The Long Earth [Hardcover]

Like many others, I suppose, I read this book because Terry Pratchett is listed as primary author. And I read it all the way through to the end, expecting at any moment one of those brilliantly funny, laugh-out-loud paragraphs that are the hallmark of inspired Pratchett.

There aren't any. There's barely even a mildly amusing sentence. There's nothing remotely like the wickedly acidic social commentary of Pratchett at his best. You could tell me that Pratchett had never seen this book, let alone written it, and I'd believe you.

Instead, there's a moderately interesting voyage through multiple versions of the Earth, only one of which contains humans. In all the others, humans never evolved. Most humans can "step" sideways into a parallel Earth using a "stepper box" -- a few can do so unassisted and some can't "step" at all. Our hero, along with the super-AI Lobsang (think 2001's Hal), sets off on a journey across a couple of million parallel Earths. They meet some moderately interesting creatures but never really stop to investigate, come across a couple of moderately interesting colonies of Earth humans but never really stop to investigate, finally meet one enormous Alien Being but never really stop to investigate, hightail it back home to find that their hometown has been blown up by jealous non-stepping humans. The End.

Errmmm .. I'm definitely left thinking, So What? There's no conflict, no suspense, no subtle building of tension. True, some good s-f is mostly an investigation of ideas -- but the parallel-universes idea is hardly new, and none of the other ideas are really developed. I understand that this story is intended as the first of a series -- but I think it could safely have been condensed to a prologue. Nothing much happens, and it's an incredibly long-winded way of setting a scene.

I'll give it three stars because there's some potential here, but I'm guessing you could probably skip it and go straight to the next one. Unless you were looking for some scintillating Pratchett, in which case I wouldn't bother at all.

Intéressant, un peu redondant dans les descriptions et un certain manque d'histoire et de péripéties. Mais un intéressant "tough experiment".

I found the concept of the long earth so compelling, by the end I kind of just felt like that is how the universe is and it's just a matter of time before we are aware of it. It just felt right. However, I didn't find any of the characters sympathetic or compelling so I found the story as a whole unsatisfying.