SPOILERS The Long Mars **Spoilers**
- Thread starter Tonyblack
- Start date
Was reading the Inspector Clouseau parody this morning. Very Pratchettesque. 
Did anyone else look up who Eugene Cernan was? I'm ashamed to say that, although the name sounded familiar, I couldn't place him.
Did anyone else look up who Eugene Cernan was? I'm ashamed to say that, although the name sounded familiar, I couldn't place him.
I´m halfway through the book, and I absolutely love it, like the previous two books in The Long Earth series.
There is one thing that bothers me though, and that is the fact of the attitude of "grown-up" Paul.
Supposing that the Next are a much more intelligent species than us "normal" Homo Sapiens, why is then Paul being so condescending towards people who are not the Next?
For me, with intelligence, there also comes an understanding of each species equal worth, no matter of their intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know have a great understanding for different kinds of intelligence in different people?
Paul, in the book, is comparing humans with "dumb apes", and then again he is pointing out the worth of the ape-like trolls. These double standards don´t make sense to me from the authors point of view. Why do you think they chose to portrait Paul (and perhaps others from the Next) in this way? I would love to hear other peoples thoughts. Do you really think that Paul thinks humans are all dumb, or is he just upset with the way the Long Earth is developing? Do you think the Next would like to extinct the Homo Sapiens? And what would then be the take home message from the book, the more intelligent species, the more death and war?
I appreciate any feedback and further discussion!
Cheers!
There is one thing that bothers me though, and that is the fact of the attitude of "grown-up" Paul.
Supposing that the Next are a much more intelligent species than us "normal" Homo Sapiens, why is then Paul being so condescending towards people who are not the Next?
For me, with intelligence, there also comes an understanding of each species equal worth, no matter of their intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know have a great understanding for different kinds of intelligence in different people?
Paul, in the book, is comparing humans with "dumb apes", and then again he is pointing out the worth of the ape-like trolls. These double standards don´t make sense to me from the authors point of view. Why do you think they chose to portrait Paul (and perhaps others from the Next) in this way? I would love to hear other peoples thoughts. Do you really think that Paul thinks humans are all dumb, or is he just upset with the way the Long Earth is developing? Do you think the Next would like to extinct the Homo Sapiens? And what would then be the take home message from the book, the more intelligent species, the more death and war?
I appreciate any feedback and further discussion!
Cheers!
Normally I also don´t analyze too much, it was just something that I could not get out of my mind!
I have finished the book now, and I have to say I do have another perspective now. Do you know if they will continue writing the Long Earth series?
And thanks guys for the welcoming =) Glad to be here!
I have finished the book now, and I have to say I do have another perspective now. Do you know if they will continue writing the Long Earth series?
And thanks guys for the welcoming =) Glad to be here!
Well I finished and, as I expected, the book was very much left open for the next one. There is a lot of stuff not explained, but that's ok with me as this and the other books are very much about provoking thought.
I am reminded of classic Sci-Fi with this series. It's a sort of "what-if" series. They have introduced a premise - what if you could step sideways into infinite versions of Earth? From that idea they have then, I think, expanded on that idea to pose such questions as: What would this ability mean for Humanity and for the Datum Earth?
In the last book we were introduced to a terrorist attack on a US city, where people were able to step away to relative safety. In The Long Mars we have an enormous natural disaster that has rendered the Datum Earth pretty much uninhabitable in vast areas. The idea of the Yellowstone super-volcano causing such damage, we are told, is quite possible and maybe even likely. So the exploration of the effect this has is really quite well investigated. Of course those people in the book were able to step away from the disaster - we wouldn't be able to. In many ways it's the sort of reverse to what we get in a lot of post-disaster fiction. In this case one realises that as we don't have that ability to step away, the outcome for us could be pretty terrible. Normal dystopian fiction says: this is what things might be like if something dreadful happened. This book is, in many ways, more frightening because the threat is real and there is no escape.
