Tony Black reviews The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter…
The final chapter in The Long Earth series, The Long Cosmos shall resonate in memory for being perhaps the final piece of published writing from the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, who sadly died in 2015. The series, co-authored with hard science writer Stephen Baxter, originated from an idea Pratchett had tucked away since before even he started his long-running Discworld series, on which he made his name, and came to fruition following a dinner party with Baxter in the late-2000’s after which they decided to collaborate on bringing it to life.
Originally sketched out as a trilogy, The Long Earth saga ultimately needed extra room to breathe and this fifth and final entry was completed by Baxter upon Pratchett’s untimely death. He does a fine job in bringing to a conclusion what could have been a jarring juxtaposition between two very different writers; Pratchett, one of the masters of comic fantasy, and Baxter, one of the giants in speculative science-fiction. The Long Cosmos, however, much like the previous four books, manages to fuse these two disparate talents together in an enjoyably imaginative, often lightly and comfortably jovial way, shot through with plenty of pop-culture references and fascinating scientific concepts. It also borrows heavily from the Jodie Foster film Contact, which is brilliant and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Indeed that film itself is mentioned on more than one occasion, the narrative follows essentially the exact same concept as Carl Sagan’s original novel, and Baxter actually consulted with Wisconsin residents with a serendipitous connection to the character of Ellie Arroway, who Foster played in that movie. The connections are far from coincidental, and serve to illuminate a tale which concludes the ‘stepping’ adventures of pioneer Joshua Valiente while opening up The Long Earth world into a much wider universe along the way. Pratchett & Baxter don’t just step but indeed leap in terms of the setting and characters for their final book, moving ahead decades to Joshua as a lonely old man who seeks solitude with the song of Silence in the so-called ‘High Meggers’, the worlds far away from the original ‘Datum’ Earth, our own world (incidentally ‘The High Meggers’ was the title of Pratchett’s original story concept).
His is just one story weaved into a larger, almost ensemble tapestry; aged priest Nelson Kaziuwe getting a message from the enigmatic Lobsang (now an enhanced AI, effectively) which sets him off searching for a family he didn’t know he had; Joshua’s own adventures in far away worlds with the Al Pacino-sounding trolls (hoo! ha!); and principally an unnerving message, the Invitation, sent across the cosmos from a possible alien intelligence which brings together scientists, sinister corporations, the US Navy, and the calculating enhanced Next on a project of discovery. This is just scratching the surface of a plot which twists, weaves, adds depth and complexity, and throws in enough adventure, imagination and indeed wit to keep most other writers busy for twenty books, let alone one.
Even with Baxter’s penchant for hard science (which is far more apparent here than Pratchett’s acerbic droll, only popping up occasionally), what never becomes lost in the stepping and conceptual scientific ideas is the warmth of heart built into The Long Earth story and it’s characters. There’s a wistfulness about this book, a sense of ending, perhaps not just for Joshua but Pratchett himself, and a sense of looking back on a world unrecognisable and searching for constants, for memories, for as the trolls call it “remember”. It’s a story about family, about the loss and rediscovery of family, the importance indeed of maintaining those relationships and that humanity in the face of so much ‘other’, and in the end about finding a family with those you are thrown together with, across divides equally in terms of background and race.
Much is made of the trolls here, the comparison of them to migratory species often considered inferior, with the character of Sancho almost feeling like a Planet of the Apes-style conduit to the humanity of a species that isn’t all that far away from us. Baxter & Pratchett maintain those messages without them ever becoming preachy, or ever losing sight of the sense of scale or wonder of their story. Come the climax, as Joshua & a rag tag and splendidly eccentric group of unlikely pioneers explore the unknown, you’re not just reminded of Contact, but of Star Trek or 2001 (which the book pays a heavy nod and wink to), of all those works of science fiction which pushed the boundaries of human experience. While these two writers make this happen with a redoubtably British tongue in cheek, they do so equally with a true sense of comforting, innocent wonder and hope, and it makes for lovely, spirited reading.
You’d do far worse than to check out The Long Cosmos, and indeed The Long Earth series as a whole. It may not be the best work from either Stephen Baxter or Terry Pratchett, with both to an extent playing jointly out of their wheel houses, but this final book is a frequently well written, well paced and lightly comic stroll through a near future world of eccentrics, old men, young men, creatures, beasts and all manner of humans, with a complexity hidden behind clear, audience-friendly prose and narrative storytelling which never leaves you behind. If this is the last piece of writing from Pratchett too, it’s worth the price of shipping for that alone. Take a step closer, and enjoy.
The Long Cosmos is out on June 30th, published by Penguin Random House.
Tony Black is a freelance film/TV writer & podcaster & would love you to follow him on Twitter.
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Originally published June 29, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
