The Long Earth

I consider Terry Prachett to be one of the finest English-language writers working today. I've never read anything by Stephen Baxter. So now we all know where I stand coming into this.This book tells the tale of humanity discovering the ability to travel between dimensions. They can visit various alternate versions of Earth by going "East" or "West" from the home Earth. There they find the same geography (mostly), the same animals (mostly), and no sign of humans whatsoever. It appears that the original Earth is the only one with humanity but not, perhaps, the only one with sentient beings.Some people view this as an opportunity to get rich fast. One of them decides to go to Sutter's Mill in our world, then move a few worlds over, all the better to get the gold there. He arrives only to find that he's far from the first person to think of this, and very soon the value of gold decreases dramatically.Others view this as a chance to get away from the world; to start new lives in a new land. The Green family is one of these, moving to a world over 100,000 Earths away from ours to set up a new life. In doing so they leave behind their thirteen-year-old son, who is one of the 20% or so who cannot travel between worlds.And others view this as a great chance for science and exploration. These include Joshua, a man who can travel between worlds naturally, without the machine that most people require. He and a sentient computer named Lobsang (he claims to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan man), travel across over a million worlds, dropping science probes as they go, and trying to learn about this strange new phenomenon.I really like that the travel between worlds is done with a device so simple you can build it with parts from Radio Shack and power it with a potato. I also love that the authors explore the real-world ramifications of what would happen if people could travel like this. For example, within a day of the technology appearing, there's an assassination attempt on the American President, and a bombing at the House of Commons in the UK. Then the cities start rapidly depopulating as people begin to leave for the new worlds. Some places end up as virtual ghost towns.I was also pleased that they addressed the possible legal issues (ie: do America and other countries have jurisdictions over these new worlds?), dealt with the issues of those left behind and I found it interesting that they decided iron would not be able to travel between worlds. There's no real explanation for this (except possibly a Celtic one), but I liked it.What I liked less, frankly, was much of the story execution. The Green family is entirely unsympathetic. I can understand their desire to go out and start a new life, but the parents should have been arrested for child abandonment. You don't leave your thirteen-year-old son behind so you can go colonize. That's just not right. I'm not sure why they couldn't have just waited a few years. It's not like there was a massive land and/or resource shortage on the first Earth. I'm also not at all clear on why they couldn't take him with them. It's established that people who can't travel between worlds can, in fact, do so if someone carries them. It could just be me, but if I wanted to go colonize and keep my family intact, I would have been happy to tote my son between 100,000+ worlds if that is what it took.I also got a little bored of the travelogue between Joshua and Lobsang. The conversations and the various worlds they were visiting were interesting, but it just kept going and going and going, and the little cut-aways to what was happening with the Green family or what was happening back home were more distracting than anything else, and not always in a useful way. I also found the ending very abrupt and an event that happens in Madison just before the end to be really unnecessary.So why the positive review with those complaints? Because while the conversations do go on and on and on, they ARE interesting, as is the travel. I also liked the various almost-humans and the possible dinosaurian civilization that are encountered. I like that some of the various problems these new worlds create with the old one are addressed. I also really liked the characters of Joshua and Lobsang, and Lobsang's very human nature. He seems the most "Pratchettian" character. I also liked the general concept overall. It's just interesting to think that there could be well over two-million alternate Earths, and possibly a lot more, that are out there, and of those, ours is the only one with humans.But my favorite part of the book comes near the very end, when we learn what has been driving various non-human intelligences "Westward" over the last few years. It leads to something which reminded me very heavily of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "2001" and various episodes of "Doctor Who", and I mean all of that in the best possible way.While this book is not perfect, and is very different from what I've come to expect of Prachett, it is ultimately quite good and the flaws and complaints I have with it are minor indeed. I'm not sure if this book is meant to be the start of a new series, but if it is, sign me up for all the following installments!

I understand the negative reviews but I disagree. Yes, there is much reference to and description of each multiverse earth BUT these all serve the plot. It is clear where the journey is going and why (to sample the 1 millionth earth) throughout the book. Each bit of travel between Earths makes sense and sets up the next Earth that is visited.If you don’t like or accept the multiverse theory favored in physics today then you should NOT read this book.Another complaint is the ending. Yes, loose ends are there at the end but my reaction was to look forward to (and to purchase) books 2-4. I felt, rather, that what the first book does is to set up nicely there being more to the story. With that being said, I still felt that the story in this book was satisfying.It perturbs me that so many people expect endings to tie up all the loose ends. That is not the way life works.Another way to express it: I would be just as happy if this were a stand alone book as opposed to a series.I will review each book as I read the second to fourth ones. My expectation is that the ideas presented here and the open ending will be appropriately expanded upon in book 2.This is my 5th Stephen Baxter book and my first Terry Pratchett.

