Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

The Long Utopia: A Novel
The Long Utopia: A Novel
The Long Utopia: A Novel
Audiobook12 hours

The Long Utopia: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

“Their trademark world building and questions of morality remain intact . . . The explosive cliffhanger ending—also now something of a trademark—promises one final return to the series.” — Booklist

The fourth novel in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s bestselling series, which io9 calls “a brilliant science fiction collaboration.”

2045-2059. Human society continues to evolve on Datum Earth, its battered and weary origin planet, as the spread of humanity progresses throughout the many Earths beyond.

Lobsang, now an elderly and complex AI, suffers a breakdown, and disguised as a human attempts to live a “normal” life on one of the millions of Long Earth worlds. His old friend, Joshua, now in his fifties, searches for his father and discovers a heretofore unknown family history. And the super-intelligent post-humans known as “the Next” continue to adapt to life among “lesser” humans.

But an alarming new challenge looms. An alien planet has somehow become “entangled” with one of the Long Earth worlds and, as Lobsang and Joshua learn, its voracious denizens intend to capture, conquer, and colonize the new universe—the Long Earth—they have inadvertently discovered.

World-building, the intersection of universes, the coexistence of diverse species, and the cosmic meaning of the Long Earth itself are among the mind-expanding themes explored in this exciting new installment of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's extraordinary Long Earth series.

The complete list of books in the Long Earth series include:

  • The Long Earth
  • The Long War
  • The Long Mars
  • The Long Utopia
  • The Long Cosmos
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJun 23, 2015
ISBN9780062297365
The Long Utopia: A Novel
Author

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

More audiobooks from Terry Pratchett

Related to The Long Utopia

Titles in the series (5)

