SPOILERS The Long Earth **Spoilers**
- Thread starter Tonyblack
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I just finished reading it, and have posted a review on another BBS. However, here is a copy of the review...
I will add more later once I have read this thread more thoroughly. But already, are Pratchett and Baxter considering sequels? Good! I was annoyed at how little some parts of the plot were developed, I do want to see that.
So, The Long Earth: Electric Boogaloo, anyone?
I will add more later once I have read this thread more thoroughly. But already, are Pratchett and Baxter considering sequels? Good! I was annoyed at how little some parts of the plot were developed, I do want to see that.
So, The Long Earth: Electric Boogaloo, anyone?
Tonyblack said:
I felt the cynicism of the human race in the book was Terry's. But I also haven't read any Baxter, so I don't know. 
Let's just say that the universe gets destroyed, for a certain value of 'destroyed'. It's for a good cause, though, believe it or not.
It's for a good cause, though, believe it or not.BTW, since when has Baxter written Doctor Who? I know he has written a novel for release soon called The Wheel of Ice, but has he written anything else beforehand? :|
So I'm about half way through. I like what the book is about. Pretty bloody amazing concept isn't it? I've not warmed all that much to Joshua & Lobsang. I'm not bothered by that though. I really like Private Percy's story. The boy who's family left him behind? I wonder if he's going to become a future bad guy. I found that bit really hard to read. Why the hell would you do that? No doubt everything will become clear, it just seems odd.
Happy reading all!
Happy reading all!
Finished.
Overall, better than I expected, because I came in with low expectations.
Conceptually, this thing is a lot of "something borrowed, something blue." Perhaps there isn't anything new you can do in SF because it's all been done to death, but this one really seems to stew genre conventions around in a pot.The "alternate universe" thing has been done to death by authors ranging from Isaac Asimov to Philip Dick to Orson Scott Card to Pterry himsef as well as all those cliched Star Trek episodes with quanta and all that. The "big one-celled beastie intelligence' thing that influences other life forms and threatens to take over to death forever. (See Christopher Moore's Fluke for a far better portrayal of this kind of thing). The idea of violent conservative/religious backlash against reaching out to the stars was done far more effectively in Sagan's Contact. The "omnipresent sentient computer" thing is as old as SF itself. Even the notion of 'stepping' was covered by Pterry himself--the time-slicing of Lobsang and the History Monks in "Thief of Time" was a similar thing. And the "loner hero social misfit different than everyone else hero" is the staple of ST, since so many of its readers are longer social misfits.
So, why is The Long Earth readable at all? Because the plotting is good and much (but not all) of the dialogue, when it doesn't get bogged down in awkward exposition, is engaging. And it being a quest type of story helps. It wouldn't be all that interesting if the story just focused on one particular Long Earth.
There's a lot of stuff that just doesn't make sense. It really doesn't make sense that Earthers would step 100,000 earths to find a new home, when they could simply go to 5 earths east and west and walk in any direction and they'd have as much land as they needed. The pioneers (in the U.S. at least) didn't automatically travel across the country. They gradually moved westward, and only moved west as other claimed property. Even after Lewis and Clark came back from their expedition, you didn't have thousands of people from Virginia hitching up wagon trains and heading to California.
It also doesn't make sense that there was only identified earth where (other than the big ameoba) species other than hominids developed a civilization, unless P&B are trying to make the point that truly sentient species are a rarity, which may be true.
Madison, WI as the main Earth setting. At first I thought this had been chosen because Neil Gaiman lives in Wisconsin (but not in Wisconsin), but halfway through it occurred to me that Pterry was at the US Discworld conference last year and Baxter must have been there, too and that probably influenced the choice (you must believe me that I guesses this before the postscript). I, for one am glad about the choice since I went to UW-Madison and therefore knew exactly what each selected street and location connotated. (For example Mifflin Street, mentioned early in the book, used to be the hippie capital of the midwest, which makes sense that a giant pot plantation was found in one of its houses).
Despite what Lobsang said about stepping not being 'time traveling,' the westward trek certainly was a trek backward in time. The progression was from "jungle worlds" (more recent) to "ice age" worlds to pre-ice age words (mining and cornfield worlds) to worlds where the dinosaurs existed. By the time they got to the world where the amoeba thing, the earths were going back to a stage where most life was in the sea. One would surmise that further westward travel would ultimately lead to earths without life at all, or even to a universe where the earth was still forming. Which makes you wonder what happens in the "eastern" worlds--do they represent what the earths will become over time--i.e., ultimately earths that become lifeless, burned by a sun that ultimately 'winks out, destroyed by asteroids, or where new forms of life evolve''?