Take Terry Pratchett, known for the Discworld stories which are unformly good to superb, full of dry, satirical wit and almost always with a point to make. Take Stephen Baxter, known for his thoughtful, in depth hard SF. Put them together and you get....Eh.In truth there is very little Pratchett in this book. There is none of his humor or insight. The hard SciFi was equally disappointing. There are many MANY exciting and fascinating concepts that would have made this pure awesomeness. Believable machine intelligence. Multiple Earths which diverge in physical and biological evolution the further you get from home Earth (Datum Earth in the story). Multiple sapient intelligences springing from differing roots. None of which are explored. There are interactions between humans and non-humans. None of THAT is explored either. There are conflicts between the humans that can visit the parallel Earths and those who cannot. Not explored. There is a world-ending threat. Not explored. There is endless potential here for further stories based on the universe, but this one does nothing except showcase the place. Even the explosion of a pocket nuke in a major urban center is a so-what event.There is a mish-mash of fantasy/occult and hard scifi - both of which I like, but neither of which dominates the story and neither of which, again, is explored. I know there were a lot of good concepts in this book and you can't explore them all, but for goodness sake explore SOMETHING. Just when you think this might get good, it wanders off onto another tangent or back to a character that is so utterly colorless you couldn't care less about them. Tell me how human society is affected by the "trolls" (one of the species encountered, and the most interesting). Or how troll society is affected by the humans. How the machine sees us and what the implications of it's existence are. There are economic dislocations on datum earth. Tell me about them.Even the big ending is blah. The world ending threat turns out to be not that much of a threat after all. The book just... stops. Sad and unsatisfying.Not recommended unless you just HAVE to have everything with either of these authors names on it.

O tema é bom, mas acho que foi pobremente explorado.O livro não tem muita ação; ele cria uma expectativa a respeito de um perigo iminente e no final tudo se resolve de forma muito fácil.Acho que o autor deixou o tema muito mal desenvolvido. Esperava mais do livro.

I enjoyed this more than I expected as I'd read quite a few bad reviews of it. It does meander with no real jeopardy but I actually think that's why I ended up enjoying it so much.In a world similar to ours, all the kids try out a new machine (of which the instructions were posted online) that allow you to jump to a parallel Earth. Each jump East or West then allows you to jump further away from 'our' Earth and so far there appears to be no limit. After the initial shock and disbelief that this engenders, society undergoes a radical shift as you would expect as people realise they can just leave this Earth and go explore, live off the land, or set up alternative communities. The story then plays out a few years after the world changes when a master world hopper called Joshua is contracted to go exploring as far as possible from Earth for a major corporation along with an AI called Lobsang.There are quite a few other characters too, some to appear for a few paragraphs and might re-appear, others not, but these are the main characters for the most part until 'Sally' arrives later in the book. Most of the book consists of their journey through hundreds of thousands of Earths that mostly are just various explorations of how flora and fauna might have evolved in slightly different environments.There are slices of life back on original Earth, and various settlements on other Earth's but this is mostly it. It sounds boring but honestly I really enjoyed it. There is a vague threat that they are trying to find the root cause of but that's pretty much the only plot point of significance apart from some commentary essentially on the political ramifications of major portions of the world's population disappearing but even that doesn't play a significant part.The author's had an idea and stuck with it and I quite admire them for it. Don't go looking for Terry Pratchett's signature humour as it's mostly missing here but there are signs of his influence throughout. It's also hard to wonder where they are going to go with this, especially for another four books, but I definitely think I will read the next one and see how it goes. In some ways I hope they keep the meandering style of this but it could get a bit repetitive also.

Dreadful.

...in that it redeemed itself in the end. First, it's important to understand that this is sci-fi, not humorous fantasy - I'd say it was in the Arthur C Clarke vein (no bad thing). The problem is that it takes so very, very long to get going. The first half of the book is, in my view, so disjointed by the multiple viewpoints that I found it hard to engage with any of the characters. Indeed, there are so many that you don't know which characters to invest in - at least not until the book settles down around a third of the way in.The concept is great but the "threat" promised at around the 2/3rds point never really materialises - there's never any sense of real imminent danger, no huge climax (ahem) to be followed by resolution. It's an interesting thought-piece on what would happen if the available space on Earth became, effectively, unlimited but it feels like the first volume of a longer story. If that's the case, and there is a sequel, then it would be worth the effort as hopefully it would get off to a quicker start, the scene having been well and truly set.Not the finest hour of either Pratchett or Baxter. Sir Terry is my favourite current author (I recently finished reading Snuff aloud to my wife at bedtime, oh what a life I lead) and I've enjoyed Stephen Baxter's novels but this one, whilst intellectually interesting, feels more like a discussion than a novel.As I said, I hope there's a follow up because there's plenty of potential in the premise as now set up and these authors are worth another shot.

The idea is great (albeit not new), the possibilities seem as endless as the Long Earth - unfortunately the only endless thing is the plot heavily crawling through miriades of 'not much's happening' and mind-numbing dialogues between Joshua and Lobsang, the authors' backflash-know-it-all-explanation-speculation-narration tool of choice. Saves them from building a story properly, I suppose. Yawn. I wish I'd waited for a cheaper version, but who would have expected Terry Pratchett to be so boring? I also wish I could get excited about what might be the longest introduction to 'the story probably really starts in volume 3' but at this point it just feels a bit rude having been charged full prize for a half-arsed attempt.Ah, well - it might make for a visually entertaining movie, if you throw enough special effect 'almost-dinosaurs', really scary but also very cute trolls, and 'the day after tomorrow'-style nuclear ruins at it.