Clearly we have not seen the last of the Next. I was sort of reminded of Arthur C Clarke's "Childhood's End" and John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos" with this story arc. It's not a new idea for a story, but I do like the way that this has been handled in this book. Of course the Next would see humans as apes. As single kids they are disturbed and frustrated. Picked on in school and bored at how simple things are to them. Once they get together as a group, and are able to communicate and swap ideas, they move even further away from homo sapiens. That increased strength would make trying to converse with ordinary people, incredibly slow and frustrating. Add to that the fact that those ordinary humans were prepared to wipe them out, must surely mean that we haven't seen the last of them. I suspect even Lobsang will have problems with them.
I'm still thinking about the Mars story. I found it interesting that Long Mars and Long Earth are not synchronized. The Mars in the sky of West 1 is not the same Mars as Mars West 1. This may make the idea of cheap easy space-flight using the Gap Earth, practically useless.
And then we have the Space Elevator technology. This again is an Arthur C Clarke idea. At least he has created it in his books - I don't know if it was his idea in the first place. What I want to know is how Sally's father managed to get a small strand of the cable. Was it just lying there waiting to be picked up? He obviously didn't cut it from the main cable. Not only would that be near impossible with any tools he might have, but it also be incredibly dangerous for a cable under that much tension to be cut.
So if space travel via the Gap Earth isn't going to be useful, maybe space elevators on the various Step Earths will.
I will look forward to the next book.
I am reminded of classic Sci-Fi with this series. It's a sort of "what-if" series. They have introduced a premise - what if you could step sideways into infinite versions of Earth? From that idea they have then, I think, expanded on that idea to pose such questions as: What would this ability mean for Humanity and for the Datum Earth?
In the last book we were introduced to a terrorist attack on a US city, where people were able to step away to relative safety. In The Long Mars we have an enormous natural disaster that has rendered the Datum Earth pretty much uninhabitable in vast areas. The idea of the Yellowstone super-volcano causing such damage, we are told, is quite possible and maybe even likely. So the exploration of the effect this has is really quite well investigated. Of course those people in the book were able to step away from the disaster - we wouldn't be able to. In many ways it's the sort of reverse to what we get in a lot of post-disaster fiction. In this case one realises that as we don't have that ability to step away, the outcome for us could be pretty terrible. Normal dystopian fiction says: this is what things might be like if something dreadful happened. This book is, in many ways, more frightening because the threat is real and there is no escape.
Clearly we have not seen the last of the Next. I was sort of reminded of Arthur C Clarke's "Childhood's End" and John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos" with this story arc. It's not a new idea for a story, but I do like the way that this has been handled in this book. Of course the Next would see humans as apes. As single kids they are disturbed and frustrated. Picked on in school and bored at how simple things are to them. Once they get together as a group, and are able to communicate and swap ideas, they move even further away from homo sapiens. That increased strength would make trying to converse with ordinary people, incredibly slow and frustrating. Add to that the fact that those ordinary humans were prepared to wipe them out, must surely mean that we haven't seen the last of them. I suspect even Lobsang will have problems with them.
I'm still thinking about the Mars story. I found it interesting that Long Mars and Long Earth are not synchronized. The Mars in the sky of West 1 is not the same Mars as Mars West 1. This may make the idea of cheap easy space-flight using the Gap Earth, practically useless.
And then we have the Space Elevator technology. This again is an Arthur C Clarke idea. At least he has created it in his books - I don't know if it was his idea in the first place. What I want to know is how Sally's father managed to get a small strand of the cable. Was it just lying there waiting to be picked up? He obviously didn't cut it from the main cable. Not only would that be near impossible with any tools he might have, but it also be incredibly dangerous for a cable under that much tension to be cut.
So if space travel via the Gap Earth isn't going to be useful, maybe space elevators on the various Step Earths will.
I will look forward to the next book.
I certainly spotted that reference. I didn't like the comedy bits in this book. They felt out of place and awkward. It almost feels like they remembered this was partly a Pratchett book and therefore had to nail on some comedy bits. It's not necessary and felt intrusive. I did enjoy this book a lot, as well as the previous ones. But comedy generally doesn't work well in this series.
