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    The Long Earth: A Novel
    The Long Earth: A Novel
    The Long Earth: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Long Earth: A Novel

    Written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

    Narrated by Michael Fenton Stevens

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The first novel in a brilliant collaboration between the visionary Discworld® creator Terry Pratchett and acclaimed science fiction novelist Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth transports readers to an infinity of new worlds—a series of parallel “earths"" with doorways leading to adventure, intrigue, excitement, and an escape into the furthest reaches of the imagination. All it takes is a single step. . . .

    The possibilities are endless. (Just be careful what you wish for. . . .)

    1916: The Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone?

    2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive—some say mad, others allege dangerous—scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson finds a curious gadget: a box containing some rudimentary wiring, a three-way switch, and . . . a potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way humankind views the world forever.

    The Long Earth is an adventure of the highest order and will captivate science fiction fans of all stripes, readers of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen, and anyone who enjoyed the Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman collaboration Good Omens.

    Other books in the Long Earth series include:

    • The Long War
    • The Long Mars
    • The Long Utopia
    • The Long Cosmos

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 19, 2012
    ISBN9780062189608
    The Long Earth: A Novel
    Author

    Terry Pratchett

    Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

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    Reviews for The Long Earth

    4/5

    189 ratings97 reviews

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    • 5/5

      Harper, 1st Edition, ISBN 9780062067753, June 2012

      This collaboration between Pratchett and Baxter seems more Pratchett than Baxter, though a bit more serious in tone than most of Pratchett's solo work.

      We start with two vignettes of people unexpectedly displaced--a young British soldier in France during WWII, and a young, very pregnant woman who lives in a Catholic orphanage in Madison, WI, somewhat closer to the present day. The young soldier finds himself in a place that looks very like France except for the total absence of any evidence of war or, indeed, human habitation. He meets up with some rather odd-looking people whom he concludes must be the Russians he's heard tell of, and finds that they are friendly, helpful, and great singing companions.

      The young woman delivers her baby, alone, in a strange, lonely place, briefly pops--or, as we shall later learn, Steps, away from him, and then returns to take him back to the orphanage with her. Her son, Joshua Valiente, grows up in the orphanage, developing strong attachments to the Sisters who raise him.

      When Joshua is in his teens, he and everyone else wakes up one day to find that a rather eccentric Madison scientist has posted to the internet detailed plans for what he calls a "stepper," and disappeared. There's an immediate flurry to build these startlingly simple devices, and Joshua discovers that he's the only one around who can Step without a Stepper, and without experiencing nausea on arrival in the neighboring Earths.

      That's the setup; the rest of the book follows the unfolding effects of easy migration to alternate, mostly uninhabited, Earths. Some have friendlier climates or more fertile land; there are "belts" of Earths in similar stages of development an ice belt, a water belt; most importantly, a Corn Belt.

      There are a few people like Joshua, who need no Stepper; there are also people who can't Step at all, Stepper or no. Governments try to assert control of "their" territory in adjoining Earths; non-Steppers develop a resentment against those who can simply Step away into free land and new lives while all around the economies of the "home" countries are collapsing from the effects of the deserting population.

      Looming over all of this is the presence that Joshua senses, which he calls the Silence, and the accumulating evidence of other near-human species who are migrating "eastward" through the worlds, fleeing--something.

      Pratchett is always excellent, and Baxter is when he's not being self-indulgent, and this book puts their skills on full display, developing the characters and the cultural and practical effects of the discovery of the Long Earth. It's thoroughly enjoyable, but be warned: it ends with a partial resolution, and clear indications that more should be expected, in the way of future books exploring more of the implications. Well, to be perfectly frank, there's one storyline that ends with a full-blown cliffhanger.

      Recommended, with the caution that if you hate reading a first book without the next books being available, you may want to wait.

      I bought this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Rather disappointing. The plot, what there is of it, took an enormously long time to develop. There are some interesting characters, but many of them never meet and it's not clear what all of them contribute to the story. Also, the main plot lines (the troll migration and First Person Singular) are introduced with very little supporting evidence. Given that Lobsang can only be on one Earth at once, how does he know the trolls are migrating, and how does he know which direction they are taking?What is the evidence that First Person Singluar is a threat?I wonder if the two writers developed the plot line in advance and then both assumed that the other was providing the supporting evidence?There's also the age thing - I get pretty much all the cultural references to old movies, poetry and the like, but the protagonists are much younger than I am. Their tastes reflect those of the book's writers, rather than the interests more likely for their deomgraphic.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Loved the premise - that all most humans need to cross into alternate worlds is the equivalent of Dumbo's magic feather, powered by a potato battery. Had enough long before the end, but still found amusement and delight in the imagininings of Pratchett and Baxter.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I'll be honest, this is not the Pratchett I expected. There's an unexpected appearance of a potato, but it's mostly just a really good scifi novel.  

