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Last and First Contacts
Stephen Baxter is one of preeminent science fiction writers of the current age. This collection showcases his work at its best. Last and First Contacts features ten exceptional stories personally selected by the author, none of which have been collected before and one of which, “Erstkontakt”, is brand new, having been written especially for this book. Also included is “Last Contact”, which was shortlisted for the Hugo Award.
185 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2012
About the author
Stephen Baxter
417 books2,680 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 20, 2025
I liked most of the stories. I was brought here by reading Last Contact in another book. I think I've read this before then, but I can't find it.
February 20, 2017
Last and First Contacts was an expected little romp of short sci-fi stories. Most enjoyable, some meh, with some gems. I figure I'll just blurb about all of them.
Erstkontakt
Erstkontakt takes place in WWII, on the Nazi side. An alien equivalent of a rover arrives from Alpha Centauri, and lands in the lap of Werner von Braun's rocket research facility. The story is mainly meant to foreshadow the possible implications of such a landing. How it might provide technological hints that would inspire the Nazis to leapfrog Allied weaponry, what a Nazi space exploration agenda might look like, and how they might treat the matter of contact with extraterrestrials. Not peacefully, the book assumes.
In The Abyss of Time
In The Abyss of Time provided one extremely memorable image. The sci-fi tech here was a "cosmological bathysphere" that utilized an abnormal concentration of dark energy to propel the vehicle through time.
I can't say I'm one-hundred percent on the scientific conjecture, but the concept relies on the relative concentration of dark energy to dark matter to normal matter changing over time. The bathysphere utilizes a radically different local concentration of the three to propel the vehicle forward through time to reach the time with the equivalent relative concentration of dark energy, dark matter, and matter. Sort of like diffusion.
In any case, my favorite part of the story was the image of the universe at the far edge of time, when everything has expanded to near-nothingness with the exception of the last remaining universal consciousness, which spends most of its time dormant in order to conserve its limited resources. Like the deep ocean where occasionally foodstuffs will fall from the more abundant shallows to the deep, this consciousness snatches the dense matter and energy of time travelers who venture to the end of time from many different species and civilizations who've independently discovered time travel.
Halo Ghosts
Halo Ghosts I was sort of meh about. It was an okay story, but it did at least introduce a concept I hadn't heard of before. A Berry phase, or geometric phase, is a physics concept, which Wikipedia densely introduces as
In any case, the application in the story is of explorers who search comets for very old and untouched matter, because they have a device that's able to read some quantum mechanical Barry phase that allows them to essentially determine what the matter was like and what was around the matter at some energetic time in the particles' histories.
Tempest 43
I skipped this one because I'd read it before. But previously I had enjoyed its take on sentient machines and the mid-future of humanity in the face of climate change and high technology.
The Children of Time
This was very reminiscent of Baxter's Evolution novel -- a series of snapshots over extremely long swathes of evolutionary time.
Unlike Evolution, however, where humanity evolves toward and then away from homo sapiens sapiens, in The Children of Time Baxter plays with the concept that humanity's ability to modify its environment stunts the normal process of evolution, essentially freezing humanity as homo sapiens sapiens through the ages. Though industrialized humanity used up all the easily available resources and our descendants are never able to reach a similar level of technological development.
It makes the imperative to not mess up this particular go at technological civilization seem more important.
The Pacific Mystery
A particularly interesting story--it contains both alternate history intrigue (Nazis, naturally) and a non-Euclidean earth.
No More Stories & Dreamer's Lake
These stories both deal with intelligent stromatolites. The first in the context of a transformed earth, and the second out in space. Both also involve an exploration of a transformed humanity. The first is through a biological re-engineering of the species, the second through a technological discovery that makes FTL travel possible, opening up the universe to humanity.
The Long Road
Flash fiction. A cyclical story tracing a rise and fall of a civilization as seen through a road.
Last Contact
This story deals with the Big Rip ( a number of the other stories in this collection also mention it ). It's actually the first time I've been exposed to this particular cosmological theory, despite the theory having been around for a decade.
The Big Rip describes an ultimate fate of the universe, wherein the expansion of universe actually tears apart matter at a certain point. Last Contact tells a story of that certain point being right now.
Erstkontakt
Erstkontakt takes place in WWII, on the Nazi side. An alien equivalent of a rover arrives from Alpha Centauri, and lands in the lap of Werner von Braun's rocket research facility. The story is mainly meant to foreshadow the possible implications of such a landing. How it might provide technological hints that would inspire the Nazis to leapfrog Allied weaponry, what a Nazi space exploration agenda might look like, and how they might treat the matter of contact with extraterrestrials. Not peacefully, the book assumes.
