be a final beat missing. This was more of a problem in the first half of the book, notably in "Erstkontakt" and "Halo Ghosts".

Several elements and concepts surfaced repeatedly across different stories: (inhuman) consciousness and intelligence, indistinctly seen aliens, journeying, Nazis, stromatolites, and religion (specifically, Catholicism). I was pleased to see the latter treated gently, given how religious belief is so frequently ridiculed in modern science fiction.

All in all, this collection was a bit of a mixed bag. My favorites were "Last Contact" and "The Pacific Mystery", while "No More Stories" hit the other end of the spectrum. ( )

Stephen Baxter is one of the few current science fiction writers writes who still writes hard core science fiction. This bunch of short stories is a thought-provoking collection covering a multitude of wide-ranging topics to the end of the universe and back. They are tight and concise, as befits good short stories and some are reminiscent of Asimov's best. ( )

Good compilation of short science fiction stories. Quick entertaining reads... worth a purchase. ( )

When I received my ARC copy of Stephen Baxter's collection of short stories I thought his novels are very good, so his short fiction should be good too. To my surprise his short fiction is actually BETTER. Somehow he infuses these shorter works with a sense of the hugeness of time and space - in more than one instance bringing us to the end of our Universe. He writes equally well with male and female lead characters and makes the stories too engaging to put down until completed.

On a personal note - I do not recommend reading these stories if you have recently lost your mother. Other than that I suggest everyone else go out and get a copy right away - you'll be glad you did. ( )

I really enjoyed Last and First Contacts by Stephen Baxter. This is a collection of short stories including time travel and space travel as well as alternative versions of our own world. Baxter returns to themes from his novels including the question of how the universe will end.
All in all, a very enjoyable collection which I would recommend to any science fiction fan. ( )

This is the first book I've read from Stephen Baxter. To bad I never heard about him before (my mistake, undoubtedly) because the stories in this book are what I would consider 'true' science fiction. Not that I mind all the fantasy books set in some (not to distant) future galaxy that have come out in the past years. This is a book along the lines of Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov; hard core science fiction.
The stories in this anthology (as the title already gives away) are about the meeting of 'alien' live as well as the end of the earth / galaxy / universe. In general the stories are very well written (but what could you expect from an 'established author'. If I have anything to complain about it is that some stories have a 'half-hearted' ending. Somehow these stories have a feel that they could have had an ending that would have left me pondering for a few hours instead of the few minutes I now had to take.

My personal favourite in this anthology is 'The Pacific Mystery'. ( )

I read Baxter's "Manifold: Time" a number of years ago, and while I can no longer tell you what the book was about, I still remember a chapter that described the future of the universe, billions and billions of years from now. I've always wanted to read something else along those lines, so when I saw this title in the Early Reviewers list last month, I eagerly requested a copy, and I'm happy to say that it lived up to my expectations. I didn't like every story, but there were enough really great ones that my overall impression of the book is a very positive one.

My favourite stories were "In the Abyss of Time", "The Children of Time", "The Pacific Mystery", and "Last Contact". Each of these stories featured some really big and interesting ideas, with the possible exception of "The Children of Time", which is beautiful in its simplicity. ( )

Sci-fi confession: I was not entirely swept away by Olaf Stapledon’s classic work, Last and First Men, which seemed several billion years too long. However, I have a warmer response to Stephen Baxter's Last and First Contacts, a collection of recent short stories combined with a few brand new tales. I have read a number of Baxter's full length novels but I think I prefer his efforts at shorter forms, where numerous ideas can burst forth without the reader having to work through them in intricate but sometimes gruelling detail.

