A hundred years in the future a simulation of William Thomson has been created to answer one all important question – and it is an answer that humanity desperately needs to learn!

Read Kelvin 2.0 online for free.

A young woman whose great-grandparents were victims of global warming strives to make the world a better place – in more ways than one!

Read Penance online for free.

Special thanks to Free SF Reader for recommending both of these stories. And if you like them then take a look at the other stories I’ve read by Stephen Baxter and Paul McAuley.

Have a great weekend!

Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell:

“Last Contact” follows two women, Maureen and Caitlin, as they live through the last few months of Earth’s existence. Maureen is intent on fixing up the yard at the new house she’s just bought in Oxford, while her daughter Caitlin, an astrophysicist, is helping the public understand and cope with what is about to happen. As the “Big Rip” gets closer to Earth, some people quit their jobs and do the things they’ve always wanted to do, while other people, like Maureen, hope to continue living normally right up to the very end.

Maureen said carefully, “I take it the news is what you expected, then.”

“Pretty much. The Hawaii observatories confirmed it. I’ve seen the new Hubble images, deep sky fields. Empty, save for the foreground objects. All the galaxies beyond the local group have gone. Eerie, really, seeing your predictions come true like that. That’s couch grass, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I stuck a fork in it. Nothing but root mass underneath. It will be a devil to get up. I’ll have a go, and then put down some bin liners for a few weeks, and see if that kills it off. Then there are these roses that should have been pruned by now. I think I’ll plant some gladioli in this corner—”

My Two Cents:

• The good:

• The idea of the Big Rip is pretty cool. An all-consuming field of dark energy is downright scary – and it makes for a great story!
• I quite enjoyed how the story alternates between the doom-and-gloom the near future holds, and the daily normalcy of working in the garden. A nice contrast there.
• Maureen’s phone notifications with the search-for-ET-at-home enthusiasts was a great little side note to this story.

• The bad:

• While there isn’t anything really “bad” in the story, it does leave you feeling a little bit anxious about something like this happening in our lifetime.

Fact Sheet:

• Page Count: 11

• Word Count: 4,366

• “Last Contact” garnered the following awards:

• It has been nominated for the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Where you can find “Last Contact”:

• This short story first appeared in the anthology The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2007.
• You can read a free online version at the Internet Archive.

Some Interesting Links:

• If you like “Last Contact” you may like some of the other stories in the same book. Be sure to check out SF Signal’s review of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2007.
• You can learn more about Stephen Baxter at The Zone.
• Be sure to learn more about the SETI@home project – so you can be like Maureen and help analyze data for signs of alien life!

Craving More Stories?
If you enjoyed this story then you might also like The Last Question, about a super computer that is asked a question about the end of the universe, by Isaac Asimov.

by Stephen Baxter

• Word count: 5070
• Page count: 15

“The Ghost Pit” is a 2001 science fiction short story by British author Stephen Baxter. It is about a team of alien hunters who crash land on a moon containing an amazing structure.

The story follows Raida, a young woman who is teamed with her mother’s old partner on a “ghost” hunting expedition. When their ship is attacked they crash on one of the moons orbiting a large jovian planet, where they must cooperate to make their way to the impossibly long bridge connecting the two moons. Along the way Raida learns more about “ghosts”, her mother and the price of doing business in an extremely competitive field.

“The Ghost Pit” is part of Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Sequence, a series of novels and stories set in the far future. The Xeelee Sequence describes the future expansion of Mankind and its war with an alien race called, surprisingly, the Xeelee. If you like this story you may want to check out the first novel of that series, Raft.

I found this to be an interesting read. Stephen Baxter has a unique writing style and is very straight forward in his story telling. If you have read any of his other short stories then you will find this one to be similar. He holds degrees in the sciences and that clearly shows through as he tells this tale. I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the Ghosts, and the idea that two moons could be connected by an engineered bridge – quite an engineering marvel that would be! There are some mind stretching ideas presented in this short story – which is a definite plus in my book.

“The Ghost Pit” was nominated for the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. It also ranked 4th on the 2002 Locus Award and 2nd on the 2002 Asimov’s Reader Poll.

As soon as the Spline dropped out of hyperspace our flitter burst from its belly. After our long enclosure in the crimson interior of the huge living ship, it was like being reborn.

Even though I had to share this adventure with L’Eesh, my spirits surged.

‘Pretty system,’ L’Eesh said. He was piloting the flitter with nonchalant ease. He was about sixty years old, some three times my age, a lot more experienced – and he didn’t miss a chance to let me know.

Well, pretty it was. The Jovian and its satellites were held in a stable gravitational embrace at the corners of a neat equilateral triangle, the twin moons close enough to the parent to be tidally locked.

And beyond it all I glimpsed a faint blue mesh thrown across the stars: an astonishing sight, a net large enough to enclose this giant planet, with struts half a million kilometres long.

I grinned. That was proof that this Jovian system was indeed a Ghost pit – a new pit, an unopened pit.

Which was why its discovery had sent such a stir through the small, scattered community of Ghost hunters. And why, to be first, L’Eesh and I were prepared to fire ourselves in without even looking where we were going.

Where you can find “The Ghost Pit”:
• This short story originally appeared in the July 2001 edition of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
• “The Ghost Pit” is included in book four of Stephen Baxter’s Destiny’s Children series, Resplendent.
• You can read a free version of this short story online at The Baxterium, and on Asimov’s web site.

Did you know that the author of “The Ghost Pit”, Stephen Baxter, has won a wide variety of writing awards – including the 1995 Sidewise Award for Best Short Form Alternate History? Yep. You can learn more about this hard science fiction writer on Wikipedia.

If you liked this story you might enjoy Raft, also by Stephen Baxter.

by Stephen Baxter

• Word count: 5951
• Page count: 16

Raft is a science fiction short story that first appeared in issue #31 (Sep/Oct 1989) of the British science fiction and fantasy magazine Interzone. The story is about a group of humans that accidentally entered an alternate universe where gravity is much stronger than it is in ours. It follows a young man named Rees who is apprenticed to a scientist after one of his pranks nearly kills a fellow crewmember. It takes place over several years as Rees learns more about their universe and tries to overcome its limitations so he can save his crew.

The author, Stephen Baxter, who studied mathematics at Cambridge and holds a PhD in aeronautical engineering, does a great job explaining the possibilities of such a strange universe and the complications it would present to humans. The ideas presented in this short story eventually led to Baxter’s first novel – also called Raft.

If you enjoy hard science fiction and stories that go into detail about the life cycle of stars and nebulae, then you will probably enjoy this one. But it’s more than just a description of nifty inter-stellar objects, it is also the story of a young man that changes his views about science, learns new and unimaginable things and eventually must face down former friends to save his crew and the tree-like ship that they live on.

Breathing hard, he surveyed his world.

The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. It was nearly the end of a work shift, and people slid along the avenues to their homes, skirting each others’ irritating gravity pull. Many of them, Rees knew, would be carrying rations from the supply machines that hulked around the rim of the Raft. Others carried tools after a shift spent maintaining the huge old supply devices.

You can read Raft online for free at Infinity Plus.

If you enjoy this story you may want to check out Baxter’s Xeelee Sequence series of novels that expand on the ideas presented in Raft. You can also learn more about the author, Stephen Baxter, by reading his biography at The Zone.