In The Abyss of Time
In The Abyss of Time provided one extremely memorable image. The sci-fi tech here was a "cosmological bathysphere" that utilized an abnormal concentration of dark energy to propel the vehicle through time.
I can't say I'm one-hundred percent on the scientific conjecture, but the concept relies on the relative concentration of dark energy to dark matter to normal matter changing over time. The bathysphere utilizes a radically different local concentration of the three to propel the vehicle forward through time to reach the time with the equivalent relative concentration of dark energy, dark matter, and matter. Sort of like diffusion.
In any case, my favorite part of the story was the image of the universe at the far edge of time, when everything has expanded to near-nothingness with the exception of the last remaining universal consciousness, which spends most of its time dormant in order to conserve its limited resources. Like the deep ocean where occasionally foodstuffs will fall from the more abundant shallows to the deep, this consciousness snatches the dense matter and energy of time travelers who venture to the end of time from many different species and civilizations who've independently discovered time travel.
Halo Ghosts
Halo Ghosts I was sort of meh about. It was an okay story, but it did at least introduce a concept I hadn't heard of before. A Berry phase, or geometric phase, is a physics concept, which Wikipedia densely introduces as
a phase acquired over the course of a cycle, when the system is subjected to cyclic adiabatic processes, which results from the geometrical properties of the parameter space of the Hamiltonian."
In any case, the application in the story is of explorers who search comets for very old and untouched matter, because they have a device that's able to read some quantum mechanical Barry phase that allows them to essentially determine what the matter was like and what was around the matter at some energetic time in the particles' histories.
Tempest 43
I skipped this one because I'd read it before. But previously I had enjoyed its take on sentient machines and the mid-future of humanity in the face of climate change and high technology.
The Children of Time
This was very reminiscent of Baxter's Evolution novel -- a series of snapshots over extremely long swathes of evolutionary time.
Unlike Evolution, however, where humanity evolves toward and then away from homo sapiens sapiens, in The Children of Time Baxter plays with the concept that humanity's ability to modify its environment stunts the normal process of evolution, essentially freezing humanity as homo sapiens sapiens through the ages. Though industrialized humanity used up all the easily available resources and our descendants are never able to reach a similar level of technological development.
It makes the imperative to not mess up this particular go at technological civilization seem more important.
The Pacific Mystery
A particularly interesting story--it contains both alternate history intrigue (Nazis, naturally) and a non-Euclidean earth.
No More Stories & Dreamer's Lake
These stories both deal with intelligent stromatolites. The first in the context of a transformed earth, and the second out in space. Both also involve an exploration of a transformed humanity. The first is through a biological re-engineering of the species, the second through a technological discovery that makes FTL travel possible, opening up the universe to humanity.
The Long Road
Flash fiction. A cyclical story tracing a rise and fall of a civilization as seen through a road.
Last Contact
This story deals with the Big Rip ( a number of the other stories in this collection also mention it ). It's actually the first time I've been exposed to this particular cosmological theory, despite the theory having been around for a decade.
The Big Rip describes an ultimate fate of the universe, wherein the expansion of universe actually tears apart matter at a certain point. Last Contact tells a story of that certain point being right now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 26, 2026
pretty cool. really liked in the abyss of time, no more stories, children of time. children of time is really fascinating and i see it's a recurring theme in baxter's novels about humans sabotaging civilization and never managing to leave earth. it was so sad reading about ruul and his family living underground, at a time the sun has started to expand and kill most surface dwelling lifeforms. that's like sixteen billion years into the future. insane. i wonder how much of language and civilization would even exist at that point? and i really liked the famous last contact. it's sad and touching yes but didn't really frighten me a lot. again, a doubt - in the case of an imminent big rip wouldn't earth be violently flung out of orbit and everyone would freeze and die months before the rip reaches? i also really doubt if the end of the world would be as peaceful as it is. would there even be any NHS to hand out pills? still, the ending is so, so sweet, staring destruction in the face with acceptance and yes, wonder.
October 26, 2022
Stephen Baxter on oivallinen kirjailija, joka näemmä hallitsee myös novellit. Last and First Contacts on kokoelma novelleja, joissa jonkinlainen punainen lanka on kontaktien teema. Kokoelman aloittaa ensimmäinen yhteys -tarina Erstkontakt, ja päättää viimeisistä kontakteista kertova Last Contact.
Toinen ulottuvuus on aika, kirjassa kohdataan muun muassa aikabatyskooppi ja seurataan ihmiskunnan tulevaisuutta baxtermaisen mittavin loikkauksin.