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is not the diskworld. It is, however, a marvelous though experiment on alternate earths, how to travel in them, and what mankind might do with infinite space and resources. Fascinating, if lacking in Pratchett’s trademark hilarity.
    • 2/5
      Something about the narrative pacing of this reminded of Heinlein.
    • 5/5
      This book was wonderful. the characters are built beautifully and you really start to know them. when i reached the end i simply stared at the page for a few minutes with my mouth open. i can't wait for the next in the series.
    • 4/5
      I find myself confused by the mixed bag of reviews generated from this book. Yes, one of the authors generally writes satirical fantasy novels, and the tone and content of this book is about as far from Discworld as is possible. However, there is no rule stating authors can’t stretch outside their mental and stylistic boundaries, and the resultant science fiction epic in this case is both thoughtful (almost to the point of philosophy) and adventurous. It is science fiction without venturing into space exploration or future technology, examining instead the premise of parallel universes and how humanity would deal with access to parallel earths. I think this quote sums up the premise: “Our pathetic handful of microgravity orbital factories gives the illusion that we are still a space-going species, but the dream has gone…” While there are hints (book titles, even) that the authors might extend their multiverse outside of Earth later, I enjoyed this novel almost as a return to basics. I would have preferred, perhaps, less of a cliff-hanger at the end, and the tone of this book is very reserved and I could see how some might be annoyed by that and/or its erudite aspirations (I liked it, c'est la vie). But, in the age of the production of space operas, or movies such as Interstellar, this book is able to provide aliens and alien experiences while keeping its eye turned in and down, rather than up and out, playing with ideas of evolution, social experience, and the infinities of possibilities all the while.
    • 4/5
      An interesting concept, that I will be looking forward to reading more about. Unfortunately the description of the Long Earth sometimes seems a little inconsistent, and now and then I found myself wishing it was a bit more "hard" sf. I'm especially surprised that "one of the UK's most acclaimed writers of science fiction" didn't realize that, while not losing the material that eventually made up the Moon would have made the Earth more massive, it would also have made it *less dense* (because the heavy elements in the Earth's core weren't lost, only the lighter ones in the crust and mantle), and thus the gravitational pull on the surface would have been *weaker*, not stronger (if the difference was big enough to be noted at all). Not to mention how the difference in radius would have affected stepping, but such things seems to be handwaved whenever they aren't needed to make a point...
    • 1/5
      I couldn't detect much, if any, Pratchett in this book.I only kept reading firstly because it is an e-book and it is not easy on my old Kobo reader to read the last few pages before deciding to delete it, and secondly because i assumed that there would be an interesting ending.There wasn't!
    • 4/5
      Taking that one step to the left can bring you to a new place you didn't know existed--and you can step and step and step forever. But where is home and what makes it home, and why can't some people leave?

      The idea behind this book is very good, but the main character is the Long Earth, not the person whose story we follow. He never seems to have a goal for his life and literally floats through a lot of his life. I wanted to see more of what was going on where people were colonizing the new Earths, and there is certainly more room to add stories.

      I could see Pratchett's input in places, but I missed the grounded-ness of Discworld. Perhaps Baxter and Pratchett were exploring that very lack of being grounded and at home. This was not the best book I ever read, but it was interesting anyway. I like exploring new worlds, even if it is the same one across the dimensions.
    • 4/5
      The Long Earth was fascinating and thought provoking.  I have to say I tried again and again to engage my husband in conversation about "what if" and all the thoughts that this story brought to mind.

      I do lament that there wasn't as much of Terry Pratchett's signature humor as I was anticipating.  I could definitely see some of it here and there but I surely wanted more.  A downside is it took me quite awhile to finish this one.  I thought I would gobble it down in a day but for some reason I just couldn't get sucked in, even though I did really enjoy it, there was just so much awesome description and things to read about, all the POSSIBILITIES I SAY!!! haha.

      I really think part of what gave me trouble was that I couldn't pin down until about 100 pages the main characters in the book were.   Also, this was a very slow moving read, there wasn't enough action compelling you forward.  It was a book for contemplating.  There was so much rich explanation and jumping forward and backward in time that I didn't feel the urgency to finish it quickly that I do with some books.  I didn't see a main story arc progressing.  Even by the end of the book I thought - now what was REALLY the plot?

      Because it moves a lot from character to character, stringing a bunch of things and events together I was often wondering "why the heck did they choose to include this person's story" only to understand their madness later on during the book.  It did give me a bit of a disjointed feeling.

