The long earth
The Long Earth (Original title: The Long Earth ) is a science fiction - novel of the British writer Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter . The English-language edition was published in June 2012 by Doubleday in the Random House - Publishing Group , a German translation of Gerald Jung in the following year in also belong to Random House Manhattan publishing .
The novel tells of the discovery of a “changer” that anyone can easily replicate, which makes it possible to travel to an adjacent parallel earth in seconds , making it possible to reach any number of unexplored worlds of the eponymous so-called “Long Earth”. While humanity is beginning to colonize neighboring worlds step by step, the young Joshua Valienté, who is innate with the ability to “change”, ventures into distant areas of Long Earth together with an artificial intelligence named Lobsang.
The Long Earth is the first part of a series that Pratchett and Baxter continued with The Long War , The Long Mars and The Long Utopia , and which in 2016 with the volume The Long Cosmos - in which Pratchett no longer takes part due to his untimely death could - found her conclusion.
History of origin
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Authors Pratchett and Baxter
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The basis of the novel and its sequels is Terry Pratchett's short story The High Meggas , published in 2012 , which he wrote during the publication phase of his first disc world novel ( The Colors of Magic ) in the mid-1980s as a possible starting point for a series still to be developed. The success of The Colors of Magic then prompted Pratchett to put the material aside for the time being in order to continue the story about the Discworld . The decision to resume was made in the late 2000s during a discussion with Stephen Baxter who brought the idea of the "Long Earth" into play, and after which the two authors finally agreed to work together.
The action is set in Madison , Wisconsin , which the authors explain in a note of thanks that a discworld convention was held there when the novel was being written : "In this way, we were able to do a lot of research on site, in one go, as we authors like to say. The convention itself actually became in part a mass workshop on the subject of »Long Earth«.
Pratchett announced the completion of the novel on December 10, 2011 via Twitter . The first edition of the English language version finally went on sale on June 19, 2012.
action
The "Long Earth" is a potentially infinite sequence of parallel worlds that resemble the earth (which serves as a datum point for referencing and is called "the date earth" or simply "the date" in the novel) and can easily be recreated by anyone at home "Changers" can be reached. The "date earth" is lined up in this sequence, the way into the "long earth" leads in two directions, namely to east and west, which is why every parallel earth has the corresponding designation "east 1, 2, 3 ..." or " West 1, 2, 3 ... “carries; in addition, the individual worlds can only be traversed step by step one after the other. While the worlds closer to the datum earth are still quite similar to it, those further away differ increasingly in geology , flora and fauna . What they all seem to have in common, however, is that, unlike on “Datum”, evolution has nowhere produced humans , but it has produced some hominid species such as Homo habilis .
After an initial episode in which a soldier suddenly finds himself in a deserted forest instead of on the battlefield, the main narrative in Madison begins on the so-called changeover day in 2015. On this day, the cranky scientist Willis Linsay disseminated the blueprint of the prototype of the changer on the Internet -Box that only needs a potato as an energy source. The easy-to-build changer is rapidly spreading around the world, especially among children and young people. Since most of them get very nauseous as a result of the change process and many cannot orientate themselves in the adjacent earths West 1 or East 1 or even get injured, there is initially great chaos. However, some people keep their heads clear and help those changers in need. The young Joshua Valienté stands out as a savior, who grew up in a home looked after by nuns and is one of the few people who is able to move into adjacent worlds without technical help from birth.
In 2030, fifteen years after changeover day, Joshua is invited by Lobsang, a sophisticated talking computer who claims to have been a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic in a previous life and reborn as artificial intelligence , to travel in an airship named Mark Twain to tackle the still unexplored outermost regions of the "Long Earth". Together they move many 100,000 steps away from the “date” in order to collect as much information as possible about the parallel worlds. Alongside unknown animal and plant species, they also discover humanoid, changeable species, the giant monkey-like "trolls" and the goblin-like "elves". They penetrate into the area of the earths called "high megas" in the jargon of emigrants, ie more than a million steps west of the date earth.
On the beach of an extensive North American inland sea, they meet the natural changer Sally Linsay, whose father Willis invented the changer and who has been exploring the parallel worlds on her own since childhood. Together with her they continue the journey and come across the Happy Landings settlement about 1.5 million steps west on the North American Pacific coast , a place that has been reached by naturally changeable people for hundreds of years without step-by-step changes. The people there live peacefully with the trolls who communicate through singing.
