By Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter
This is a sci-fi series jointly authored by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. The central idea is of an orthogonal direction being discovered, labeled “stepwise”. Each step stepwise takes you to an alternate Earth, subtly different from ours, with the differences increasing the further you go. While homo sapiens only evolved on our Earth, known as the Datum, other beings sparsely inhabit other Earths, with several species having evolved to exploit stepwise movement naturally.
The story can be weak in some of the books, but they’re not really about that anyway; they’re mainly meant as a vehicle for the exploration of evolution, alternative biology, and human society, and in that they succeed wildly. Every single book introduces you to new, interesting ideas.
I read this over three days at the start of November, 2023.
This is the second in the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, preceded by The Long Earth. The central conceit is, as in the previous book, enthralling and brilliant, and many of the consequences of Step Day are further explored and fleshed out.
The book centres around a few main strands: - the tension between Datum Earth and the ‘colony worlds’ (with fun parallels to the American Revolutionary war) - Lobsang’s work of gathering friends and accomplices - The problem of troll cruelty across the Long Earth
The book is slightly weaker than the first, and could do with slightly faster pacing or a more integrated plot, but I’m a sucker for travelogues and episodic stories, and I found it really enjoyable. As ever, the exploration of Earths just a few probability branches away was the main attraction, and they managed to include such wonderful organisms and evolutionary pathways in this one, along with the tantalising possibility of spaceflight at the Gap.
Some passages were surprisingly brutal, and the eruption of Yellowstone on Datum Earth at the end was chilling and sombre, which meant the contrast with the other, more light-hearted sections made it feel a bit inconsistent.
Still, they pulled it off.
I read this in early February 2024. Such a good book! The authors are endlessly inventive, with the emergence of the posthumans and the conflict with humans, and the exploration of the Long Mars.
The scenes on Mars in particular were just brilliant, with the unbelievable space elevator reveal somehow being totally unexpected and yet perfectly built-up-to in retrospect. The idea of the Long Mars being somehow orthogonal to the Long Earth was slightly odd I felt, and perhaps a bit inconsistent, but the suspension of disbelief was strong enough to ignore that.
The conflict between the posthumans and current humans(?) was also slightly more misanthropic than I expected from PTerry, but their vanishing into the Long Earth was the only possible outcome.
The subplot about the expedition to Earth 200 000 000 West was wonderful, exploring concepts like chirality, alternate bases for life (like sulphuric acid), various ecosystems and forms of intelligent life, and throughout it all was the comprehension of the sheer unlikeliness of our Earth, which of course was the only possible choice from the anthropic principle.
I like how every step of these books is the only natural consequence from the previous steps. It points to excellent worldbuilding and brilliant sci-fi, if the characters tend to be a little 2D.
Read this over a couple of days in Edinburgh, in mid April 2024 for a conference!
I really liked it! The main plotline is an incursion by alien species/cyborgs/von Neumann replicators into one of the long Earths, and they make that Earth into a Dyson motor to prevent humans fighting back, so the team seal off that universe from the parallel Earths with the help of some of the Next.
A lot harder sci-fi than some of the other books, particularly with the alien bits, but it was also slightly less tight and focused? The quality was a bit lower, but still an engrossing and rich read. Sally’s and Shi-mi’s deaths at the end were particularly sad.
We also reunited with the unit of Lobsang from the first book, who went off with First Person Singular! Slightly less information from him than I would have liked (actually several parts of the book seemed a little poorly thought-out, particularly the conversations and actions of the Next, but maybe I’ve set my standards too high with Ted Chiang and Greg Egan) but still a nice surprise.
Some really good themes as well, about humanity’s collective achievements on Datum, and the possibly permanent loss of ability to achieve great things again with the species spreading out across the millions of worlds.
I read this over a couple of days in mid-June, 2024.
Overall, good! Still really great ideas, from the hydrogen-saturated miles-high trees in a far distant Earth, to more explorations of troll culture, there’s lots of new stuff, but still drastically less than the other books. The pacing remains an issue, and the eco-fascism raises its ugly head a little more. Lots of misanthropy (not from Sally this time, locked in an alternate universe, but from the other characters), plus slightly woo science about the stepping North/South and the purpose of the hypercomputer built over a parallel North America, made of a material which stores something like $10^{22}$ bits per gram.
The ending was also slightly a let-down - they discover a new form of stepping which takes them across the galaxy, but they never meet any sentient aliens, and even the explanation of stepping itself, an interaction of quantum physics with consciousness and imagination of all things, was unsatisfying.
The weakest entry in the series, unfortunately.