      The Long Earth had a lot of interesting scenarios and things that made you think, "is that how humanity would really react?" moments - but ultimately I felt like it was incomplete.  The book ended way too abruptly.  Yes, the main character Joshua figured out a few major things with his traveling companions, and there was character growth on his part that I was happy with but most of the last events in the book seemed so anticlimactic.  Once I did reach the end of the book my reaction was "Is that IT???" It just didn't feel like its own complete story...even if a book is meant to be a series I still think the individual book should be able to stand on its own.   Obviously, I think there is going to be another book, and while I enjoyed this one I'm not foaming at the mouth for the next one if it goes in a similar fashion as this one.  I'll of course read it though *evil laughter*
    • 4/5
      Great authors can flex their style and this is a fine example. Initially there is more of the Pratchett humour, however it quickly drops off as the novel becomes more concerned with it's science fiction potential. This lack of traditional Pratchett wit is no failing, after all this is not a Discworld novel. Both authors styles can be noted and the multiple storyline threads appease (to some extent) their own strengths, however the only issue The Long Earth presents is a lack of plot direction. There is a lack of drive here, often seen in exploratory science fiction and more frequent in the high brow end of the genre. Pratchett fans will be expecting a strong beginning. middle and end, which is absent here.The characterisation could be stronger, presenting no real emotional draw, however it is a the central idea of The Long Earth which compels the pages to be turned. There are some really strong insightful moments captured between the authors. Ultimately this is a good story and this particular future of Earth and it's dominant species (us) offers so much hope, yet reminds us of our own flawed nature.
    • 1/5
      Excellent concept; dreary execution.
    • 3/5
      A blend of science fiction, humor and fantasy, this is a story of parallel earths. It is a collaborative effort with Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter and is the first book in a series of five books. People travel between the earths by "steppers" or stepping. Over all it was okay, it just didn't feel like much was accomplished. I expected humor and there was some in a Pratchett or Douglas Adams sort. The characters seems a little "coined" and Hollywood and politically correct. Wisconsin was the setting for Datum earth and that was kind of cool. The rest was parallel earths going west or east. In this book they went west. The book had some parts that dragged, even one of the characters mentions that it is too much information. The author's premise was that if man had a enough land (in stepping, there is no limit to land) then there would be no war. Rating: 2.75.
    • 4/5
      I can't wait for the next one.
    • 4/5
      Take a step sideways... and enter a whole new Earth. Humanity suddenly has infinite directions in which to expand, but not everyone has the ability to step. And when the grass is suddenly greener on Earth 1-infinity, but you're stuck unable to leave Datum Earth, you might just be a bit unhappy about it. But this isn't that story. This is the story of what's out there on the Long Earth, settlement, exploration, and one young man with a unique talent.Not exactly post-apocalyptic or dystopian, but definitely thought-provoking.
    • 2/5
      Perhaps more Baxter than Pratchett in this. I enjoyed it, but! it ends on a cliffhanger.
    • 3/5
      I'm not really sure what I make of this book. While I was reading it I was engaged and enjoying it but as soon as I put it down I felt no compulsion to pick it up again and if this hadn't been a 14 day library book I may have never finished it.It was an easy read, the pages and chapters just seemed to fly by but not a lot happens for the first half. As something would seem to get started in a new chapter I was like, NOW the plot is going to take off...and it didn't until almost exactly 1/2 way through, sadly I counted the pages. I liked the characters but I wasn't particularity invested in them, none of them really seemed to change or grow but they were pleasant enough to read about. But a character such as Lobsang should have been fascinating to read about and discover, but not really.Mostly this felt like a long drawn out exploration of the different worlds where they never quite looked at what I found interesting and then just moved on.I found the politics back on Datum Earth potentially interesting but they never really got into that and the ending, well all I can say is I kept flashing to the last Futurama movie before the series was renewed which made it kind of hard to take to serious.I'm glad I read it, I enjoyed it for what it was but I won't read it again and this is going to be one of the few Pratchett books I won't buy.
    • 5/5
      Imagine that today children around the world went missing on account of their new toy. They are gradually brought back, but they've discovered that there are a seemingly infinity number of parallel earths ("The Long Earth").The reviews on this book is decidedly mixed. How the world has changed! Thi It is slow paced and exploratory. It's an adventure in curiosity, not action. If this sounds boring to you, you'll probably want to pass on the book. If you're fascinated already, like I was, take it, devour it, love it.
    • 3/5