On the further journey, a gap in the sequence of the worlds in which an earth was never created turns out to be particularly dangerous. In addition, travelers increasingly come across warning signs of an impending danger that is approaching "Date Earth" and forcing trolls and elves to flee towards "Date". An extraordinarily changeable giant organism is responsible for this, which can absorb other living beings and has a unique consciousness. The life form can come into contact with Joshua, through which he learns the name “first person singular” and the goal of their journey, namely the exploration and reception of other living beings. Lobsang can also communicate with her and succeeds in dissuading her from advancing east.
While Joshua and Lobsang are on the road, the novel develops several other, predominantly political and social problems in short episodes that arise for the world's population with the discovery and accessibility of the "Long Earth". So earthly states proclaim geographically congruent areas in other worlds for themselves and subject them to their legislation, but without actually being able to exert an executive influence on them. In addition, the question arises of what it means in economic terms to have practically unlimited resources of raw materials due to the existence of parallel earths. For example, gold becomes worthless because gold deposits like the one that triggered the gold rush in California can now be exploited a thousand times over on other earths. Another obstacle to the spread of humans is the fact that no object made of iron or its alloys can change, so that many tools and machines made of different materials have to be used.
Some emigrants are also accompanied, like the Green family, who voluntarily cut off from any civilization and begin a pre-industrial life without electricity, running water or existing infrastructure. From the diary of the teenage girl Helen Green, the reader learns details about the train to Earth West 101,754 and the establishment of the Reboot settlement in 2026 in a "changeable" version of New England . The Greens left Helen's incapable of changing brother Rod back on "Date Earth", where he joined an increasingly terrorist resistance movement of people who were also unable to change. Rod eventually assassins a devastating attack on the city of Madison at the end of the novel.
main characters
Joshua Valienté
Joshua Valienté is a 28-year-old loner who spends his time wandering neighboring parallel earths in order to be to himself. He was born on a parallel earth by his mother Maria, but then grew up in an orphanage run by nuns on "Datum Earth". Joshua belongs to a small group of naturally changeable people who can travel through the "Long Earth" without technical aids, which is also one of the reasons why Lobsang chooses him as a companion.
Lobsang
Lobsang is an artificial intelligence that claims to have been a Tibetan motorcycle mechanic in a previous life. From a technical point of view, it is a computer, but it was the first machine to succeed in having a court establish that it was a human being. He is a partial owner of the company transEarth , which tries to capitalize on the "Long Earth", and is planning an expedition to distant parallel worlds to obtain information. Lobsang is also the builder and, as an artificial intelligence, also part of the airship, the Mark Twain , with which he and Joshua will eventually embark on the journey.
Monica Jansson
Monica Jansson is a police officer in Madison. While investigating a burned-out house that belonged to a physicist named Willis Linsay who had been missing since the fire, she found the prototype of the “changer” in the rubble, the plans of which had surfaced on the Internet shortly before . Jansson mainly deals with the problem that the possibility of changing in neighboring worlds is increasingly being used for the targeted execution of crimes or assassinations on the "date earth".
Sally Linsay
Sally is the daughter of the missing Willis Linsay, the inventor of the “changer”, but just like Joshua is able to travel through the “long earth” without technical aids. Lobsang and Joshua meet her in an area far from "Datum-Earth", where Sally, who has been roaming the "Long Earth" for a long time as a loner, joins them to solve the riddle of the sudden wanderings of the "Trolls" and " Elves ”.
Sequels
The Long Earth is the starting point of a series that was continued with The Long War (German 2015), The Long Mars (German 2015) and The Long Utopia (German 2016). In July 2013, in an interview with the BBC 2 radio station, the authors announced that they had signed a contract for "at least" 5 books. The fifth book has the English title The Long Cosmos and was published in June 2016, the German-language edition The Long Cosmos was published on November 14, 2017.
Web links
literature
- Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter: Long Earth . Manhattan, Munich 2013. ISBN 978-3-442-54727-2 .
- Terry Pratchett: Big Words - Stories . Piper, Munich 2018. ISBN 978-3-492-28212-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pratchett 2018, p. 83.
- ↑ a b Interview with Pratchett and Baxter on BBC Radio 2 on July 2, 2013 (English; last accessed on May 20, 2014).
- ↑ Pratchett / Baxter 2013, p. 397.
- ↑ Tweet Pratchett's December 10, 2011 (last accessed September 12, 2014).