The writing style doesn't seem to convey a lot of Pterry, although I think that Lobsang's dialogue is all Pratchett and that his speaking style is based on that of Vetinari (notice that Lobsang uses the Vetinari's catchphrase, "And thus, we progress.") Certainly a lot of the ideas of alternative earths and elves probably stem from these ideas Pterry had formulated in Lords and Ladies and Wee Free Men. It would be interesting to know how the two authors split the writing. Did Baxter do narrative and exposition and Pterry do dialogue? Did they split certain plotlines?
The ending really bugged me. You knew there was going to be more than one book, but the way this was set up was terrible. Wouldn't you have thought that the steppers would have discovered that they could take nonsteppers with them long before this? Sure they would've, and this would have solved the Humanity Firsters problems, which was mainly more about jealousy than anything else. But it was such a stupid cliffhanger ending, so cynical that that it shoudl have had a"TO BE CONTINUED..." at the end.
Anyway, overall, a flawed book but a decent read, but I wouldn't put it anywhere near Pterry's best work or anywhere near the best the top flight SF ever written.
Overall, better than I expected, because I came in with low expectations.
Conceptually, this thing is a lot of "something borrowed, something blue." Perhaps there isn't anything new you can do in SF because it's all been done to death, but this one really seems to stew genre conventions around in a pot.The "alternate universe" thing has been done to death by authors ranging from Isaac Asimov to Philip Dick to Orson Scott Card to Pterry himsef as well as all those cliched Star Trek episodes with quanta and all that. The "big one-celled beastie intelligence' thing that influences other life forms and threatens to take over to death forever. (See Christopher Moore's Fluke for a far better portrayal of this kind of thing). The idea of violent conservative/religious backlash against reaching out to the stars was done far more effectively in Sagan's Contact. The "omnipresent sentient computer" thing is as old as SF itself. Even the notion of 'stepping' was covered by Pterry himself--the time-slicing of Lobsang and the History Monks in "Thief of Time" was a similar thing. And the "loner hero social misfit different than everyone else hero" is the staple of ST, since so many of its readers are longer social misfits.
So, why is The Long Earth readable at all? Because the plotting is good and much (but not all) of the dialogue, when it doesn't get bogged down in awkward exposition, is engaging. And it being a quest type of story helps. It wouldn't be all that interesting if the story just focused on one particular Long Earth.
There's a lot of stuff that just doesn't make sense. It really doesn't make sense that Earthers would step 100,000 earths to find a new home, when they could simply go to 5 earths east and west and walk in any direction and they'd have as much land as they needed. The pioneers (in the U.S. at least) didn't automatically travel across the country. They gradually moved westward, and only moved west as other claimed property. Even after Lewis and Clark came back from their expedition, you didn't have thousands of people from Virginia hitching up wagon trains and heading to California.
It also doesn't make sense that there was only identified earth where (other than the big ameoba) species other than hominids developed a civilization, unless P&B are trying to make the point that truly sentient species are a rarity, which may be true.
Madison, WI as the main Earth setting. At first I thought this had been chosen because Neil Gaiman lives in Wisconsin (but not in Wisconsin), but halfway through it occurred to me that Pterry was at the US Discworld conference last year and Baxter must have been there, too and that probably influenced the choice (you must believe me that I guesses this before the postscript). I, for one am glad about the choice since I went to UW-Madison and therefore knew exactly what each selected street and location connotated. (For example Mifflin Street, mentioned early in the book, used to be the hippie capital of the midwest, which makes sense that a giant pot plantation was found in one of its houses).
Despite what Lobsang said about stepping not being 'time traveling,' the westward trek certainly was a trek backward in time. The progression was from "jungle worlds" (more recent) to "ice age" worlds to pre-ice age words (mining and cornfield worlds) to worlds where the dinosaurs existed. By the time they got to the world where the amoeba thing, the earths were going back to a stage where most life was in the sea. One would surmise that further westward travel would ultimately lead to earths without life at all, or even to a universe where the earth was still forming. Which makes you wonder what happens in the "eastern" worlds--do they represent what the earths will become over time--i.e., ultimately earths that become lifeless, burned by a sun that ultimately 'winks out, destroyed by asteroids, or where new forms of life evolve''?
