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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: The third novel in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's "Long Earth" series, which Io9 calls "a brilliant science fiction collaboration." 2040-2045: In the years after the cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to myriad Long Earth worlds. Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous rescue work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper device, Willis Linsay. He tells her he is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars and wants her to accompany him. But Sally soon learns that Willis has an ulterior motive for his request. . . . Meanwhile U. S. Navy Commander Maggie Kauffman has embarked on an incredible journey of her own, leading an expedition to the outer limits of the far Long Earth. For Joshua, the crisis he faces is much closer to home. He becomes embroiled in the plight of the Next: the super-bright post-humans who are beginning to emerge from their "long childhood" in the community called Happy Landings, located deep in the Long Earth. Ignorance and fear have caused "normal" human society to turn against the Next. A dramatic showdown seems inevitable. . . ..… (more)
User reviews
(Yes, that is his middle name.)
And yet, something is lacking that leaves me feeling dissatisfied after finishing. The Long
In short, The Long Mars is trying to do too much at once, and it waters down the impact of any one thing that might otherwise make it better.
All that aside, I enjoyed the books. There's a lot to like about it. I think exploring all the different possible iterations that the earth's evolutionary track might have taken is fantastic. And what about Mars? How might Mars have gone differently? And what kind of life might have evolved there, or how might life be different on Earth if something had been gone differently here? It's really cool, and that's not even accounting for all of the potential politics.
There are two more books in the series--The Long Utopia and The Long Cosmos. I look forward to reading both, but I hope that Pratchett and Baxter can do better, or at least be more focused, in these last two novels.
But then things begin to change. The Gap world, a parallel universe where the Earth has been destroyed in some ancient cosmic cataclysm, leaving - well, a Gap - turns out to be ideal for getting into space quickly and cheaply (as long as you're not too concerned over which space you get into). Just get into your spaceship, step into the Gap, and suddenly you are floating in space without all the drama and expense of that rocketry palaver.
So some of our characters travel to Mars, in search of sentience, hopefully with artefacts. Here at least are all the Marses you could wish for, including some where that planet's cosmically brief habitable period is long enough for life to evolve. The authors make a fair job out of imagining alien life, though one begins to wonder quite how much of this was Pratchett by the time this was published (in 2014) and how much was Baxter.
Meanwhile, back in the Long Earth, a race of advanced humans have appeared, who have many of the features of 1950s pulp sf 'mutants' - highly advanced intelligence, a group mind (though there are no hand-waving psi powers here, just a strong group consciousness, social interactions and intuitive inter-communication), and a cool disdain for those simple souls who cannot appreciate their greatness and talents (that's the rest of us, to make that clear). I found this plot strand chillingly prescient; it has parallels with some of our political realities in the 2020s, with authoritarian politicians promoting a line of technocratic superiority which the rest of us voters are too simple or too hoodwinked to understand. In the end, these 'Napoleons' (whose charisma is one of their strong points) are accommodated within the reaches of the Long Earth. That may turn out not to be a lasting solution.
There are some problems over the novel's structure. The first of these 'Napoleons' is introduced in a series of flashbacks, and those flashbacks aren't handled particularly well. The very nature of this story will mean that it is going to have multiple p.o.v. characters; there are those readers who find this approach to story-telling unfathomable, though a story about an infinite number of parallel universes was always going to be too big for just one or two central characters. But the introduction of the Napoleions, with this series of flashbacks that are themselves scattered over two or three chapters might well infuriate some readers.
We begin to see some speculation as to the cosmology behind the Long Earth - some ideas on the topology implied by its existence, the reasons why Gap worlds exist, and the question of just how the situation arises in the first place - is there a strong anthropic principle at work here, that it's the existence of Mind that causes the quantum fluctuations that call the parallel worlds into being? And if so, then why do so many Earths appear devoid of intelligent life?
Non-UK readers should beware; although most of the characters are Americans, the whole novel is infused with a certain kind of Britishness. There are a lot of British names resoundingly dropped. A crustacean civilization is discovered on the shores of a distant Earth which is nothing more than the rock pool crabs who worship the Eyeballs in the Sky in the 1960s Daily Mirror cartoon strip 'The Perishers'. And one of the Long Mars settings is the Mars of Gerry Anderson's feature film 'Thunderbirds are Go!". Genre fans everywhere will cope with this, but more general readers beyond the UK who have been attracted by the status of the authors might find this puzzling or off-putting.
I was beginning to think that this series had run out of steam; I'm pleased to be proved wrong. I shall now happily continue to the final two volumes in the series.
Stuff happens. Even some exciting stuff.
But- it doesn't seem to happen to a purpose or for a reason. And the various plot threads- while connected by characters- do not tend to enhance each other. I keep expecting them to weave back
So, it's pretty much a fail for plotting. The main individual characters are reasonably well-drawn, but tend to do what enhances what plot(s) there are, rather than creating their own. The tech is kinda dumb- is this really what people would do?
And the whole idea of the Long Eearth, with multiple accessible alternative Earths to which one could emigrate- alone, or with a like-minded group- while there's some interesting stuff going on with that, it's not as compelling as is could be. There are so many options of ways to create "utopias"! I'm sure people would be trying such! But not here...
The Mars aspect was rather extraneous, and its only purpose was to maybe create a context that will develop in the next in the series.
Not really recommended, though if you're reading the series you may want to continue. Not a great place to start, though.
