An invitation you can't refuse

I was fairly unaware that The Long Cosmos even existed, figuring that given Terry Pratchett died not long before The Long Utopia was released, Lobsang's voyage to the outer realms was the end of it.

However, It seems that Stephen Baxter had enough material to finish the series, and thus we get the voyage of Joshua Valiente one more time. 

There's a lot happening in this one, (not that there isn't in all 5 volumes), Starting with Josh, essentially estranged from his children venturing off into the high meggers in his 70's. Nelson, the Anglican priest, gets a notice from some algorithm of Lobsang that he has a grandson. And everyone on all of the long earths gets an invitation to "Join us". Near as SETI projects can pinpoint it, coming from somewhere near Sagittarius. (Doesn't hurt that even the non human sapient species hear the call.)

The Next end up dragging in normal humans to help build The Thinker, a giant AI encoded in the Invitation.

Josh ends up in serious trouble with injuries and winds up being cared for by Trolls until his son Rob comes to rescue him. Followed almost as quickly by Josh and his troll friend Sancho rescuing Rob on an alternate Earth filled with hydrogen trees.

Nelson goes with Lobsang's adopted son into the simulation where Lobsang is currently hiding after meeting his grandson, who vanishes along with a Traveler that Nelson's family was living on stepped away.

Which eventually means every surviving major character from the series winds up on one of the Pi Earths that houses The Thinker. And eventually, the invitation is answered.

We never do get a more philosophical answer as to what it all means, although Sancho's thoughts on the matter are probably the truest of all of them.

I'm not sorry I read this, but I'm kind of happy it's officially over now.

Good night, funny man

Here, we reach what is almost the end of Terry Pratchett's career, with one last post mortum novel due out later this year in an offshoot of a series I love.

Not that I don't love the Long Earth series, but I find it sad that we'll probably never see another book in the series, unless Baxter does what Mercedes Lackey did with Bedlam's Bard and gets a new co-author.

Anyway, once again, The Long Utopia picks up a few years after the events of The Long Mars, with The Next living in a hidden Earth known as The Grange. Lobsang and Agnes move way out in the West worlds in a community named New Springfield, where the folks keep permanent residences, but mostly step around to follow the herds. Joshua spends most of the first part of the novel looking for his father, while Sally continues to be enigmatic and under-developed.

Again, we have many disparate plots flying around, and again, they don't particularly line up that well, although they do eventually tie in at the end.

See, out in New Springfield, the current incarnation of Lobsang (now living with his adopted son under the name George) runs across a mystery the local children have discovered, involving vaguely humanoid beetle like creatures made of both organic material and metals. The Beetles seem to be able to Step "North" and "South" verses the normal "East" and "West" on the Long Earth and the Long Mars. Stepping "North" winds up in "The Planetarium", which is essentially something akin to the Delta Quadrant in Star Trek.

In the meantime, the Next are trying to recruit Stan, a Next living in Miami West 5, where they're building a space elevator that Sally's father brought back the idea for from Mars in the last book. Stan isn't particularly thrilled with the Next, who seem to be fighting amongst themselves about what essentially boils down to a "Divine right" verses a "Benevolent Despot" approach to humanity.

All of this is interspersed with Joshua's ancestor, Luis, who started off life in Victorian London performing illusions by Stepping "Widdershins" or "Diasil" (Well, to be fair, Luis starts off calling them "Dexter" and "Sinister", but the latter terms become preferred among the group Luis gets recruited to help take care of those who would work against Victoria's consort, Albert. Who isn't in a can.) Long story short, Luis and his compatriots have a bunch of adventures in stepping through World War I, and eventually set up an arrangement to marry off their descendants in perpetuity to help the Stepping Gene breed true.

So, we get a lot of thought experiments around the time we find out exactly what the Beetles are actually doing out in the High Meggers. Most of which ties in with the themes of expansion at any cost, death, and religion. Some of this revolves around the idea of creating a seed that could go colonize another planet then have that colony go off and colonize another in an ever expanding colonization process. The problem being, much like Civilization, that's unsustainable in the long run. Plus it becomes like the aliens in any number of sci-fi media, there to drain the resources of a planet, rather than coming in Peace.

And in the end, we get what I'd like to think of as Pratchett's benediction for us, his readers. A vision of his Utopia, and a strange meditation on death and sacrifice.

While I would love to see another volume in the series, where this one ends is probably where the entire thing ends, except in the hearts and minds of the readers, to whom these characters will exist in perpetuity.

And there will come soft rains....

Once again, I find myself trying to figure out why I like Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's Long Earth series so much, given that there is no real overreaching plot, more just vignettes chronicling specific characters as they cross and recross several different iterations of Terra. (Or in the case of the latest installment, The Long Mars, Mars.)

In this case, we're still following Joshua Valiente as he investigates those who are evolving out of the Long Earth, Sally Linsay as she and her father cross "The Gap" to Mars, and Maggie Kauffman as she leads a crew out to Earth West 250 million. Lopsang is less of a presence in this entry, although he does have an overarching narration to try to tie together the disparate plot threads.

