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The Long Earth
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anewman View Drop Down
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Posts: 78 		Post Options Post Options   Quote anewman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Long Earth
    Posted: 25 Jan 2012 at 01:37
I have just read the synopsis for the new Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter book 'The Long Earth' and thought fellow fans here might like to see it...
 

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

1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No man's Land gone?

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there's no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds a curious gadget - a box, containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a 'stepper'. An invention he put up on the web for all the world to see, and use, an invention that would to change the way mankind viewed his world Earth for ever. And that's an understatement if ever there was one...

...because the stepper allowed the person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth, and if you kept on stepping, you kept on entering even more Earths...this is the Long Earth. It's our our Earth but one of chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side each differing from its neighbour by really very little (or actually quite a lot). It's an infinite chain, offering 'steppers' an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger - and sometimes more dangerous - the Earths get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently.

 But, until Willis Linsay invented his stepper, only our Earth hosted mankind...or so we thought. Because it turns out there are some people who are natural 'steppers', who don't need his invention and now the great migration has begun...

Considering what it represents the Press Release is actually quite poorly written (two authors presumably read and approved it along with all the usual marketing army so why so many errors?). 
 
From a (Discworld) stamp fan's point of view, the obvious question is will the book generate stamps or they confined to the Discworld series. Seeing that the 2015 action takes place in Madison, Wisconsin, perhaps it already has?
 
I wonder if the black box, potato et al, is the 'Thing' from the earlier Truckers books? That would be nice. We will have to wait until June to find out.
 
 
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Steve View Drop Down
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Posts: 1862 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Jan 2012 at 10:40
I too got this press release and have to say it didn't make me jump up and want the book.

The idea of chain of parallel earths has been done before. I could pick out Heinlein's Number of the Beast. In this book the parallel earth's, actually universes, number six to the power of six to the power of six ... a lot. Using a special craft the heroes travel from one realiy to another. In one direction the physical laws change, in another there are alternative histories, and in another a string of fictional worlds come true including Oz and Wonderland. Can Pratchett and Baxter match the humour and weirdness of Heinlein.
Setting it 2015 seems a bad idea to me. Presumably this is to place it in the near future, but that will only apply while the book is new. Just look at the number of 'futuristic' films and TVs that specify dates that have long past.

In a way I would hope this didn't spawn any stamps. Unless it was just some sort of promotional thing.
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Posts: 385 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Murgatroyd Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Jan 2012 at 17:13
Ring around the Sun by Clifford Simak also used the concept of parallel earths, but I'm always glad to see a good author, (Or two in this case), tackle a reoccurring theme. Heinlein used a dimension hopping spacecraft, Terry and Stephen have used a box containing some wiring and a potato with a three way switch on the outside, Simak used a simple spinning top. They all work within their own ficton. I don't think that concepts like parallel earths should be subject to copyright... So much of science fiction and fantasy uses familiar concepts and plot devices... After all, where would we be if such a copyright of concepts had applied to FTL travel? The generation ship? Orcs and Goblins? The Magic wand? The young boy who becomes a hero? As I look along my bookshelves I see these themes repeated time and again... It may have been done before, but it's always good to see a thing done differently. Surely that's what parallel words are all about!
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Posts: 1298 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Colin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Jan 2012 at 23:30
Well I'll be buying the book. It looks like the sort of thing I'd read when I was a teenager, when 2015 seemed an eternity away.
 
And let's all get making our own potato devices before someone decides to sell us one... LOL
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Posts: 1862 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jan 2012 at 00:01
I wonder if that device was inspired by the punch line of the old joke that goes "I've got a job and now I have to get a potato clock"?
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Posts: 1298 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Colin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jan 2012 at 01:43
Or 'chips'?
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Posts: 78 		Post Options Post Options   Quote anewman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jan 2012 at 01:51
or inspired by this guy, an expert on upon, apparently (and the scientific application of potatoes around the universe...
 
 
giheed!
 
 
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or this:
 
 
I don't remember it from the LOTR film, or from the book, but then I don't have dementia.
 
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Posts: 1298 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Colin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jan 2012 at 02:11
Potatoes (and popcorn and a shoe, if you know when to look) also appear in Star Wars, used as stand-ins for asteroids in the deep-space special effects sequences.
 
Happiness doesn't come from getting something we don't have, but through recognising and appreciating what we do have.
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Posts: 1862 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Jan 2012 at 02:17
or here

http://www.taytocrisps.ie/park/
Don't turn around, don't look away, don't even blink

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Posts: 42 		Post Options Post Options   Quote milkman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 20:02
I read 'Snuff' over Christmas and I can't see what the fuss is about!  Perhaps writing as a partnership will bring something new to Pratchett's game? 
 
Justifying an author's lack of original thought by saying they are dipping into established themes for their own take or spin just seems like denial that the author is running out of ideas of their own.  Surely there comes a point where an author realises they are going over old ground and then they have to decide whether to continue or start again.  Isn't it just arrogance that leads them to think that their take is any better than previous iterations?  Or a lack of respect for their readers?
 
Sorry to knock everyone's favourite fantasy writer here but I have tried and am just not a fan (or fanatic!).  Prolific and good writers are a rare occurence.  Even Dickens and Shakespeare peaked.
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Posts: 27 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Hiromi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 21:01
Well it's National Libraries Week, why don't you try broadening your horizons by reading something you would never expect to enjoy.
 
Real, grown up literature for example.
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anewman View Drop Down
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Posts: 78 		Post Options Post Options   Quote anewman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Feb 2012 at 23:40
Well I still like a Discworld book, though I do also re-read a lot of the older ones, which might just be a sign of something I suppose.
 
Anyway, a mate just sent me this link and as I don't have a smart phone I thought someone here might find it useful.
 
 
Cue Discworld questions in the Quiz section...
 
 
 
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Posts: 800 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Keith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04 Feb 2012 at 04:01
I must admit that one of my very favourite Pratchetts is Good Omens, written with Neil Gaimon before it turned out that the latter was an exceptionally fine author in his own write.  So we know he can do wonderful collaborations.

I too have been less than enthralled by Sir Terry's books since Going Postal in 2004 and think that the spark of originality and wit has gone (although I loved I Shall Wear Midnight to bits).  But the fact he can still write at all is a miracle I suppose.  I have to buy them.  My wife said that as I'd bought all his books when he was well I should stick with him to the end and I think she was right.

But hopefully a collaboration will bring more of the sparks of joy, laughter and insight that made lots of us Pratchett fans in the first place. 

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Posts: 77 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Marj Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04 Feb 2012 at 09:30
We used to call burial mounds 'long earth's where I was brought up in the country. And there was a poem about being a long time dead that we used to sing to a tune when skipping and I think that had something about long earths in it too.
 
I shall borrow the book from one of my boys, I have read most of Terry's books now and get them all mixed up so my boys say. My time of life I suppose.
 
I heard on my radio that he is writing his autobiography too, now that I will enjoy reading Thumbs Up
 
 
If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
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Posts: 1862 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Steve Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04 Feb 2012 at 09:36
Originally posted by Marj

I heard on my radio that he is writing his autobiography too, now that I will enjoy reading

Shall I be controversial again? Isn't writing an autobiography rather egotistic? Leave that to the Katie Price's of this world. (Yes I know someone has to do it for her as reading and writing are not part of her skillbase ... allegegedly). No, I'll just say I don't read biographies. Just don't do anything for me.
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