View More

Related audiobooks

Science Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for The Long Utopia

Rating: 4.173076923076923 out of 5 stars
4/5

52 ratings14 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pointless trick ending, but lots of fun pop science. Yet more discussion of evolution through an historical flashback section. Now that the Next are mostly a bit older, they aren't written as much as obnoxious know-it-all teenagers as they used to be; but Stan certainly is. The Sermon on the Mount allusions were awfully heavy-handed.Realistically, Sally LIndsay would have been murdered long ago by some Long Earth-roaming nasties that caught her off guard. She seems to have some sort of secret magical power of basic human decency, a vest with lots of pockets, and dismissive pop-culture based comments.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the best of the Long Earth books in the series despite it being the fourth in the series and with Terry Pratchett failing in health. The book focuses down on a fairly small cast of characters and, the main reason it is so much better that it's compatriots, there is a threat that the various characters can't talk away; they have to act.Lobsang and Sister Agnes have had enough of being well known and treated as near-godlike (Lobsang in that case!) and have decided to become steppers out in the High Meggas. They made the 'mistake' of asking Sally Linsay for advice on a good place to homestead with their adopted son but, at least at first, they think little of her choice as they ease their way into the local society. As time passes though, Agnes feels there's something wrong with their idyll and when she does some basic calculations, she finds its rotation is increasing... and there are those pendants that all the children seem to be sporting. When she investigates she finds out about the silvery beetles that had their own version of stepping, only they'd come North or South rather than West or East. When the USN investigated, they found the beetles had built a series of metallic bridges round the planet that were being used to make the Earth a dynamo, speeding it up and destroying it. Lobsang realises that they'd need the help of The Next to seal off this Long Earth so the beetles couldn't infest the rest of the Long Earths. There were several sections on the creation of the Stepper gene lines that didn't really feed into the rest of the story and was very reminiscent of the Howard Families from Robert Howard.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "The Long Utopia" is more of the same, and if you've arrived to the fourth book in the series with me, that is good news indeed.The title may be a bit misleading, being nothing more than a throwaway reference to an unexecuted plan by a certain faction of the characters. The meat of the story deals with a new threat to the safety of the Long Earth. As the setting of the series has expanded, so too must the threats, and the authors do an excellent job of showing us the stakes.As usual, character takes a back seat to immense sci-fi concept. We do get some development for old favorites, and are introduced to some new characters, but they never feel more like sketches. Instead, what takes center stage is the interaction of the various groups that Pratchett and Baxter have given us, societies clashing on a philosophical level, the nature of humanity adjusting to the new world(s) order.The only part that did not work for me was the extended flashback sections. It sapped away energy from the far more interesting contemporary plot, and without ever connecting to it in any satisfying way. Those sections might have served better as a short story or novella associated with the series, rather than as part of the series itself.As usual, the conclusion of the story is a giant event with no discernible denouement. It is a habit that has always frustrated me, but I have always had the balm of a forthcoming volume to soothe it. I can only hope that in the next (and as I understand it, final) chapter, we are left with a bit more at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I continue to enjoy this series though I finally put my finger on what 'clangs' for me. The belief that people would happily go to a more primitive state with very small social groupings strikes me as unlikely. The assumption that this is true is where I struggle with this series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    And yes, the fourth volume of the series still doesn`t disappoint. The storyline getting more and more cosmic with the introduction of the utterly alien `bugs`. A great book with a powerful ending.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Long Earth series is remarkable in several ways. The books bring together the hard science, mythic characterisation and whimsical detail we should expect from the eminent authors (Pratchett and Baxter applying their respective literary strengths) alongside an underlying concept of great imagination and novelty. The series length (2000+ pages) allows the authors to examine the impact of extraordinary changes to the human condition from many angles. We see how technology, social structures, economies, philosophies and evolution itself react to the lifting of various constraints to their development.The Long Utopia is the fourth book in the series so by now we have a clearer picture of what the Long Earth is and how our heroes/villains will operate in it. Rather than develop the key themes that have bubbled up in the previous volumes - how big is the Long Earth, why have humans only appeared once with no real sapient competitors, what will happen to the Next as their evolutionary split from humanity continues, how are the Next and natural Steppers related, how will humanity reorganise itself within the Long Earth, and many more - this book takes what seems to me a different tangent. What if a fault in the chain of Earths allowed a totally alien life with very different unfathomable objectives and motivations to take over one Earth and threaten the rest? I think this is the weakest book in the series, but still eminently readable and enjoyable. The silver beetles (I presume a Pratchett historical cultural reference) are only ever seen from the human perspective, so are opaque. The solution to their hegemony is never really explained and is executed rapidly (with a nod of thanks, I suggest, to Arthur C. Clarke). This does feel like a book that is marking time and exists only to separate the story from its adjacent siblings. Adding a crisper, condensed version of this story into either The Long Mars or The Long Cosmos would weaken their impact so a separate and therefore longer story in book form was required.Read this as part fo the overall series and regard it as an amuse bouche between more substantial courses.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book 4 in the Long Earth series brings further development of the characters, plot, and the multiverse they inhabit. Once again we consider what it means to be human, indeed what it means to be alive. This instalment was better than the last one I thought.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I borrowed this from the library, being unable to tell clearly from the slight hints on the cover or in the front matter that it was the fourth in a series, so I read it as a standalone novel. There is enough dropping of information to enable the piecing together of the backstory (though frankly some of it doesn't matter and is just a sort of friendly wave to readers of the previous volumes), and I enjoyed having to figure things out, even though this was more to do with my ignorance than a quality of the book itself. On the other hand, it meant that interactions between characters with a lot of history were often partly lost on me.I was struck by how old-fashioned much of this book felt. This really is geek science fiction for science fiction geeks. It seems slightly weird that a book published in 2015 stands so firmly in the tradition of 20th-century SF: sometimes it reads almost like a kind of scrambled pastiche of Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Niven & Pournelle, et al. (all now dead except for Jerry Pournelle). I was faintly irritated by the self-conscious preachiness about human society and the knowing allusions to recent popular culture, which can make even some of the great SF classics read awkwardly.Overall, I found the scenario worked well, and the historical flashbacks were not too disruptive, though they are of more relevance to the series than to this individual novel. I am pleased to have read it, but I am not rushing out to read all the others in the sequence.MB 21-ix-2018
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Long Xxx series has suffered from the "more is less" problem. Each book upped the count of the number of alternate Earths visited, so that each Earth became just a glimpse. Dozens of glimpses does not one good story make. Adding Mars into the mix in The Long Mars just made things worse. Each book also also tracks three to five plot lines that have little to anything to do with each other. With The Long Utopia, slightly less is slightly more. There are only a few plot lines -- one historical -- and just a couple of Earths in play for most of the time. This makes for a more cohesive and readable narrative, helped along by the introduction of an alien threat more in keeping with Baxter's other books. There's a surprisingly weak solution plucked from thin air, but a satisfying climax that is probably Baxter's homage to Childhood's End. If you made it through the the previous books in the sequence, take this as a recommendation to continue. Not for beginners though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These books are different, fascinatingly so. With the setting and characters now well established, a more traditional science-fiction plot than those of the first three books emerges—contact with inscrutable aliens. But this story is equally thought provoking...and seems to leave the door open for further exploration.

