Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter: A Review

This is one of my favourite new books.  


While The Long Earth is indeed about parallel earths, but as the authors very quickly point out, it is one on a grand scale.  “All those parallel earths are identicalon all but the detailed level,” one character points out early on, “Oh save that they are empty… this is tough luck on Adolf Hitler, who hasn’t been allowed to win his war anywhere!”

Imagine millions of earths coexisting with our earth on a slightly dimensional plane on ether side of this earth, and you get the picture.  Travel between the earths is possible by “stepping.”  Some use a device called a stepper (which when described, you can sense the whimsical hand of Pratchett behind it) while others seem to have a natural talent. Others can’t step at all.

Authors Pratchett (famous for his Discworld series) and Baxter (his Odyssey was reviewed in an earlier posting on this blog), with a mixture of humour, gentle satire and awe, paint a wide canvas of a world whose population one day awakens to realize that the old saying “there’s only one earth” no longer applies, but there are literally millions of new worlds the taking, and how the peoples of the earth wrestle with the vast implications of what now faces them.

The book has a number of characters and plots, but the main plot follows the path of an unlikely pair of a natural stepper, Joshua Valiente and an intelligent computer program who may have once been human, Lobsang, as they explore deep into the Long Earth to find the source of an impending disaster, sweeping in like a tidal wave of doom across the alternate universes, that will eventually overwhelm and destroy the home (or datum) earth, along with the entire Long Earth, if not stopped.

But that’s all I’m going to say here.  

My recommendation: if you’re looking for a great summer read that will keep you turning pages, buy this book. And then, of course, you’ll have to wait for the next book in the series, The Long War, coming soon.


Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Amelia Earhart’s Plane Found on Sonar?


Regular readers of this blog will know that we’ve closely followed the search for Amelia Earhart’s aircraft by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). 

Now, perhaps, most intriguingly, their search may have paid off. TIGHAR'S long-standing mission has been to find the twin-engined Lockheed Electra that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan flew in while making the fateful Pacific leg of their round-the-world flight attempt, before vanishing in July 1937.

A sonar scan shows an “anomaly” resting in about 600 feet of water, off of Nikumaroro Island, which is some 350 miles from their planned destination, Howland Island.

Is this Earhart's Plane? - TIGHAR


This, along with a recently unearthed picture taken in October 1937, showing some debris closely resembling the landing gear of Earhart’s aircraft sticking out of the water off of Nikumaroro Island, is the strongest evidence unearthed thus far to suggest what happened to the plane.

But what happened to Earhart and Noonan?  Were they trapped in their plane when it crashed, perhaps rendered unconscious by the impact and couldn’t escape?  Did they make to the nearby island, where they managed to eke out an existence for a while? If so, what happened after that?

It’s likely these questions will never be fully answered and the mystery that had intrigued so many – including myself – for well over 75 years, will endure.  Amelia, of course, is a prominent character in my alternate history novel War Plan Crimson and has a short story all to herself in my alt-history collection, Elvis Saves JFK!

Meanwhile, you can help out a poor unemployed writer by purchasing both Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 (both are free to preview). Both books are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store.  And if you’re looking for an experienced marketing communications guy, do me a favor and have a look here. Thanks.