Joshua's narrative involves what may or may not be a new speciation of humans, the youth who call themselves "The Next". We encounter them in both Joshua's tale and in  Maggie's journey when she fings the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Neil Armstrong I. In Joshua's case, this involves dealing with a child he met in Happy Landings a few years back (Happy Landings being a very high numbered Earth West where people who fall through the soft places tend to wind up... It's also one of the few places trolls and humans live harmoniously.) He's on hand to witness as the the USLONGCOM (Basically what's left of the US government military operations, now relocated to Madison West 5 after the Yellowstone volcano pretty much wrecks havok on Datum Earth) takes "The Next" prisoner and puts them in isolation at Pearl Harbor on Datum Earth.

Maggie's voyage focuses on the variety of of life as it evolved elsewhere in the infinite Earths, and provides tales of human compassion missing elsewhere. Maggie is kind of the conscience of humanity in this. She takes a Beagle (sapient bipedal dogs introduced in the last book) onto her crew along with several trolls. This leads to revelations on why the Beagles really dislike some of the human scientists in their world. She tries to find a way to get medical help for a creature someone shoots at (through a window) in the really high numbered Earths. And she's the one who ultimately gets to decide the fate of the Next after running across a group of them from Happy Landings way out in the 200 millions.

Sally, who's not exactly happy with her father, none the less accompanies him to Mars. "The Gap" (the first iteration of Earth going West where there is no Earth [likely caused by an asteroid collision early on]) has a Mars with vegetation. (The idea that gets relayed here is that as life crossed the gap, DNA managed to hit Mars. There's also the idea that variations on Mars had the right volcanic melting of ice that allowed life to flourish for however long.) Their journey finds that there is life on "Joker Marses", where the conditions for life are still being met or have been met previously. And ultimately, their journey os one of trying to figure out if the ends justify the means. Yes, "Step Day", unleashed by Willis, wound up being a net positive, but the cost of life was very high. The sacrifices he makes on Mars looking for something specific may also have similar benefits for humanity, but there's an equally large sacrifice made in the process. The comparison to Greek mythology's Daedalus is made about Willis Linsay, which seems rather fitting in the end.

It's not a terribly long book, but it's fun to read. And it does seem to capture the essence of humanity in all of its narratives, capturing moments of fear, hatred, hope, and joy.

It just keeps going and going and going.....

I was mildly disappointed when I opened The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, since the first book in this series, The Long Earth, ended on something of a cliffhanger. Thus, when book 2 opened 20 years after the events of book 1, I was mildly annoyed.

That annoyance didn't last terribly long as the plot got rolling along. Once again, most of the focus is on Joshua, an orphan and natural stepper currently living in Hell-Knows-Where on Earth West 1 million or so. He has a wife and kids now (the wife being the one whose journals narrated part of book 1, talking about how settlement of the Long Earth progressed), and serves as mayor of his town. Then Sally (another natural stepper, but one who can sense the "soft spaces", places where one can get between multiple Earths at a go) re-enters his life, begging him to go back to Datum Earth to do what he can about the mistreatment of the Trolls.

(For those of you who have not read the first book, here's a quick setting synopsis. On step day, plans for steppers popped out on the internet via Sally's father. Made of cardboard and a potato to power it, one could hit the switch and "step" East or West onto a parallel Earth. Or several steps, really. Josh and Lobsang [Lobsang being an AI who thinks he is the reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman] took a special airship West across the Long Earth to see what they could find. Along the way, they found races that could also "step", most of which had not ever really been seen on "Datum Earth". One such race was the trolls, who have a group intelligence and communicate in song. Another, Elves, were bloodthirsty hunters.)

Josh's wife, Helen, is fighting with her dad, who lives a few steps away in Valhalla, which is currently involved in a dispute with Datum Earth over the so called Aegis laws. Which basically state anyone living in an alternate Earth in what would be current US political boundaries (Most of the Earths retain similar shape, but there are "jokers" and a few worlds where the Earth no longer exists) must submit to US regulations. Folks in far out Earths like Valhalla feel that they're being taxed without representation. Which leads to the trip of the USS Benjamin Franklin across the worlds to remind settlements that they are still United States citizens. What that crew finds between poles of Datum DC and Valhalla is a mushy middle ground where they have to step in to help solves strange disputes in various colonies. We also have a Chinese expedition going East to Earth East 6 Million, wherein we see another theme of the novel... One of the worlds they pass is habitated by non-human sapient creatures about to be wiped out by a typhoon. That the crew does nothing to help them causes a very reserved girl from Valhalla to finally find her humanity.

We also have trolls vanishing about halfway through, which makes the last half a race between Josh and Sally to figure out who can find the trolls first.


I enjoyed this book, and indeed, I've enjoyed the series so far. And this one was an improvement, since there weren't near as many plot threads in play. There's still quite a bit going on, but the narrative is much more cohesive in book 2.