      A random selection for me, because I don't usually read Terry Pratchett (I know!), but half price is half price. Also, the blurb begins with this line - '1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up' - so this former Scarlet Pimpernel leaguette couldn't resist. However, I wuz robbed - the character is a reference to Baroness Orczy's hero, but doesn't feature above twice.Cute literary nods aside, the story itself was intriguing but rather a one-trick pony, until the final 'What is this, Star Trek?' chapters (and bonus points for mentioning my other fictional love). On 'Step Day', the population of Earth - and Madison, Wisconsin in particular - discover that there are millions of parallel worlds out there which people can 'step' into. Most need a gadget called a stepper to move into a different plane, but a few, like the book's hero Joshua, are born with this ability. Joshua takes off in an AI-powered airship to investigate these new 'worlds', and meets Sally, the daughter of the man who invented the stepper. That's about the long and short of the plot. I don't mind Terry Pratchett, though I'm not sure how much he and co-author Stephen Baxter contributed to the novel, but his whimsical, slightly surreal style of humour has never really tickled me (like Lobsang, the artificial intelligence with the soul of a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic, hoho). The concept of 'stepping' is clever, but the new worlds are all prehistoric wastelands of one kind or another, and the pioneer metaphor, with families like the Greens abandoning old Earth for a new start, was sort of abandoned for Joshua and Lobsang's jaunt through evolution, via Flight of the Navigator and the original Star Trek. Entertaining and thoughtful, but hardly earth-shattering, pardon the pun.
    • 4/5
      Good book and a great read brimming with so much potential for future books.
    • 2/5
      Meh. I adore Terry Pratchett, and this book definitely has his signature humor, but I really couldn't get into it. This book imagines a world where it is suddenly possible to "step" between multiverses. None of the other multiverses are inhabited by humans, so suddenly there are vast frontiers available to anyone who wants to explore and exploit them. There are lots of interesting ideas in here, which is part of the problem: there are too many ideas and implications to explore thoroughly, which leads to too many ideas and not enough plot to sustain them.Pratchett's characters are normally really likeable, but all the characters in this book felt really flat to me and I just didn't care about any of them. The one character I might have cared about - Sally - suffers from the "Trinity problem": like Trinity in The Matrix, she stands by and watches some mediocre dude save the universe because the circumstances of his birth made him the savior of the universe. To add insult to injury, the ending is not an ending at all, but a cliffhanger that won't get resolved until the next book, which I have no intention of reading.
    • 3/5
      Heavy with Terry Pratchett sentimentality, but interesting nonetheless. Includes some Douglas Adams-like touches, but is generally a straight-up, big ideas, work of serious science fiction. It seems implausible, as if a more imaginative author would have managed to come up with something darker yet more realistic.Large parts are set in Madison, WI, where I spent a good deal of my adult life. The Arboretum, Clean Sweep, Mifflin St., Allied Drive, Badger Road, Picnic Point, the Capitol, all figured in the narrative and I waxed nostalgic.
    • 3/5
      This is only half of a book. :/
    • 4/5
      Reminded me, in an odd way, of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Felt incomplete (probably because it's the first in the series).
    • 3/5
      When a scientist discovers how people can "step" into parallel worlds, he puts the schematic diagram on the internet to prevent any government from monopolizing the technology. Soon, a slew of new problems arise that governments around the world must deal with. Some people, like Joshua Valiente, find they can step without the stepper box. Joshua and Lobsang, a Buddhist computer program that was ruled by a court of law to be human, set out on a journey to see just how many iterations there are on the long earth. The story was humorous in places, but at times I found I had to force myself to continue reading. I read other books by Terry Pratchett that I thought were very good, but I would have to rate 'The Long Earth' as just average.
    • 3/5
      I suspect that you'll like this book much more if you're a fan of Stephen Baxter than of Terry Pratchett. There really isn't much of Pratchett's humor, language and flair in the novel, although he is definitely present in some of the character names.The titular Long Earth is a series of alternative dimension Earths stretching infinitely to the "east" and "west". Some people can step between these earths unaided, others with the help of a simple device powered by a potato, and a small percentage can't step at all. In any case no iron can move across dimensions, which makes for some interesting challenges.Humans don't exist on any of the other earths, and the few intelligent species are secretive, mysterious, and play little role except to flee the big scary something in the dimensional distance. There is also some exploration of what a diaspora across dimensions might do to society, especially for those who can't make the trip. In fact, that aspect was the most interesting part of the novel to me, and the part that seemed to be mostly ignored. Instead the focus is on revealing the scary monster and having the disconnected narrator find a connection to the rest of humanity. Neither of which made for a particularly satisfying conclusion.I think back to the fad for shared-world novels that happened in the late 80s, and I think that this would make a great setting to turn a whole variety of authors loose in, but I doubt it will happen. As it is, The Long Earth is a good idea that didn't really pan out.
    • 4/5
      The world as we know it is just one of a (possibly infinite) number of parallel worlds that can be "stepped" between. Joshua, a natural stepper, sets out to explore further than anyone has ever gone before, with an artificial intelligence named Lobsang and a giant hi-tech airship. It's a very entertaining book as one would expect from the authors, it is hard to say where each had their input as the whole works together very well. Then end sets up nicely for the next in the series and I've started reading already.
    • 4/5
      Mind = blown.