352 pages
English language
Published Dec. 27, 2012 by Transworld Publishers Limited.
Terry Pratchett, other than lending his name to this book, wasn't a part of it. No humor and dark reading. Mr. Baxter should have published it under his own name, he can write, just not to my liking. gmb 3/15/20
With the invention of a simple device man can step between the worlds, to see all the what ifs of earths evolution. However, something is coming and all the other creatures of the long earth able to stop are being forced towards our datum earth.
Great start to the series and I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter co-wrote this science fiction story about parallel earths and mankind's discovery of the ability to "step" between them. It's not at all a work of humour unlike most of Pratchett's other work. Well written and with interesting characters, I enjoyed the read, but ultimately found the ending a bit anticlimactic and felt it left too many questions unanswered and unexplained. One of those unfortunate cases where a book is good, but disappointing because it leaves you feeling it could and should have been so much better.
Did not finish. Not because I'd expected a Discworld novel, but because I didn't like this one enough to continue.
An excellent book. Right up until the last chapter, which seemed slightly gratuitous. Perhaps, as a resident of Madison, I am slightly biased.
Conceptually interesting but ultimately unsatisfying.
This was an odd book so many really good ideas all jumbled up and going nowhere in the end. I expect if Pratchett's name wasn't on it I would not have finished it.
The instructions appeared online in 2015; anonymously posted but guaranteed to be followed by thousands of inquisitive children. That day is now known as Step Day. One by one, children disappeared, stepping into the next world. The children were scared and helpless except for orphaned Joshua. For once, her felt strangely at peace and he led the lost back to their earth. From that day onwards, it was known that there were other earths, with different evolutionary paths. Pioneers set out to colonise these new worlds leaving behind the rich and the poor and those who can’t step.
Joshua is happy by himself but when he is approached by the Black Corporation and introduced to Lobsang, the first computer to prove its humanity, he embarks on a mission to step to the ends of the Long Earth.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter need little introduction and their first collaboration has …
The instructions appeared online in 2015; anonymously posted but guaranteed to be followed by thousands of inquisitive children. That day is now known as Step Day. One by one, children disappeared, stepping into the next world. The children were scared and helpless except for orphaned Joshua. For once, her felt strangely at peace and he led the lost back to their earth. From that day onwards, it was known that there were other earths, with different evolutionary paths. Pioneers set out to colonise these new worlds leaving behind the rich and the poor and those who can’t step.
Joshua is happy by himself but when he is approached by the Black Corporation and introduced to Lobsang, the first computer to prove its humanity, he embarks on a mission to step to the ends of the Long Earth.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter need little introduction and their first collaboration has been eagerly awaited by fans. I haven’t read any Baxter but it’s easy to identify the humour and observations we have grown to know and love from Pratchett. However it’s very different in style to Discworld which I can only assume is Baxter’s influence.
It’s a little slow to get going with so many characters seemingly on different versions of earth. The chapters concerning the modern day pioneers felt a little disjointed and didn’t contribute much to the plot. I can understand their relevance as back story but the characters weren’t really engaging enough and they got in the way of the real story. However I did really enjoy the bits about Private Percy in 1916 when he first encountered what he thought were the French or possibly Russians but were actually steppers from another earth. They added to the whole story of the primates, our possible evolutionary cousins from other dimensions (or legs of the trousers of time).
Lobsang is an excellent character, a computer that has managed to prove in a court of law that he is human. His story is that he’s a reincarnated Tibetan monk and when Joshua first meets him, he’s encased in a vending machine. He is the ultimate super computer yet becomes a character you come to feel for. He enforces a daily film, of which it is always relevant to an event or comment. He might infuriate Joshua but I think they might even manage to become friends along the way.
Whilst we don’t get to spend much time in each version of earth I loved the passing worlds and their strange but oddly familiar creatures. It’s an exploration of what the earth could be like if Homo sapiens hadn’t taken over the place. Yet what is the future of the Long Earth is humans start all over again and what will happen to those left behind? All this sort of makes up for the lack of flowing plot in the first half of the book and I look forward to seeing what happens next.