The writing style doesn't seem to convey a lot of Pterry, although I think that Lobsang's dialogue is all Pratchett and that his speaking style is based on that of Vetinari (notice that Lobsang uses the Vetinari's catchphrase, "And thus, we progress.") Certainly a lot of the ideas of alternative earths and elves probably stem from these ideas Pterry had formulated in Lords and Ladies and Wee Free Men. It would be interesting to know how the two authors split the writing. Did Baxter do narrative and exposition and Pterry do dialogue? Did they split certain plotlines?
The ending really bugged me. You knew there was going to be more than one book, but the way this was set up was terrible. Wouldn't you have thought that the steppers would have discovered that they could take nonsteppers with them long before this? Sure they would've, and this would have solved the Humanity Firsters problems, which was mainly more about jealousy than anything else. But it was such a stupid cliffhanger ending, so cynical that that it shoudl have had a"TO BE CONTINUED..." at the end.
Anyway, overall, a flawed book but a decent read, but I wouldn't put it anywhere near Pterry's best work or anywhere near the best the top flight SF ever written.
I'm reading the Time Odyssey trilogy by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C Clarke at the moment and the discontinuities in those books very much remind me of Long Earth except that this is one planet with multiple time streams running simultaneously rather than multiple planets with one time stream. This adds to my first impression that The Long Earth is at least 75% Baxter probably more. It reads far more like one of his books than Terry’s and when I first read it I barely spotted any of Terry’s influence other than Lobsang. My feeling is that this is a Pratchett concept but written by Baxter and then fiddled about with by both of them in the editing process to give Terry some more input.
It wouldn't need to be done regularly--just once. There would plenty of room on Earth west 1 and east 1 for the phobics and Humanity Firsters to settle so they wouldn't need to step often. And certainly in these nearby earths there would be medical personnel ready to stabilize the phobics. It's a gigantic plot hole to assume that every stepper in the world was as selfish as the Greens. If you've got millions of people stepping hundreds of thousands of worlds, you have to think that at least a few steppers would try to bring a few phobics through, find that it worked, and find ways to improve the process.
The Greens leaving Rob behind was a really disturbing part of the story. I didn't get the impression that this was the norm, but maybe I'm not remembering correctly. It was important to the Greens to move several steps away, they weren't content with stepping just once. But, it would make sense that the majority of families would at least try to bring a phobic member with them.
Finally was able to log back on after nearly three weeks of trying. I couldn't get a Lost Password Email sent to me for love nor money. (And if you can't log in, you can't ask for help logging in.) (AND none of the other emails anywhere on the website seemed to working.) I'm happy to say that's all been fixed. So my little review may seem a bit tardy, is my point, but I'll post it anyway and hope no one objects too strongly.
It was an interesting concept and I think the depictions of what people did were pretty spot on. The immediate move to pillage the nearest gold mines, corporations looking to exploit the worlds to make a profit, people going back to modified pioneer ways (here I'm picturing the colonists of Firefly/Serenity).
The resentment from the phobics seemed pretty realistic as well. I'm not sure, however, that families would just bail on their non-stepping children unless there was other, pre-existing dysfunction. I listened to the audiobook and actually found myself getting really agitated listening to the hate speech by the anti-stepper activist (I can't recall his name just now). That was a fine bit of writing (and performance by Michael Fenton Stevens).
I liked a few of the supporting characters, a motorcycle riding nun was great. I liked Monica Jansson but I'm a little disappointed at the lesbian-police officer cliche.
I thought the Happy Landings community was a good back story. I liked the idea that there have been natural steppers for a long, long time. And the...evolution of the community that showed influences from the generations of people who appeared was appealing. I'm not sure about the "suddenly I was just transported here and no I don't want to go back to my old life" description but perhaps that will be resolved in the next book
I think the descriptions of Lobsang and Joshua traveling through the worlds sometimes got a little tedious. I know they were writing to show their progress through all the variations of the worlds but to me there were a couple of parts that got a little long.
I was aggravated at the abrupt ending until I started reading other people's reviews and found that it was To Be Continued.... (I loathed The Lady & The Tiger with it's "you decide what happens" ending.) Maybe it should have been obvious to me but I kept looking at the number of discs left and wondering how they were going to wrap up the story with so little time left.
I liked the little references to Discworld, (especially the potato which, duh, didn't even click until I read Fred Phillips' review on http://spychocyco.blogspot.com/). I don't know anything about Stephen Baxter. If I had read his work before, that might make me like the book more (or possibly less.)