I didn't like the comedy bits in this book. They felt out of place and awkward. It almost feels like they remembered this was partly a Pratchett book and therefore had to nail on some comedy bits. It's not necessary and felt intrusive. I did enjoy this book a lot, as well as the previous ones. But comedy generally doesn't work well in this series. 
OK against my better judgement I downloaded the audible version as I had a spare credit. The Long War was such an awful book and a serious low point in the writing of both Terry and Stephen with it's stock situations and 'as if by magic the heroes escape' sections, especially at the end, I came to The Long Mars with a highly negative view of the series.
However, and there has to be a however with that start, this book was much much better. The narrative flowed a lot better, the Beagles became more than just a badly written shock tactic and the concept of exploration was developed rather than just boringly listed in the previous book. Characters have been rounded out not just vague stereotypes and I actually was engrossed in the story for the first time in the three volumes.
I have to say the book read as very much a Stephen Baxter novel and I agree with Tony
that it really didn't work when it tried to be funny, this was proper SF and didn't need messing with as it just broke up the storyline.
All in all a vast improvement on The Long War, I may even go mad and buy a print copy
However, and there has to be a however with that start, this book was much much better. The narrative flowed a lot better, the Beagles became more than just a badly written shock tactic and the concept of exploration was developed rather than just boringly listed in the previous book. Characters have been rounded out not just vague stereotypes and I actually was engrossed in the story for the first time in the three volumes.
I have to say the book read as very much a Stephen Baxter novel and I agree with Tony
that it really didn't work when it tried to be funny, this was proper SF and didn't need messing with as it just broke up the storyline.
All in all a vast improvement on The Long War, I may even go mad and buy a print copy
Okay, I'm done.
Now, let me just say that I didn't like The Long Earth all that much and I hated The Long War, so I went into this with equal parts low expectations and dread.
I will say I was pleasantly surprised. I think Baxter (and I do think that Baxter is doing 90% of the work here; I see very little Pterry here, other than ideas he might adding) listened to the hundreds of negative reviews and got rid of the endless chapters of backstory and exposition that made TLW so incredibly dreary. The Long Mars is much more plot-driven, which is a good thing.
The two separate journeys--one with Cap'n Kauffman going where no Long Earth has Gone Before and Sally and Dad's journey along the long Marses (Mar's? Mars'? Marseseseseses?) are the best parts, since the focus is on exploration rather than the dreary social/politic posturing that drags down so much of the series in general.
But there are many parts of this that stretch credulity or simply steal ideas from other books. The "elevator to the Heavens" has already been mentioned. And it really makes no sense that Lindsay Sr. would absolutely predict it would be there. To make that assumption, he had to be certain that technologically advanced life would definitely have evolved on Mars--a long shot at best.
But I find the "science" behind the evolution of life on the Long Marses to be totally hogwash. It took 200 million years for technologically advanced life forms to evolve on Earth, and 5 million or so for humans to evolve from monkey-like mammals. Yet, on these Long Marses, where life exists only during short periods (say less than a million years) when volcano eruptions replenish the atmosphere and melt water, creating an environment for space parasites to fly from dead creatures who "fell" into the Gap from adjacent worlds, advanced life emerges after thousands of years. Perhaps it's possible, and perhaps different natural selection processes drive evolution on Mars, but remember that we human beings are only here because a meteor knocked out the dinosaurs. So the odds of many different sentient species evolving on alternating hospital/dead Long Marses seems very, very far-fetched. Unless, of course, a higher intelligence is guiding evolution on the Long Marses. I also find the idea of stepping and traveling via gliders to be totally bogus. One would think that sandstorms would have been in full force on half of these Marses, making the odds of a glider surviving almost negligible.
