{"id":1209,"date":"2018-08-15T15:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T21:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2018-08-12T15:32:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T21:32:50","slug":"book-the-long-earth-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/15\/book-the-long-earth-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Long Earth (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1462191910l\/30074233.jpg\" alt=\"The Long Earth\" width=\"318\" height=\"318\" \/>The Long Earth<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2012<br \/>\nAuthor: Terry Pratchett &amp; Stephen Baxter<br \/>\nLength: 691 minutes \/ 11.52 hours<\/p>\n<p>Having read a few of Sir Terry Pratchett\u2019s books before, I am no stranger to the randomness of his writing style. Usually, he has some character or object that just doesn\u2019t fit in a normal narrative, but he manages to work it in with an explanation that\u2019s both natural and makes sense. However, this only works if Pratchett has control over the entire story. Unfortunately, as is the case in\u00a0<em>The Long Earth<\/em>, the randomness that Pratchett brings to the table sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the mostly sci-fi story. For instance, does an artificial intelligence have to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman? If you want to take the story seriously, probably not.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, this book seems to be mostly written by Stephen Baxter, with only a smattering of Pratchett\u2019s charm thrown in occasionally for levity. I haven\u2019t read any of Baxter\u2019s other books, but I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019d want to, considering how\u00a0<em>The Long Earth<\/em>\u00a0was put together. First off, the entire book seems to be an exposition dump about \u201cstepping,\u201d which is the process wherein people can move from one parallel universe into another. None of the narratives seems dedicated to anything in particular. With no goal in mind, the story will often get distracted away from the main character during little vignettes that explore some of the potentials of the multiverse theory presented therein.<\/p>\n<p>I did appreciate the amount of thought that went into the limitations and peculiarities of stepping between parallel Earths, but when that\u2019s the only focus of the book, it tended to get repetitive. So often, I\u2019d be listening to this audiobook and realize that there wasn\u2019t much dialogue between these characters; they were mostly spewing out more explanation about the Long Earth in a series of expository dumps of information.<\/p>\n<p>A book full of sci-fi exposition, I give\u00a0<em>The Long Earth<\/em>\u00a02.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Long Earth Year: 2012 Author: Terry Pratchett &amp; Stephen Baxter Length: 691 minutes \/ 11.52 hours Having read a few of Sir Terry Pratchett\u2019s books before, I am no stranger to the randomness of his writing style. Usually, he has some character or object that just doesn\u2019t fit in a normal narrative, but he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,54],"tags":[73,55,368,8,1437,1040,1436],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-0-stars","category-book","tag-73","tag-book","tag-multiverse","tag-review","tag-stephen-baxter","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-long-earth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}