So overall, one thumbs up. I'm looking forward to the next book to re-evaluate.
It was an interesting concept and I think the depictions of what people did were pretty spot on. The immediate move to pillage the nearest gold mines, corporations looking to exploit the worlds to make a profit, people going back to modified pioneer ways (here I'm picturing the colonists of Firefly/Serenity).
The resentment from the phobics seemed pretty realistic as well. I'm not sure, however, that families would just bail on their non-stepping children unless there was other, pre-existing dysfunction. I listened to the audiobook and actually found myself getting really agitated listening to the hate speech by the anti-stepper activist (I can't recall his name just now). That was a fine bit of writing (and performance by Michael Fenton Stevens).
I liked a few of the supporting characters, a motorcycle riding nun was great. I liked Monica Jansson but I'm a little disappointed at the lesbian-police officer cliche.
I thought the Happy Landings community was a good back story. I liked the idea that there have been natural steppers for a long, long time. And the...evolution of the community that showed influences from the generations of people who appeared was appealing. I'm not sure about the "suddenly I was just transported here and no I don't want to go back to my old life" description but perhaps that will be resolved in the next book
I think the descriptions of Lobsang and Joshua traveling through the worlds sometimes got a little tedious. I know they were writing to show their progress through all the variations of the worlds but to me there were a couple of parts that got a little long.
I was aggravated at the abrupt ending until I started reading other people's reviews and found that it was To Be Continued.... (I loathed The Lady & The Tiger with it's "you decide what happens" ending.) Maybe it should have been obvious to me but I kept looking at the number of discs left and wondering how they were going to wrap up the story with so little time left.
I liked the little references to Discworld, (especially the potato which, duh, didn't even click until I read Fred Phillips' review on http://spychocyco.blogspot.com/). I don't know anything about Stephen Baxter. If I had read his work before, that might make me like the book more (or possibly less.)
So overall, one thumbs up. I'm looking forward to the next book to re-evaluate.
Sorry you had a problem getting back on, Beti. There was a problem with the board sending out emails and we didn't realise until it was noticed that we'd had no new members for almost three weeks.
I thought your review of The Long Earth was pretty much how I read it. Although I did realise there were going to be sequels. Knowing that made it easier for me because I could see that this book is sorting of setting things up for later ones.
Terry does seem to have a thing about potatoes . . . and chickens. But both are kind of funny anyhow.
I thought your review of The Long Earth was pretty much how I read it. Although I did realise there were going to be sequels.
Knowing that made it easier for me because I could see that this book is sorting of setting things up for later ones.Terry does seem to have a thing about potatoes . . . and chickens. But both are kind of funny anyhow.
Just out of interest on this subject while musing; While they were obviously not 'phobic', how many colonists left family members behind when they spread across America (or Australia's first willing colonists, for example) all those years ago? :think:
I think it might have been more commonplace than reported since I don't think many would deliberately want to take loved ones into unknown and potentially dangerous territory. By the time that they realized that it was safe and had settled down, the young ones would have grown considerably when they got the message to come along and join with their travelling parent. Having already got a settled life of their own, they might still have refused and wanted to remain where they were.
I think it might have been more commonplace than reported since I don't think many would deliberately want to take loved ones into unknown and potentially dangerous territory. By the time that they realized that it was safe and had settled down, the young ones would have grown considerably when they got the message to come along and join with their travelling parent. Having already got a settled life of their own, they might still have refused and wanted to remain where they were.
I got the impression from that family in the book that the move was very much the mother's dream. The younger kids thought it was an adventure and the husband seemed to go along with it because that's what he always does. Leaving a possibly stroppy teen behind seems to be something the family got over very quickly. I mean - it's not like he was dead . . .
Hello all, long time no post!
An amazing concept and really, most of the permutations were explored in one way or another from the impact on evolution to the possibility of joker Earths, through to kids getting stuck in fridges when their new games go wrong, through to the politics on Earth. As a thought-experiment this book is great, lots and lots to get your head around.
As a novel, as a narrative, it's hit and miss and it didn't feel like Pratchett to me. Joshua is the least compelling central character I've ever come across in a Pratchett novel. I'm glad Sally joined the crew at a later point as a counterpoint to him but even she was somewhat stilted (I found a lot of the dialogue clumsy actually). I'd rather go for a pint with Lobsang than with the autonotom that is Joshua. This could be an interesting point in itself - with the Turing Test brought up a few times in the novel - were it not for the fact that I only feel this way because the moulding of Joshua's character isn't up to snuff. I don't think Joshua is meant to be that dull is he?