As for the Kauffman journey, it seems to be one huge MacGuffin for the discovery of the Next living on the wreckageof the crashed longship. They go as far as 300,000,000 Long Earths and turn around. Oh, and then they put the eccentric billionaire (who seems to be based on the eccentric space-funding billionaire from the book/movie Contact on his own planet for the very rich. Grey Poupon, anyone?
And the whole Next thing is pretty tired SF. Theodore Sturgeon did it decades ago in More than Human. Star Trek did it to death in the Khan & Company stories. It's just dull superman type stuff and doesn't add much other something for Joshua to do since his marriage is kaput. And it creates yet one more bogeyman for the witch-hunting Datum Earthers to hate. For it's the steppers. Then it was the Happy Landings hippies. Now it's the supermen. It's always something.
I'm also getting a little tired of the incongruities of this series. For example, in the first two books we learn that many Earthers can's step. Neither can the beagles, apparently. But if Snowy could "step" by traveling on the airship, then why didn't someone ship out all those non-stepping Datumers (like the little psycho kid left behind by his family) on the airships as well to be reunited? Certainly Lobsang would have known this was possible.
And how was Lindsay Sr. able to communicate with the Long Marsers? For god sake, we humans can barely communicate with people who don't have a 100% understanding of our own language. Yet with no problem at all he's able to approach a bunch of totally alien beings and communicate his "deal", the idea of stepping and how to use the boxes and exchange this for photos of the monoliths in a matter of an hour or so? Hornswoggle. Unless we find (and I'm pretty sure that will come out) that Lindsay Sr. is a Next. He certainly possesses most of the characteristics of the species.
Oh, I don't find the reuse of the crab kingdom from the Science if Discworld book to be particularly clever. In a book that borrows so many idea from other sources, couldn't they have found another way to convey a different kind of intelligence? How about smart ants? Snakes? Pigeons?
The book is enjoyable if you're willing to suspend every possible kind of disbelief. But Baxter tries to hard to make the science plausible in some areas, while letting the truly implausible go without comment.
Now, let me just say that I didn't like The Long Earth all that much and I hated The Long War, so I went into this with equal parts low expectations and dread.
I will say I was pleasantly surprised. I think Baxter (and I do think that Baxter is doing 90% of the work here; I see very little Pterry here, other than ideas he might adding) listened to the hundreds of negative reviews and got rid of the endless chapters of backstory and exposition that made TLW so incredibly dreary. The Long Mars is much more plot-driven, which is a good thing.
The two separate journeys--one with Cap'n Kauffman going where no Long Earth has Gone Before and Sally and Dad's journey along the long Marses (Mar's? Mars'? Marseseseseses?) are the best parts, since the focus is on exploration rather than the dreary social/politic posturing that drags down so much of the series in general.
But there are many parts of this that stretch credulity or simply steal ideas from other books. The "elevator to the Heavens" has already been mentioned. And it really makes no sense that Lindsay Sr. would absolutely predict it would be there. To make that assumption, he had to be certain that technologically advanced life would definitely have evolved on Mars--a long shot at best.
But I find the "science" behind the evolution of life on the Long Marses to be totally hogwash. It took 200 million years for technologically advanced life forms to evolve on Earth, and 5 million or so for humans to evolve from monkey-like mammals. Yet, on these Long Marses, where life exists only during short periods (say less than a million years) when volcano eruptions replenish the atmosphere and melt water, creating an environment for space parasites to fly from dead creatures who "fell" into the Gap from adjacent worlds, advanced life emerges after thousands of years. Perhaps it's possible, and perhaps different natural selection processes drive evolution on Mars, but remember that we human beings are only here because a meteor knocked out the dinosaurs. So the odds of many different sentient species evolving on alternating hospital/dead Long Marses seems very, very far-fetched. Unless, of course, a higher intelligence is guiding evolution on the Long Marses. I also find the idea of stepping and traveling via gliders to be totally bogus. One would think that sandstorms would have been in full force on half of these Marses, making the odds of a glider surviving almost negligible.