    As an aside, Terry Pratchett has long been my favorite author. The Long Earth series that he created in collaboration with Stephen Baxter only goes to exemplify how much potential has been lost when Sir Terry died. These are not like his Discworld stories. They are far darker, less satirical. You won't find many laughs in them. They are, in the immortal words of Monty Python, something completely different. But they show the great diversity Sir Terry had and hint at all the wonderful stories that might have been written in a alternate trouser-leg of time, one in which Death had decided that he could, maybe just this once, make an exception and turn over the glass.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great ending, I could only hope that there could be more!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Long Utopia is a refreshing change after the disappointing The Long War and promising, but ultimately unfulfilling, The Long Mars. It truly captured my imagination like none of the other books, including TLE.Unlike previous installments, including The Long Earth, TLU contains a predominant story line rather than the "Four Lines, All Waiting" approach. Yet it still succeeds in its massive world building (and destroying) project, and brings some characters' developments to a satisfying conclusion (I assume, since I haven't finished The Long Cosmos).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My SO got me this book without realising it was part of a series, and trusting in their common sense I also started to read it without realising that it was part of a series.It worked anyway. Of course I missed some worldbuilding and backstory of characters that were obviously already well established, but they were introduced with enough information that it was easy to take to them. I found the premise of a multiverse of many parallel worlds intriguing (something very Baxter-like), but missed a bit Pratchett's amazing characterisation skills.In any case, good enough to hunt down the other parts.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Three books in, you'd think we might have been able to dispense with the world-building activities. I confess to having grown less interested with each passing installment of the Long Earth series: The first intrigued me with the novelties of and possibilities inherent in the central conceit (people can "step" sideways into what are essentially parallel earths, with just slight differences between one and the next. Over dozens, hundreds, thousands and millions of steps, however, those differences can loom quite large). The payoff wasn't there in the first novel, but I assumed as the cosmology built out more, that feeling would dissipate.

    Nope.

    Instead, each new story has indulged the uge to introduce yet more "novel" mechanics and contrivances, to just straight-up skip long stretches of "insignificant" time (where there are no novel inventions propagating, and thus saving us from having to read about the "characters," what shaped them, and other such dalliances that only get in the way off our fictional science, thank you). This is no different, where now we set upon a world where you not only can step sideways, you can also step forward and backward, and there's a Dyson sphere and ...

    It's all too much. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the full third that was given over to the early history of a Victorian British secret society of steppers, its incogruity and total disconnect from the rest of the story went a long way toward proving to me that this really would be better off as a series of short stories presented from different authors (a la the Afterblight Chronicles) rather than a series of novels.