Stephen Baxter's "Gossamer" (short story, free)

This is for readers interested in description of yet another exotic alien life form. I didn't seen any entertainment value, however.

Collected in.

1. David G Hartwell (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF" (1996) (Volume 1 of his annual series).

Fact sheet.

First published: Science Fiction Age, November 1995.
Download full text from Lightspeed. [via Best Science Fiction Stories]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Stephen Baxter.

Stephen Baxter's "Kelvin 2.0" (flash fiction, apocalypse, free)

Via a one-sided conversation in the year 2107 between narrator & a computer simulation of Lord Kelvin (I didn't know his real name was "William Thomson", "1st Baron Kelvin"!), we learn about the serious implication of a fundamental process of the universe the Physics has now unearthed: that "Space-time itself has a half-life" & "that in a mere billion more years, nothing corporeal will survive - no atom, no star, no human."

Fact sheet.

First published: New Scientist, 16 September 2009.
Download full text from publisher's site. [via Best Science Fiction Stories]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Stephen Baxter; doomsday fiction; weird physics fiction.

* Arthur Clarke & Stephen Baxter's "The Light of Other Days" (novel)

Main post. Why this dummy post?

Stephen Baxter's "Last Contact" (short story, science fiction): A description of apocalypse

Very well told - even if the plot is uninteresting. I wasn't bored.

It's probably best described as a "weird physics" story.

Full text of this story is available for download. Note: I've not read this online version.

Story summary.

"dark energy. It’s like an antigravity field that permeates the universe. Just as gravity pulls everything together, the dark energy is pulling the universe apart, taking more and more of it so far away that its light can’t reach us anymore. It started at the level of the largest structures in the universe, superclusters of galaxies. But in the end it will fold down to the smallest scales. Every bound structure will be pulled apart. Even atoms, even subatomic particles."

And this "Big Rip" has suddenly accelerated. In a few months, the universe will be no more - at least not in a form we can recognize!

Story itself is told in the form of dialogs between an old woman Maureen & her 35 year old astrophysicist daughter - living somewhere near Oxford, England - over a 7 month period. First the stars slowly vanishing, then Milky Way. Then Sun rushing away - sunlight to darkness in a few minutes. Then earth beginning to tear apart - narration ends, of course, with the death of the two woman (& everyone else on earth, of course).

Title comes from enormous number of messages humanity has received from alien supercivilizations - during the last few months of its existence. Looks like aliens knew of the phenomenon long enough back in time to ensure speed of light constrained signals will reach earth just in time (means many of these signals would have started long before there were any kinds of interesting animals on earth)!!! No one has been able to decode these messages, but Maureen has a theory - those supercivilizations are saying us goodbye. Hence last contact.

Collected in.

1. Gardner Dozois (Ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection" (2008).
2. George Mann (Ed)'s "The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction" (2007). Original publication.
   

Fact sheet.

First published: George Mann (Ed)'s "The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction", Solaris Books. 2007.
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Award 2008 in short story category.

Stephen Baxter's "Sheena 5": When humans seeded an alien race

Pretty much every assumption in this very readable story is way too far fetched. And still, what a fantastic story.

I found key messages of the story are easy to identify with - or may be I am biased:

1. Living on the frontier leads to more competent species.
2. Fast turnaround in a process produces better results.

Download full story text here.

Story summary.
Sometime about a third of the way through twenty-first century, world is a nasty place. Science & technology is pretty much dead. Militaries are strong. Petty conflicts over resources are common.

Dan Ystebo of NASA has managed to sell a rather fantastic & far fetched story to Senator Maura Della for fixing the world's problems. A little asteroid, Reinmuth (code 2018JW), will be moved to earth's orbit, & used for mining things that are anyway in abundant supply on earth! This will be done by building structures on asteroid that will act like rockets to move asteroid to earth orbit - as in many other stories.

But the really far fetched twist is - no humans will go there. A squid will have her mind genetically enhanced to make her smart, & to make her communicate with humans - particularly Dan! She will go in her tiny water habitat that will be part of the ship. No need to bother getting her back safely - since squids' natural life is only 2 years (I haven't verified it from other sources).

Sheena 5 is the squid that will go. Apparently, 5th in the line of engineered squid. Since she can never leave her water habitat, she will control an army of small robots that will actually do the construction job aboard the asteroid.

What no one foresaw was: she got pregnant just before the trip. Since she is smart, she gave birth in space in a way that hid the fact from mission control for too long. Now her craft is on asteroid, the rocket is fitted to asteroid & pushing it towards earth, but she has too many babies in her too small a habitat!

Turns out 4 of her babies are very smart; rest are typical dumb squids. Dumber ones will get eaten by their smarter siblings. But soon, the life support starts getting overstretched.

That is when Sheena 6, one of the smarter kids, makes Dan educate her on how to use local resources & her robots to extend the habitat. Expansion is done, & all is well for the moment.

Dan's lab is taken over by military, people lose interest in Project Bootstrap - the one that would have brought asteroid, Dan moves out. Years pass - less than a decade, I think.

Then, one fine day, someone manning Hubble II telescope decides to have a peek. And all hell breaks loose.

Not only have the squids made their little asteroid wholly habited, they have ships all over Sol! Reinmuth is headed to earth, & humans are afraid. Near end, we will see hints of the doom of humanity - as nuclear attack against Reinmuth fails, & it's entering earth's atmosphere. Sheena 46 appears to be in charge.

Fact sheet.
"Sheena 5", short story, review
First published: Analog, May 2000
Rating: A

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "The Next Tenants": In the wake of WWII, a man has lost hope in future of humanity. And is helping termites become sentient.
   

This story is included in the following anthologies.

1. David Hartwell (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 6".