The Long Earth

What does it mean to be human? Put it another way, if you were a super-intelligent supercomputer whose talents included possessing soft-drink vending machines and making humans feel inadequate and uneasy around you, how would you convince them that you are sentient and therefore should be protected from people with access to your 'off' switch, or an axe and a concern about you hacking the missile codes before they can stop you, or who just don't like being outsmarted by soft drink vending machines.

Imperfections, apparently, that's what makes us human. That and curiosity. And not getting along with others.

In 2015, not getting along with others suddenly ceases to be a problem as mankind discovers enough room to really, really, really be alone if that's what they want. The world discovers how to step. This is not, thank god, a fitness fad which will lead to a revival of the leotard or the leg warmer as a fashion accessory, leading inevitably to the Great Lycra Riots of 2016, but rather mankind discovering that there are endless, multiple earths, each just one dimension on from one another and that mankind has the ability, some naturally, some with a little potato-powered gizmo, to step onto those worlds.

What makes 'the Long Earth's endless Earth's interesting is that they are all empty of humans. Only on 'our' Earth, or 'Datum' as it's termed, has humanity evolved. Everywhere else is full of forests, trees and animals that have yet to learn to fear man or realise how good they taste on the grill.

This is great for two reasons. First, it means that Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter can tell a pioneer story of folk who are fed up with crowded Datum, where all the natural resources have been used up and all the potatoes have presumably been used to make stepping gizmos. The pioneer folk do what pioneers everywhere do, decide that the place where they live has gone to the dogs and that it's time to up sticks and haul ass, and wagons, and ass drawn wagons, westward ho. They have decided to get far, far away and set up their vision of How Things Should Be. Pioneer stories are always fun. Secondly, it means that the authors avoid the whole issue of how humans on the alternative Earths might have evolved so that people are not faced with slightly different versions of themselves, for instance ones that look good in lycra.

So, no alternative histories where the Roman Empire has colonised the moon or something, just lots of trees, and travelers.

Joshua is a traveler. A natural stepper who doesn't even need a potato to skip up and down worlds, he is though, for the jaunt in this book, a passenger on board an airship that forms the body of Lobsang, the super intelligent computer who has sensibly assumed the form of an airship instead of a drinks vending machine for this trip and has convinced the courts he is sentient by claiming to be a reincarnated Tibetan. He certainly has enough faults to be human.

The two are traveling to the ends of the Earths, to see what's there and to see if there is greater meaning behind it all. Along the way they encounter pioneers from Datum in various stages of establishing their communities. The pioneers are mostly Americans, as America is home (or former home) of the pioneer spirit and many of its inhabitants like to eat meat and think they look good in buckskin or a hat with a tail. The fate of the rest of the world is briefly touched upon, suggesting that Governments have a hard time adjusting to their citizens just leaving the country, and the world, if they so wish.

There are gizmos and toys and some neat science fiction big ideas about the mechanics of traveling between worlds. The focus though is on humanity, not just the wish to be human exhibited by a computer interested in self preservation, but in what drives humans to explore and discover and strive to set up their idea of a perfect community, even when that community is just themselves, literally alone in the world. ( )

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter is the first book in a new science fiction (speculative fiction) that explores (quite literally) the multiverse — one Earth at a time.

In 2015, the plans for a stepper are posted to the internet. It's basically a box, some wires, a switch (don't forget that!) and a potato (a Portal 2 reference?). As people (mostly teenagers) build the steppers and hit the switch (if they have one, most don't), they blip out of this Earth and go one step either East or West to another (but unpopulated) Earth.

In trying to save the other kids from the orphanage who stepped with shoddily built steppers, Joshua (who built his to spec because that's what he does), learns that he prefers the near silence of these other Earths and more importantly, he's a natural stepper (no box needed).

Like the disaster books of the 1970s, this novel has an ensemble cast, though the main ones are an orphan and natural stepper, Joshua, a former Tibetan motorcycle repairman (now computer consciousness) — Lobsang, a Madison police officer, and the daughter of the man who invented the stepper.

Roughly two-thirds of the novel cover Joshua and Lobsang's journey west. The other third is divided up between the mechanics of stepping, the ramifications back on the Datum (original Earth), and some other accounts of people stepping (presented as blog entries, for example).

Joshua, in his late twenties, is hired to go in search of the end the Long Earth. He will be traveling with Lobsang in a carefully built airship set up record anything unusual that is found along the way. It also serves as a back-up drive (one of many) for Lobsang (just in case). Should something happen (which means something invariably will), Joshua is in charge of brining Lobsang (meaning the airship's datacenter) home to the Datum.

I listened to the book on audio CDs (ten discs), performed by Michael Fenton-Stevens. My favorite character (due in large part to Fenton-Stevens's work), was Lobsang. If I ever have a self-driven car — I'm naming it Lobsang. Realistically, I should name computer part Lobsang, and the vehicle the Mark Twain — but you get the idea.

While I can clearly say I enjoyed the book. And while I can easily recommend the book, I do have some quibbles with it. The first is the authors' choice of Madison Wisconsin (and other parts of the United States) for their setting. The problem is that these American characters were so clearly being strained through a British filter twice (one in the text, and again in the audio performance). Most of the time it didn't matter but sometimes an American character would say something that no American would say ("disorientated" instead of "disoriented"). Or the narrator would mispronounce something and I'd be once again taken out of the moment ("fehma" instead of "f-ee-mah" for FEMA).

My second quibble is the big threat which comes down to what Joshua calls a "migraine monster." Frankly, with Terry Pratchett as one of the co-authors, I wasn't all that surprised that there was a huge ecosystem bearing creature lurking on the Long Earth. So while I was half expecting a giant terrapin / pachyderm combo, I got instead, something that brought to mind one of the water monsters from Pikmin 2 (though large enough to carry an elephant).

But it was still a fun read and I'm planning to revisit the Long Earth when The Long War is released later in 2013. ( )

There are, it turns out, many Earths besides this one: a long, perhaps infinite chain of them stretching out in two directions through some dimension we can't perceive. They vary a lot, but they all have one thing in common: there are no other human beings on any of them. And all it takes to get there is one little machine so simple that even a child can build it.

Stephen Baxter is an imaginative writer and one with a good head for scientific detail, but he's not great with characters, and he's really not much of a storyteller. Pratchett, on the other hand, is a storyteller extraordinaire, but one who is sadly no longer at the peak of his cognitive abilities. I had some real hope that these two writers would complement each well and produce something that showcases the best strengths of both of them, but, alas, that's not quite what happened. The result of their collaboration instead feels a bit... schizoid. There'll be lots of rather flat, exposition-laden Baxterian prose, and then suddenly there will be a passage that's lively and funny and clever and pretty much pure Pratchett, then it'll fade back into being Baxtery again. And the whole thing is very poorly structured; it feels more like a loose collection of interesting ideas that don't really go much of anywhere than it does like any kind of actual narrative.

On the upside, it is a really great premise, one with lots and lots of fascinating implications that are at least touched on in some thought-provoking ways. In fact, there's enough richness in this concept and this setting to carry a dozen novels, easily. I just wish the one that we got lived up to that promise better. ( )

There are so many wonderful elements to this book, but for me they never quite jelled. Glad I read it, though. ( )

I really enjoyed this book - fun, easy to read, interesting concept. Other reviewers have commented on the slow pace of the book - but I did not find it slow at all. ( )