SPOILERS The Long Earth "Code" - SPOILERS!

[poohcarrot]

This is NOT the official Long Earth discussion!
That can be found at the link below;
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4998

(And before anyone runs off to Jason complaining about yet another one of my posts, Jason himself, gave me permission to start this thread. )

So let's start with some vibes! :dance:
When Long Earth is made into an action blockbuster starring Johnny Depp as Lobsang, this song will run with the closing credits. :dance:

We don't live in the same world
We don't live in the same world
I caught you looking in my world
As if you wanna be my girl

I think we're dreaming the same dream
I think we're dreaming the same dream
I'll let you be in my dream
If you show me your dream
Tell me what it means

I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Running around, chasing your shadow
So please don't let this chance slip away
If you waste it this time
I won't be here tomorrow

If we get it together
It could last forever
If you got the time to try it
You know that it could be a riot

We don't live in the same world
We don't live in the same world
But I could step into your world
If you step into my world

I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Running around, chasing your shadow
So please don't let this chance slip away
If you waste it this time
I won't be here tomorrow

We don't live in the same world
Take a step into my world

 

[poohcarrot]

Who'd like to be a guinea pig?

I think what I've found is very interesting, and the chances of it being coincidental are exactly one million to one, but I'd like an objective view before I go public. :dance:

 

[pip]

My role in life is as an honorary guinea pig

 

[poohcarrot]

I'll start pm-ing you either later today or tomorrow. :dance:
(One bit is absolutely stunning. )

There are 6 sections;

Intro
Chapter 41 pt 1
Chapter 41 pt 2
Brian Cowley
Sally
Monica Jansson

 

[pip]

No worries . I'm already inrigued

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

I'm still only halfway through but as it's you

 

[poohcarrot]

Very kind of you Jano, but as you haven't finished it, you wouldn't understand. Plus, it'd ruin the ending.

Anyhoos, Pip's casting his beady eye over it, even as we speak. :dance:

 

[pip]

My conclusion is that Pooh is nuts but in an interestingly twisted way.

 

[poohcarrot]

Well let's get this Code/theory jobbie underway, shall we?

MASSIVE SPOILERS!

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION

When I first read Long Earth, two things struck me;
- Chapter 41 was just plain silly.
- The ending with the nuclear device was totally unnecessary.

On subsequent reads I realised something.

The Humanity First movement is quite clearly a bunch of dangerous nutters who think nothing about damaging the US to further their political aims.
They reminded me of the Tea Party, who are also quite clearly a bunch of dangerous nutters who think nothing about damaging the US to further their political aims.
(Remember how the US lost its triple A credit rating due to Tea Party intransigence during the Debt Ceiling debacle? :twisted: )

(Feel free to comment at any time. See if you can guess where this is all leading. :dance: )

 

[poohcarrot]

Part 2 - Chapter 41 part 1 (up to the word evolution on page 280)

Great chunks of Brian Cowley's speech are pure Tea Party rhetoric.

Stepping? Gay marriage? Obamacare?
"We plain folk, who don't have the education to know any better, have words for practices like that. Words like un-natural. Words like abomination. Words like unholy."

Cowley goes onto talk about how politicians inside the Beltway are out of touch with the common man.
"But I'm not inside the Beltway. I'm just an ordinary Joe, like you, like you."
- straight out of the Tea Party playbook.

For good measure he also invokes God three times.
"...like God made them."
"...at least it's God's own moon."
"...God's good earth."
- pure Tea Party.

And all the time, the audience are a-whooping and a-hollering just like all good T-Baggers do. :dance:

And just like the Tea Party, the Humanity First movement has "well-heeled backers."

 

[poohcarrot]

Part 3 - Chapter 41 part 2 (from the word evolution to the end of chapter)

Then all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, Cowley goes off on his evolution argument. He talks about neandethal man being around for hundreds of thousands of years. Like, WTF?

