You sound like you're from landan!

Lots of travel happened again, hence lack of updates as I never prepare posts in time.  Over the weekend I was in Jersey (which all the adverts say is the hottest place in the British Isles.  I have yet to see any evidence of this, and have therefore deduced it is all lies. Lies I tell you, lies!) and then on Tuesday I went on a trip to London with Matt. 

We had a round about idea of what we were doing for the day.  I wanted to go to the Forbidden Planet megastore, as I had missed out going the last time I was in London, and on the way we finally found Denmark Street.  Bear in mind that Matt loves guitars and that this road is basically just guitar shops.  Expensive guitar shops.  He was in heaven.  Luckily for non-musical me there was a Foyles bookshop across the road.  I was basically like a kid in a candy shop, that place was HUGE!  Not to mention the vast selection, including books that I haven't been able to find anywhere else in the U.K, bar online.  I knew it was a sign, and who cares if I have plenty on my TBR list already, how could I pass up the chance to own/read Libba Bray's Beauty Queens and the Zombies VS. Unicorns anthology?   

Moving on, or after Matt dragged me away from the books and the Doctor Who merchandise, we found Forbidden Planet, after bypassing a massive tool shop, had a look round and I managed not to buy anything...just.  We then went to Fopp, to peruse their vinyl selection, before heading to lunch and then having a break in Hyde Park.  Or should I say Matt had a nap while I continued reading Mira Grant's Feed.  It was a lovely afternoon, but we weren't done yet.

The main reason for the trip was that last week I had won tickets from SFX to go to the Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter event at the IET, where they would be discussing their new book, The Long War. 

 

It was a really good event, even if answers to questions sometimes took such an indirect route that I was often left wondering what the original question was!  However, if you know me, that's my kind of answer!  Pratchett was full of wit, quantum bollocks is a rather good phrase, Baxter highlighted the process of how a single book by two authors whose styles are rather different, and Terry's assistant Rob was a great mediator.  Shame we never got to use the microphones for a group sing-a-long! 

 

I had a fantastic day, I'm more enthusiastic about reading The Long War and I really can't wait to go to another book event.  I just wish there were more local ones with authors whose books I have read so I'm not completely clueless as to what they are on about!

The Long Earth

This collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter came as a recommendation from a friend.  If I'm honest, even a few weeks after I finished reading The Long Earth, I am still unsure if I really enjoyed this speculative tale. 

1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No man's Land gone?

2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there's no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds a curious gadget - a box, containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a 'stepper'. An invention he put up on the web for all the world to see, and use, an invention that would to change the way mankind viewed his world Earth for ever. And that's an understatement if ever there was one...

...because the stepper allowed the person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth, and if you kept on stepping, you kept on entering even more Earths...this is the Long Earth. It's not our Earth but one of chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side each differing from its neighbour by really very little (or actually quite a lot). It's an infinite chain, offering 'steppers' an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger - and sometimes more dangerous - the Earths get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently.

But, until Willis Linsay invented his stepper, only our Earth hosted mankind...or so we thought. Because it turns out there are some people who are natural 'steppers', who don't need his invention and now the great migration has begun...

Pratchett and Baxter present some interesting concepts and as you would expect that are some amusing pieces of prose, I especially liked Joshua's background and the mentions of the somewhat progressive nuns that raised him, but The Long Earth was more of a prologue than a proper stand-alone story.  I would have loved to have found out more about Lobsang and the Black Corporation, and about the history of the 'natural' steppers.

  Also, when it comes to the structure of a book, I'm normally of the opinion the shorter the chapter the better.  However, in this case, the chapters (which only consisted of a few pages and would often drift from the main story of Lobsang and Joshua) made the book read like collection of short stories.  I do hope that Pratchett and Baxter collaborate again and produce  a sequel for The Long Earth, perhaps they could combine the two in an 1Q84 books one and two to make a more comprehensive novel?