As for the Kauffman journey, it seems to be one huge MacGuffin for the discovery of the Next living on the wreckageof the crashed longship. They go as far as 300,000,000 Long Earths and turn around. Oh, and then they put the eccentric billionaire (who seems to be based on the eccentric space-funding billionaire from the book/movie Contact on his own planet for the very rich. Grey Poupon, anyone?
And the whole Next thing is pretty tired SF. Theodore Sturgeon did it decades ago in More than Human. Star Trek did it to death in the Khan & Company stories. It's just dull superman type stuff and doesn't add much other something for Joshua to do since his marriage is kaput. And it creates yet one more bogeyman for the witch-hunting Datum Earthers to hate. For it's the steppers. Then it was the Happy Landings hippies. Now it's the supermen. It's always something.
I'm also getting a little tired of the incongruities of this series. For example, in the first two books we learn that many Earthers can's step. Neither can the beagles, apparently. But if Snowy could "step" by traveling on the airship, then why didn't someone ship out all those non-stepping Datumers (like the little psycho kid left behind by his family) on the airships as well to be reunited? Certainly Lobsang would have known this was possible.
And how was Lindsay Sr. able to communicate with the Long Marsers? For god sake, we humans can barely communicate with people who don't have a 100% understanding of our own language. Yet with no problem at all he's able to approach a bunch of totally alien beings and communicate his "deal", the idea of stepping and how to use the boxes and exchange this for photos of the monoliths in a matter of an hour or so? Hornswoggle. Unless we find (and I'm pretty sure that will come out) that Lindsay Sr. is a Next. He certainly possesses most of the characteristics of the species.
Oh, I don't find the reuse of the crab kingdom from the Science if Discworld book to be particularly clever. In a book that borrows so many idea from other sources, couldn't they have found another way to convey a different kind of intelligence? How about smart ants? Snakes? Pigeons?
The book is enjoyable if you're willing to suspend every possible kind of disbelief. But Baxter tries to hard to make the science plausible in some areas, while letting the truly implausible go without comment.
It would be nice if greater intelligence = greater understanding and empathy, but this isn't really the way with any species, especially humans. Those who are more intelligent (or, let's say, more educated) always look down upon those they consider to be less intelligent. In ancient times, the Romans looked down at the "savage Germans and Bretons." Until the 19th century, Europeans enslaved millions of Africans and Asians, using the justification that those of other races weren't as intelligent and incapable of become "civilized." Even today, those of higher IQs tend to look down at those of lower IQs, even though we're all the same species and our brains are essentially identical. Since competition is built into our DNA, the evolution of a more intelligent species would likely only inspire such individuals to use this competitive advantage to enslave, kill or, or subjugate those they considered to be "inferior." Thus, the behavior of Paul and the other Nexts is completely understandable. Of course, their hatred of "dim bulbs" has, in large part, been shaped by their mistreatment as children by their peers, parents, and authority figures. Intellectually, they might be leagues ahead of normal humans, but emotionally, they're still children.
The Mark Twain from The Long Earth was the first twain ever, so it was not possible to ship out Rod Green before he blew Madison up. In The Long War Dan's comfort during the twain ride to Valhalla is taken as a sign he wasn't phobic. It seemsthat phobic humans can be transported by twain, but they need medical attention. It might be different for non-stepping species. Also, do we know if Beagles can't Step at all, even with a human-made Stepping device?
I think it was made pretty clear in TLMs that beagles couldn't step on their own. Given that a stepping box is really a glorified placebo, it stands to reason that Beagles may have tried to use them but couldn't. Thus, in terms of stepping capacity, they're as useful as the iron and wood carried in the airships--inanimate stuff that apparently can be "magically" stepped by a sapience of one kind of another.
The Beagles indeed cannot use Steppers. But I don't see why that should mean they shouldn't be able to be transported in a twain. Stepping on one's own requires engaging one's mind. But people on a twain can be Stepped in their sleep - it is the twain's computer that does the Stepping, carrying everyone else passively. If a sleeping human can be Stepped by a twain, I don't see why not a Beagle too.