Novellit ovat mielenkiintoisia. Mieleen jää Last Contact, joka on todella herkkä ja koskettava maailmanlopun ja viimeisen kontaktin kuvaus. Toinen mieleenpainuva teos on vaihtoehtohistoriallinen The Pacific Mystery, joka vie lukijan natsien mahtavalle ilmalaivalle selvittämään, miksi Tyynenmeren yli ei voi päästä. Syy on ovela.
Hieno kokoelma kokeneelta ja taitavalta kirjoittajalta. (15.4.2012)
Toinen ulottuvuus on aika, kirjassa kohdataan muun muassa aikabatyskooppi ja seurataan ihmiskunnan tulevaisuutta baxtermaisen mittavin loikkauksin.
Novellit ovat mielenkiintoisia. Mieleen jää Last Contact, joka on todella herkkä ja koskettava maailmanlopun ja viimeisen kontaktin kuvaus. Toinen mieleenpainuva teos on vaihtoehtohistoriallinen The Pacific Mystery, joka vie lukijan natsien mahtavalle ilmalaivalle selvittämään, miksi Tyynenmeren yli ei voi päästä. Syy on ovela.
Hieno kokoelma kokeneelta ja taitavalta kirjoittajalta. (15.4.2012)
March 12, 2021
A great collection of some terrifying but incredibly thought-provoking short stories all within a delightful box of classic Science fiction.
Exploring all aspects of humanity, what it is to be human and what it is to exist, have existed and possibly exist in the future.
Exploring all aspects of humanity, what it is to be human and what it is to exist, have existed and possibly exist in the future.
October 30, 2018
Great collection
This is a well written set of short stories. Refreshingly old school sci-fi. Made me think of some of the older sci-fi legends.
This is a well written set of short stories. Refreshingly old school sci-fi. Made me think of some of the older sci-fi legends.
December 19, 2025
Good stories, except Erstkontakt and The Pacific Mystery’ which I didn't like.
April 14, 2013
I love science fiction because I love the journey of imagination into the human species' possible futures. And, for reasons I'm not totally sure of, Stephen Baxter is one of my favourite sci-fi writers...correct that...he is the only sci-fi author I read these days.
Surely all of us are fascinated by the future and by the big scientific and political questions and challenges that humankind will face as we trace the contours of our past and present and try to imagine them into our future. The biggest question of all, I guess, is whether we will ever have the technological capability to find and explore other habitable worlds and their inhabitants. And, by the time we do, what will our world look like politically and economically? Will, as Baxter suggests in one of the short stories in this collection, space exploration be led and conducted by the private sector? Will there still be a private sector?
Perhaps I enjoy Baxter's writing so much for three reasons.
Firstly, as Ian Whates points out in his introduction to this collection of Baxter's short stories, Baxter knows his scientific stuff, so his imaginings of the future are based on seemingly profound knowledge of present-day science and where it may be leading us - so much so, in fact, that I often struggle to understand some of the science.
Secondly, Baxter seems to have a deep sense and knowledge of history. His one story in this anthology, based on Nazi research during the Second World War on rockets, speculates on the arrival of an alien spaceship near their research site and the Nazi's plans to use the alien technology to start an inter-galactic war. Nice detail - scientific, political and personal - in the story.
Thirdly, Baxter has a fine sense of the interplay between the big things (very big things in some cases) and the mundanely human and personal. The last story in the anthology tells the tale of a mother in rural England and her astrophysicist daughter waiting out the Big Rip - when dark energy (a real scientific concept) permeates the universe, gains precedence over gravity and eventually rips everything apart down to molecular level. Not the end of the world, but the end of everything, of all matter. The daughter is the scientist who has predicted the exact date and time of the Big Rip. Her mother, knowing that all is to end, continues to nurse and plan her little domestic garden.
Some of the stories in this collection are not so good - a little bland, mundane and perhaps hastily put together. But there are mainly gems.
The only problem I have with Stephen Baxter is that he has not written enough works to satiate my appetite for good, thoughtful, realistic and imaginative science fiction.
Surely all of us are fascinated by the future and by the big scientific and political questions and challenges that humankind will face as we trace the contours of our past and present and try to imagine them into our future. The biggest question of all, I guess, is whether we will ever have the technological capability to find and explore other habitable worlds and their inhabitants. And, by the time we do, what will our world look like politically and economically? Will, as Baxter suggests in one of the short stories in this collection, space exploration be led and conducted by the private sector? Will there still be a private sector?
Perhaps I enjoy Baxter's writing so much for three reasons.