As Mars is still uncharted territory, beyond the probes sent up before Step Day, the natural steppers are recruited. It's a chance for Sally to reconnect with her father. As there is mounting evidence that Mars once had an environment that could have supported life (and may very well have), the Long Mars travels are a way to explore the many what-ifs that could have played out under different circumstances.
While there are nods to Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series, the Martian landscapes are pure Pratchett and Baxter. Mars throughout remains an inhospitable environment to Earthlings, but there are some Mars version with thriving alien flora and fauna that remind me of Hal Clement at his best.
Back home on the Long Earth, there are a few other side plots. First, there is the continued fall out (literally) from the Yellowstone eruption. Next, there is a joint exploration between China and the United States. Finally, there's a plot about a new breed of humans, ones who are scary smart and seem to have more powers beyond the natural stepping the Joshua and Sally have. This last plot seems to be the stringer for a possible fourth book.
When The Long Mars was first announced, the title I saw floating around was The Long Childhood, clearly with the mutant plot being the highlighted one. That title would still work well for a fourth book if one is planned.
The Next, an, as yet, small group of super intelligent youngster appear to threaten the overwhelming masses of homo sap but Lobsang reckons any intelligence is worth saving and he calls in help from some of his contacts. Maggie and Joshua have to decide whether they should nuke the community where many of the Next have congregated but finally decide that it wasn't worth the risk - they'd have missed quite a few with dire consequences.
Meanwhile Sally, contacted by her father for the first time in decades, gets invited on a trip to the Mars of Gap Earth where their sojourn through the Long Marses leads to the discovery of a Space Elevator and an intelligent species.
Like 'On the Steel Breeze' I found that the various characters all having their own strands of story tended to break up the flow of the story as a whole and while they did finally converge, this part of the book was rather hurried. It will be interesting to see how the Long Earth saga continues in the next book, 'The Long Utopia'
NOTE: Borrowed from the Anne Arundel County
(2016 Review #5)
Weaknesses: well, there's not a lot of opportunity for character development, the book is distinctly British, even though it's
Strengths, again: well I really enjoy seeing how conflicts are settled without weapons. And I like the talking cat. But when I think sadly of no more Pratchett books to come, I won't be thinking so much about this series. They're better than average, but they aren't great.
Library copy
It is hard for people of ordinary intelligence, i.e., the authors, to convey super-intelligence, and they don't do it that well. Iain Banks probably does a lot better in his Culture novels, but then again his super-intelligences are not human.
The disparaging remarks made by Sally's father about the activities of the astronaut programs that pre-date the Long Earth are pithy, and may be on target.
A copy of Madison gets to come back as the capital of the United States.
I did wish that there was more of a cohesive plot structure to this book. It just sort of meanders through 2 different expeditions, simultaneously, where stuff happens, but no particularly climactic events, and when eventually the reader has enough spoon-fed information to know a bit about the Next, that situation resolves itself rather unexcitingly, and the book is over. Thus, this novel presents an interesting thought experiment, but is not a very entertaining novel.
The Next, an evolution of humanity that seems to have developed in just one generation, was my favorite storyline in this book.
I'll be ready for the
Whilst this is happening, the US Navy is intending on going to the very limits of the Long Earth, stepping through thousands of parallel world to explore and locate a previous mission. But humanity also has a challenger; the Next. These super bright people have evolved in these new parallel worlds and have a natural ability to step, and a lot of them are living their new community, Happy Landings, deep in the Long Earth. People see them as a threat.
As we follow them on their journeys, we see the new and wondrous things that they discover; new life, hostile environments, new landscapes and occasional threats. They don’t stop that often, preferring to skip through the worlds at a frantic rate. The Next have been collected onto one world and are being prevented from moving off it as they pose the biggest threat to humanity, but others think differently and think they should be free.
Much preferred this book to the second in the series. The three loosely interwoven stories are wrapping up details and plotlines from the first and second books and are opening up new threads to be continued. Sadly wasn’t quite as good as the first. Writing about people crossing worlds can drag a little, and it could have had more about the worlds where they do stop. I did like the nod to Clarke and Herbert with some of the things that they find. More interesting is the new step in evolution for humanity. Looking forward to where the story is going to go in the next two books.
In this book three explorers take advantage of a natural phenomena called the Gap to travel to Mars where they begin to step across the alternate versions of that planet. Their objective is to find what one of them has speculated as a piece of technology they were bound to find. On the Long Earth developments in human evolution hold out prospects of an acceleration in the human condition or the potential for war.
Like the earlier volumes this book spits out ideas about everything - science, technology, sociology, evolution, aliens, lost civilisations - at a bewildering rate. Hardly a page goes by without some new thought that any other writer would turn into a full book and I think this is the weakness here. There are so many ideas that one wants to read more about or to think more about that the underlying story gets lost. What the characters are up to often palls alongside the artefacts or creatures one meets and wants to learn more about.
As always, this is another exciting story based in hard-(wish) science and thinking.
And if that doesn't sound like an interesting premise for a novel, well,
I love it. I can't get enough of it, and will be immediately ordering the next in the series when and if it is ever written.
However, I must wonder how much longer the series can go, and in what way it could possibly end. As the strangeness and revelations of it grow bigger and bigger, those of earlier volumes are dwarfed in comparison. It's an arms race of oddness, and I worry that the whole edifice will grow top heavy.
"The Long Mars" reads like a middle volume, which is why I hope so much that the story will go on. There certainly seems to be more to tell.
There are some novel ideas in this book, but some just seem to be a repeat. Still I enjoyed this book and will continue on with