Like the Stapledon classic his title nods toward, many of the stories reach into the far flung future; most of them feature world's ending, the human race being extinguished and the universe rolling on (although even the matter of time and space comes a cropper in a couple of the tales). There is a good deal of variety though, including alternative history and another one that acts as a perspective on solipsism. Overall, I think it is an excellent example of what a sci-fi anthology can be, so 5/5 ( )

I had never read any of Stephen Baxter's works before this one, and tend to read science fiction novels rather than short stories, but I did end up enjoying this collection. It is very different in scope than most of the science fiction I have read. Most of the stories deal with issues on a very large scale: will humanity survive millions of years into the future; will the universe; how will mankind change as the millennia march on? I found that these stories could be very depressing since they point out that our individual existences amount to next to nothing compared with the entirety of the universe. Baxter also delves into a couple of situations involving alternate history, and although these stories are more fun than the others, I walked away from this book feeling like its heart was in its more ambitious, although depressing, cosmological stories. ( )

To me, Last and First Contacts epitomizes why I consider myself a sci-fi fan and yet tend to not read a whole lot of it. That is, I found the stories and characters compelling, but also depressing. This collection of stories seems to follow the path of contemporary sci-fi, which no longer believes man capable of taming the stars, and instead sees humanity as doomed to an existence shortened by lack of foresight in conserving and protecting the only planet we will ever have.

I find it interesting that apocalyptic fiction has become so popular, while grandiose visions of a triumphant human future, to my limited exploration, have become fewer.

I give this book four stars, first and foremost, because it is well written and absorbing, and an excellent example of good short fiction. Nice to see great short fiction. I withhold a fifth star because, frankly, most of the stories made me sad. What made me fall in love with sci-fi is partly the wonder of human triumph, which is nearly absent in this collection, reasonably so, but absent nonetheless. ( )

I've read several of Baxter's novels and generally enjoyed them. He has a wonderful grasp of science and is able to communicate compicated theories to the lay reader. This collection of shorts ran the gammut from the slightly banal to the brilliant. As several readers have pointed out, the alt-history (universe?) story about the Pacific Mystery is first rate as was "No More Stories." I liked the premise of the concluding story "Last Contact" but thought it was diravitive of (some would say an homage to) Nevil Shute's "On the Beach." I was not surprised to see Baxter's acknowledgement of that fact in his final notes. In summary, I'd recommend this collection to hard SF fans. ( )

As a long time reader of classic pulp sci-fi, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of stories, which had me reminiscing for a simpler time in science fiction, when anything was feasible. ( )

This is a very interesting collection of stories that are all of a common theme of old time Science Fiction. I very much enjoyed the collection as a whole although some of the stories were very superficial and a couple just odd but that is the nature of short stories. I found myself wanting much more depth at times. A number of the stories could very easily become a series or novel in my opinion. Specifically Tempest 43 and Children of time. The Pacific mystery was a story about a space fold that made travel from Europe to the America's seemingly impossible. Could almost see this as a TV series along the lines of Lost or a collection of paperbacks as a series chronicling the adventures of a group on their journey.
Overall a good read that could easily spark many discussions for a book club or friends who enjoy a good discussion. ( )

Stephen Baxter's Last and First Contacts is a collection of short stories that to me, have the common theme of scale.

There are stories about dark matter ripping the universe apart, and about alien consciousness that is propagated by gravity waves, and story after story of life continuing without people, or with radically changed people. It was a collection of big stories and I liked that.

Strangely, the first story in the book, and the only new story, is the smallest scale, about an amateur German astronomer working on Von Braun's rockets. I also really liked the pulpy alternate history exploration story about a world where the Pacific was uncrossable, not because of storms, but distance-wise. On a Nazi air-city they fly the distance from the Earth to the Moon over the ocean but never get to the Americas because of a fold in space that hides remnants of the past, mammoths and Neanderthals and dinosaurs. It was very neat. ( )

Last and First Contacts is a collection of short stories in the vein of classic golden-age science fiction, including a nod to 2001 A Space Odyssey. Themes of artificial intelligence, space exploration, time travel, human nature, and even a futuristic stone-age apocalypse. I liked the final story the best, “Final Contact.” Gardening at the end of the world has such an eerie but touching connotation… ( )

Stephen Baxter short stories in this collection show a deep mastery in the rules of the genre. Each of them explores the theme of a contact with a beginning or an end that only Science-Fiction can envision.

