I have mentioned before that I am a big fan of Sir Terry Pratchett who sadly died four years ago. I have read most of his books and even met him once at a convention. He was a great writer with a wonderful imagination. His best known creation is The Discworld, a flat world where magic plays a big part, but he brought humour to the fantasy genre.
The Long Earth series was something a little different. It was written in collaboration with Stephen Baxter who is described as a 'hard science fiction' writer. That does not mean he picks fights, it is more about using real science in the stories. So these books mix both genres to create some very imaginative scenarios.
The basic premise is that someone discovers that our Earth is one of an apparently infinite series that exist in parallel dimensions and with some simple equipment it is possible to 'step' between them. The social effects are massive as just about anyone can move or flee to these other worlds to start a new life. They can also be misused as you can step back in a different place to bypass locked doors and other obstacles. Lots of people set of as a new wave of pioneers to start again on a fresh world that is untouched by people.
The other Earths are subtly or radically different to ours as they have had their own evolution and geological or cosmological event. Life can take different turns to give very different outcomes. The books are largely about those who explore this new frontier.
Some may consider the characters a little underdeveloped, but that is common in science fiction and fantasy where it can be more about the ideas. Still, you get to follow some of them through the whole series of five books. We bought the original one when it came out and I have read the others over the last year and a half as ebooks. I really do not have more space for paper books and I tend to pick these up when they are discounted.
Each of the books extends the original idea in different directions with new types of humans emerging and other frontiers being found and they span many decades. There are several parallel stories in some of them that do not always seem to move things forward, but may have an effect later on.
I just finished the final book and it sort of wraps things up whilst leaving a few questions unanswered. As Terry is gone we are unlikely to get any more and I think Baxter wrote most of the last one after Terry became ill.
I have enjoyed reading them. They are not too heavy and could be read fairly quickly. I just do not find enough time for reading and so it took me a while.
My next ebook read is The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson. He is another of my favourite authors. This is also a collaboration and involves some magic, so we shall see how that goes.
Happy reading!
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Another one worth reading I found was Raymond Fiest's serries, with additional authors in the later stages.
Not heard of him, but I have a load of books lined up to read.
BTW not heard from Trevor in a while. Is he okay?
He has been flat out, he did the Wellington Marathon, then a couple of weeks later the WUUKU i think it is called 56 km up and down hills, then for his recovery period, 3 days later, he went off to Greece to catch up with his wife who had already gone over to her parents a monthish before.
When he wakes up, he will be doing lots of touristy blogs I hope.
Thanks for asking after him, I appreciate it
I look forward to hearing about those. Thanks
This sounds like a really awesome series. Something like Sliders or Fringe. Maybe even some of the stuff that is going on with the Flash series. I know this was probably written well before all of that though. It is a concept that has been around for a long time. I am totally going to check this out!
How you enjoy it if you do. They are not particularly long books.
I've never read any of Terry Pratchett's books, but it definitely does sound challenging to fully develop characters when there are multiple ones and the main focus of the books are different parallels. This is a great review and it has inspired me to pick up this series - thanks for sharing with the community, @steevc! Looking forward to reading future posts.
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I stopped reading "science"-fiction books a long time ago.
After you learn how fake our science is, and the real world it was hiding... well, the premise of this book just sounds dumb.
Its like a book on a group figuring out how to travel faster than the speed of light... when you know that the theory of relativity is complete rubbish.
There are tons of alternative earths... and stepping between them is easy. In fact, we do it all the time.
But there is not "every earth you can imagine"
The reason none of these exist is because of how the universe works.
Worlds are split when the soul wants to explore two (or more) possibilities.
And time, the past & the future, are irrelevant.
And a whole new earth isn't formed for each person's individual actions/choices. Most actions end up with everything much the same. You still went to sleep in the same bed at the same time even though you decided to walk home instead of drive.
Good luck in your other worlds. 'Our science' seems to have given us computers and the internet to communicate with as well as keeping us alive longer.
That's not science, that's engineering.
Engineers use magnets all the time.
But, ask a scientist to explain how magnets work...
The current "theory" uses unicorn particles.
Obviously it's pixies :)
I have read this book already and it is really good.
Very nice the idea of the device for changing from one earth to the other by using a "potato" device LOL
I noticed that doesn't get mentioned much in later books apart from some reference to growing potatoes in distant worlds to have a supply. It would be great to go off to explore other worlds so easily.
I'm back to reading David Gemmel books again, and you can tell from my latest attempts at fiction that there's some inspiration coming from that direction.
Still have yet to try Pratchett.. the theme of humour kind of puts me off. I think I like my fantasy to be in bleak harsh worlds...
Pratchett has some great satire too. The early books are more a parody of standard fantasy, but they developed over the years with some great characters.
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