As most T-Baggers believe Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs a mere 6,000 years ago, it clearly isn't the Tea Party, afterall, that's being parodied. :naughty:

However, I simply don't buy the evolution argument. Although I'm more than happy to believe people can travel to parallel worlds with the aid of a humble tatty, I cannot get my head round that all these "plain, uneducated, God-fearing folk" are all pro-evolution. :naughty:

In Darwin's Watch, it states the folowing;

"Allegedly, 50% of Americans believe that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, which if true says something rather sad about the most expensive education system in the world."

Therefore the second part of Cowley's speech must be pure irony, designed to protect the authors from any backlash.
If Cowley had gone off on world-is-only-6,000-years-old rant like expected, they'd be burning Long Earth in the Bible Belt even as you read this.

But can I provide any evidence to back up my theory that the book is a massive attack on Tea Party/creationist loonies? :think:

 

[poohcarrot]

Part 4 - Brian Cowley (a)

Brian Cowley is the leader of the Humanity First movememnt.

Now, TP has a tendency to name characters for a reason eg; Goodmountain = Guttenberg (The Truth)

Was Brian Cowley named for a reason? :think:

So off I went a-googling to see if I could find a link between Brian Cowley and the Tea Party. :dance:

(Did you know there's an Irish MEP called Brian Cowley? Pip assures me he's barking, but he's not the link. )

And would you Adam and Eve it? I found a connection!

(I'll continue this tomorrow, so that gives you all time to try and find the link. )

 

[poohcarrot]

Part 5 - Brian Cowley (b)

Maybe Brian Cowley was named after the village of Cowley and Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds? :think:

http://www.cowleymanor.com/british-summ ... 's-picnic/

It is reported that Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland while staying in Cowley.
In Alice in Wonderland, chapter 7 is tittled, "A Mad Tea-Party."
Well how appropriate!
So proof that the authors were writing about the Tea Party and the Tea Party is mad, Mad, MAD!!!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Um.. er...or maybe not.
Even by my standards, that evidence is a tad tenuous, a touch flimsy, to put it mildly.

However, perhaps I should keep looking. To work with, I've now got a chapter number (seven) to go on, and in the Mad Tea-Party chapter in Alice, the characters keep changing places. Could that be a clue? :think:

So let's follow the white rabbit and see where it leads. :dance:

If I look at the corresponding chapter 7 of Long Earth, what are the chances of it somehow being connected to Alice in Wonderland?

Oh! Chapter 7 in Long Earth is less than two pages long! It's about Sally leaving Datum Earth.

Wait a second..........WOW!!

 

[poohcarrot]

Part 6 - Sally

The way Sally steps isn't the usual step-by-step plod. She steps using a unique method.

Both Joshua and Lobsang compare the way Sally steps to "Alice in Wonderland".

Bottom page 244 - top of page 255
"And a new way of travelling," Joshua said , feeling faintly stunned at this latest conceptual leap. "A way to cut out the step by step plod." In fact, he thought, thinking of Sally, thinking of "stuttering," she had mentioned, another way.
..."Like the rabbit hole to Wonderland," Joshua said.

Top of page 252
Lobsang murmered, "I suspect wormholes would be a better metaphor. Or rabbit holes, if you must, Joshua."

So in chapter 7 of Long Earth, Sally leaves Datum Earth by going down a "rabbit hole to Wonderland!"

On Discworld, when people write anything, it tends to be in Olde English. The "i" is often replaced with a "y", so the word "this" would become "thys."

In the chapter 7 of Alice, A Mad Tea-Party, the characters keep on changing places.

Chapter 7 of Long Earth is all about Sally, as she's the only character in it, let's see what happens if the letters of Sally's name change places;

SALLY
YSALL
LYSAL
LLYSA
ALLYS BINGO!

In Discworld speak this would be pronounced as "Alice."

So chapter 7 of Long Earth is all about Sally leaving Datum Earth using her unique stepping ability.