Firstly, as Ian Whates points out in his introduction to this collection of Baxter's short stories, Baxter knows his scientific stuff, so his imaginings of the future are based on seemingly profound knowledge of present-day science and where it may be leading us - so much so, in fact, that I often struggle to understand some of the science.
Secondly, Baxter seems to have a deep sense and knowledge of history. His one story in this anthology, based on Nazi research during the Second World War on rockets, speculates on the arrival of an alien spaceship near their research site and the Nazi's plans to use the alien technology to start an inter-galactic war. Nice detail - scientific, political and personal - in the story.
Thirdly, Baxter has a fine sense of the interplay between the big things (very big things in some cases) and the mundanely human and personal. The last story in the anthology tells the tale of a mother in rural England and her astrophysicist daughter waiting out the Big Rip - when dark energy (a real scientific concept) permeates the universe, gains precedence over gravity and eventually rips everything apart down to molecular level. Not the end of the world, but the end of everything, of all matter. The daughter is the scientist who has predicted the exact date and time of the Big Rip. Her mother, knowing that all is to end, continues to nurse and plan her little domestic garden.
Some of the stories in this collection are not so good - a little bland, mundane and perhaps hastily put together. But there are mainly gems.
The only problem I have with Stephen Baxter is that he has not written enough works to satiate my appetite for good, thoughtful, realistic and imaginative science fiction.
May 17, 2012
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. I would prefer to give this 3 1/2 stars; but, rounding down, that leaves us with a three.
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. I would prefer to give this 3 1/2 stars; but, rounding down, that leaves us with a three.
June 25, 2012
I read a couple of Baxter novels a year or two ago, but this is the first time I’ve read any of his short stories. As with any collection, I found some very good stories and a couple of stories that didn’t resonate to the same degree. Every reader will have his or her own favorites.
Baxter’s stories involve grand cosmological concepts unfolding over vast sweeps of time or space, and several alternate histories, including one of my favorites, The Pacific Mystery. Like many of the stories in this collection it does not have a happy ending. The unifying motif in this collection is first and last contacts, and sometimes the first contact is also the last contact (Dreamer’s Lake).
The stories in this collection dramatize scientific cosmological concepts and moral issues in science, but characterization is what brings stories to life, and my favorite stories are those with more fully realized characterizations. It is this ability which puts Baxter in the upper echelon of hard science fiction writers.
Baxter’s stories involve grand cosmological concepts unfolding over vast sweeps of time or space, and several alternate histories, including one of my favorites, The Pacific Mystery. Like many of the stories in this collection it does not have a happy ending. The unifying motif in this collection is first and last contacts, and sometimes the first contact is also the last contact (Dreamer’s Lake).
The stories in this collection dramatize scientific cosmological concepts and moral issues in science, but characterization is what brings stories to life, and my favorite stories are those with more fully realized characterizations. It is this ability which puts Baxter in the upper echelon of hard science fiction writers.
August 19, 2013
This is a book of short stories by Stephen Baxter who I feel is one of the best authors writing "hard" science fiction. I read this book as an ebook.
While I have enjoyed his novels and longer works more, this was a nice little diversion. Some nice ideas were tossed about and explored.
For someone new to the author or science fiction I would not recommend this book only because I feel some of this work is a bit too subtle and "quiet" in its story telling. I wonder if a new reader to the genre would want stories with a bit more impact overall.
To be fair, some of the stories do hit that mark but not all.
But if you are a fan of Mr Baxter, definitely pick this up. It shows off his talent differently than some of his other work.
While I have enjoyed his novels and longer works more, this was a nice little diversion. Some nice ideas were tossed about and explored.
For someone new to the author or science fiction I would not recommend this book only because I feel some of this work is a bit too subtle and "quiet" in its story telling. I wonder if a new reader to the genre would want stories with a bit more impact overall.
To be fair, some of the stories do hit that mark but not all.
But if you are a fan of Mr Baxter, definitely pick this up. It shows off his talent differently than some of his other work.
May 20, 2012
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.
September 23, 2016
Low character development; high imaginative stories of humanity over eons. Awesome. Just what I want.
I read it because "Last Contact" was one of my favorites in a best-of anthology. It was the best in this collection. "Pacific Mystery" and "Children of Time" were also great.
I read it because "Last Contact" was one of my favorites in a best-of anthology. It was the best in this collection. "Pacific Mystery" and "Children of Time" were also great.
August 4, 2012
Love Baxter's short stories. Such a buffet but always a thread tying them together.
February 22, 2014
The curse of the short story collection: the ones I like, I wish would be longer. The ones I don't like, seem to drag on and get no-where.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews