The Long Earth

23rd September 2013

"The Long Earth"

By: Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

I really, really enjoyed "The Long Earth" and thought it worked well despite bouncing around quite a few different viewpoints covering how the alternative earths opened up to most people. I think it worked because it did show how it come about combined with the way they managed to tie all of the different people together at the end - including showing important events that the actual main characters never get to see in person.

This book is biased upon a short story by Terry Pratchett published in A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Stories, and was actually the start of a series he had been planning on writing before his Discworld series took off.

I think the main complainants people might have with this book is that it is a very short, light and fast read - given the subject matter it could very easily be a lot longer. It's also not hard science fiction and in some ways it comes across more as stories about pioneers and explorers with a science fiction background, rather than a more traditional science fiction book.