Weirdly, I found a lot of the action on the Datum a lot more interesting than what was going on with the airship - I think again this has a lot to do with the fact that I didn't like spending any time reading about Joshua. The story of the Greens was the most interesting idea in the book, and I'm not surprised Rod turned into what he did, nor that politics on Earth had become so divisive. I found it interesting how different societies had reacted, how different governments responded, how some people stuck together in colonies (with varying degrees of success) whilst others became drifters. All this was much more enjoyable than reading about the different types of hominid and dinosaur, or about bloody Joshua. The best bits of this book read like Good Omens; so I hope we get more of that in Part II.
The final scenes: obviously these are a talking point given how abrupt this story ended. The stepping of an entire city in one go was incredibly powerful but it could've done with more time given how huge an event it was, I felt it was really glossed over and then the book suddenly ended! The image of the falling people who'd stepped across from skyscrapers was hideous and is the one "image" that's stuck in my mind the most from this book.
I'm glad to hear there's to be another book. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up. But I hope the focus isn't on Joshua too much next time or, if it is, that he becomes a more rounded and interesting character. I think a novel in which Sally takes a more central role would be good, or even Helen Green as one of the first generation for whom stepping was the norm. I'd like to find out more about the Black Corporation, about Happy Landings, and would like Sally to find her Father to see what's he's become ("I think you'll royally fuck it up"). Perhaps we need to look at this book a little like The Colour of Magic. We've now SEEN the Long Earth, we get the concept and yes, it is good. Can we now have a bit more characterisation, a bit less of the geography and a bit more of the humanity, a bit more humour? In other words, a bit more Pratchett.
An amazing concept and really, most of the permutations were explored in one way or another from the impact on evolution to the possibility of joker Earths, through to kids getting stuck in fridges when their new games go wrong, through to the politics on Earth. As a thought-experiment this book is great, lots and lots to get your head around.
As a novel, as a narrative, it's hit and miss and it didn't feel like Pratchett to me. Joshua is the least compelling central character I've ever come across in a Pratchett novel. I'm glad Sally joined the crew at a later point as a counterpoint to him but even she was somewhat stilted (I found a lot of the dialogue clumsy actually). I'd rather go for a pint with Lobsang than with the autonotom that is Joshua. This could be an interesting point in itself - with the Turing Test brought up a few times in the novel - were it not for the fact that I only feel this way because the moulding of Joshua's character isn't up to snuff. I don't think Joshua is meant to be that dull is he?
Weirdly, I found a lot of the action on the Datum a lot more interesting than what was going on with the airship - I think again this has a lot to do with the fact that I didn't like spending any time reading about Joshua. The story of the Greens was the most interesting idea in the book, and I'm not surprised Rod turned into what he did, nor that politics on Earth had become so divisive. I found it interesting how different societies had reacted, how different governments responded, how some people stuck together in colonies (with varying degrees of success) whilst others became drifters. All this was much more enjoyable than reading about the different types of hominid and dinosaur, or about bloody Joshua. The best bits of this book read like Good Omens; so I hope we get more of that in Part II.
The final scenes: obviously these are a talking point given how abrupt this story ended. The stepping of an entire city in one go was incredibly powerful but it could've done with more time given how huge an event it was, I felt it was really glossed over and then the book suddenly ended! The image of the falling people who'd stepped across from skyscrapers was hideous and is the one "image" that's stuck in my mind the most from this book.
I'm glad to hear there's to be another book. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up. But I hope the focus isn't on Joshua too much next time or, if it is, that he becomes a more rounded and interesting character. I think a novel in which Sally takes a more central role would be good, or even Helen Green as one of the first generation for whom stepping was the norm. I'd like to find out more about the Black Corporation, about Happy Landings, and would like Sally to find her Father to see what's he's become ("I think you'll royally fuck it up"). Perhaps we need to look at this book a little like The Colour of Magic. We've now SEEN the Long Earth, we get the concept and yes, it is good. Can we now have a bit more characterisation, a bit less of the geography and a bit more of the humanity, a bit more humour? In other words, a bit more Pratchett.
I had a rant a couple of weeks ago but deleted it. I've read halfway through and thought I'd at least finish The Long Earth before saying anything negative. Well, I've tried a couple more times to get back into the book but I can't, I don't know what's happened. Maybe I'm just in the wrong headspace for it.