Or it could be described as Allys (Alice) going down a "rabbit hole to Wonderland."

Mere coincidence? Or possibly a deliberate "code?" :think:

(Obviously if Sally's name had been "Celia" it would have worked better, but it's a stupid name for a heroine, and people who are not Discworld fans would have been able to get it.)

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Finished it. See my post HERE

Care to factor that one into the Code smartypants? :dance:

 

[poohcarrot]

Nice find, Jano, but hardly a code though, is it darling?

Part 7 - Monica Jansson

As I said at the beginning, I originally thought the ending of Long Earth to be unnecessary. The last ten pages with the nuclear device didn't seem to serve any useful purpose, just superfluous drama.

However, if you assume the authors are having a big dig at the Tea Party and its creationist supporters, then the ending has a lot of meaning (to me at least).

Without the ending, Humanity First (aka Tea Party) would appear to be just a bunch of nutters who "talk the talk," but don't "walk the walk" ie; mouthy but relatively harmless.

With the ending, Humanity First (aka Tea Party) appear to be a bunch of DANGEROUS nutters, who should never ever be allowed near a nuclear button, and the sooner their anti-evolutionary, intelligent design nonsense is consigned to the garbage bin of history, the better. :twisted:

One last point, Humanity First's plan to blow up Madison and kill lots of people is partially thwarted by Monica Jansson, who saves loads of lives with her "step and help" slogan.
Of all the people the Tea Party despise the most, right there at the top of the list are gay people and atheists. Monica Johnsson is both gay (page 60) and an atheist (page 33). :ugeek:

Poetic justice, or what?

 

[poohcarrot]

Conclusion

So there we have it. A totally pants theory/code jobbie, which if I were you, I'd take with a large pinch of salt. :dance:

I'm quite clearly barking mad, because TP would never stoop so low as to attack the Tea Party and its cuddly creationist supporters. :naughty:

I'll leave you with 4 quotes from chapter 2 of Science of Discworld III - Darwin's Watch, written by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen.

"Creationism is simply a theistic belief system and offers no credible scientific evidence whatsoever for its beliefs."

"Even today there are diehards - not a majority, despite the noise they make, but a significant minority - who deny that evolution has ever occurred. Most of them are American, because a quirk of history (coupled with some idiosyncratic tax laws) has made evolution into a major educational issue in the United States."

"Creationists, in contrast, seem not to have appreciated that if they pin their religious beliefs to a 6,000-year-old planet, they are doing themselves no favours and leaving themselves no real way out."

"...where [evolution] is sometimes known as "evilution" and generally viewed as the work of the Devil."

 

[=Tamar]

Applause!

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Nice find, Jano, but hardly a code though, is it darling?

Oh dear - talk about tunnel vision...

Just because he's not homosexual and his name isn't an anagram of Allys or Lewis or Carroll doesn't mean it doesn't fit. The Scarlet Pimpernel rescued people from a hierarchical type of genocide (kill the aristos) and the LE Percy gets rescued by the 'Russian' trolls who in turn are being 'persecuted' by the 'migraine', First Person Singular and probably humanity away from Happy Landings. Evolutionary persecution is the code and the Tea Party/Fundamentalism is but one facet of that :naughty: :dance:

Ask yourself why there are no humans at first in any of the other Earths and why humans appear to have started stepping during Roman times, arguably the most pervasive of empires in earlyish Homo Sapiens historic times - why were the Elves and Trolls keeping away from Datum? :twisted:

I look forward to seeing more of the East earths in the next instalment... :ugeek:

 

[poohcarrot]

Um...are you agreeing with me Jano?

why were the Elves and Trolls keeping away from Datum? :twisted:

As Datum's population increased, the trolls stopped coming because of too many humans, but coz of the Gaia monster causing troll migration, the trolls were again coming to Datum, as chapter 27 clearly demonstrates.