Reading this boook, I thus had the impression of reading one of the (very good) anthologies I so much enjoyed reading ten years ago (short stories from the 40's to the late 80's). Baxter's stories sport the same qualities. The same drawbacks, too: in a sense, I felt them too classic for a contemporary reader.

To take an example, the idea of a conscience at the heat end of the universe is a fascinating idea. But after Lem's Solaris, you cannot just assume that it will be even slightly fathomable by a human mind.

More generally, I found that these stories were, as many classic SciFi short stories are, mainly the illustration of a good idea or a strange concept. This makes them a bit dry when compared with works that go into the depth of either the human part of the story (Le Guinn, Guibson) or the radical strangeness of the encounter (Lem).

Thus, these stories are indeed an enjoyable read, respect (mainly - there are some unwilling historical implausibility, such as Nazi scientists understanding anything about nuclear technology, then abjured as "Jew science") the canons of the genre. I had however the feeling to read something written before the major works - Solaris, Martians Go Home, The Left hand of Darkness, Neuromancer) that challenged those canons.

But perhaps that is just me feeling that hard science-fiction is just too dry as a genre. ( )

This is an excellent collection of Baxter short stories; note however most are not new to this collection and have been published elsewhere before, albeit not collected. A large range of Baxter's story writing chops are on display here, everything from deep pondering on the nature of reality to a rather rollicking alt-history. Most of the stories focus on the nature and passage of time, albeit in very different ways; you will not feel like you are reading repeats of the same story over and over again. Three stories which really jumped out at me, and I would consider highlights of the collection are "Children of Time" - which has some similarities to Baxter's excellent novel "Evolution", "Pacific Mystery" - which is the alt-history story I noted earlier, and "No More Stories" which invokes a son visiting his dying mother in a world where things are not what they seem.
Highly recommended for anyone who is a Baxter fan in particular or a fan of hard science fiction in general. ( )

lasting contact (?)

there's a sense of urgency in these stories, not limited to the stapledonian (cf. the title of this collection) leaps in temporality nor to the conciseness of baxter's writing (though it accounts - in each story - for a great and welcome narrative drive) but which is motivated (as in his recent "flood" and "ark" novels) by an awareness of and a restlessness, an eagerness even to explore the boundaries of experience, the experience of boundaries, ultimately the boundary of utter simplicity ...
one of the six-word sf stories on his website - written in the same timeframe as the stories in this volume - 'simply' goes: " Big Bang. No God. Fadeout. End. "

in the (dying) light of this the question begs: why bother ? why bother if there ain't no future, no time nor place for us ?
what drives or motivates us if not the sense of wonder and sheer power of imagination that motivates - in turn - each of these stories, the complexity of their thinking, their caring also and ultimately - in the words of the title - their hope for "contact" - or as the movie song goes:
"There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us. [...]
There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time to spare,
Time to look, time to care,
Someday!
Somewhere."
it's hippy sf in the best tradition (james blish's "cities in flight" springs to mind) and though indeed you should never trust a hippy, there's - arguably - one in all of us ... certainly now urban gardens in detroit parking lots paint a grimmer picture than even voltaire ever imagined ...
"it's just that the time [is all] wrong"

... and though tending one's garden may be laudable or necessary even, it's - so baxter seems to suggest - in no way as important as tending or holding on to one's loved ones. call me a hippy, but i got no argument with that - "i'd do the stars with you any time !"

this is (not) a love song

goodbye !

(and if the time is just wrong there might indeed be no need to countdown but still i find myself silently counting down to the next one ... by baxter and/or newcon press, thanks for a great read !)

Charming collection of short stories. Some of the stories were just brilliant.

Erstkontakt is a first-contact story set in the rocket science encampment in Nazi Germany, featuring Wernher von Braun. A fresh setup for a kind of familiar story. Nazis feature in one of the highlights, The Pacific Mystery, which describes an alternative history, where the result of the World War two was strangely changed, thanks to a different geometry. Delightful story.

The finest highlight is the final piece, Last Contact, which is a very adorable story about the end of the world.

All in all, a delightful collection. ( )