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    The Long Cosmos: A Novel
    The Long Cosmos: A Novel
    The Long Cosmos: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Long Cosmos: A Novel

    Written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

    Narrated by Michael Fenton Stevens

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    ""A wholly satisfying conclusion.” — Publishers Weekly

    The thrilling conclusion to the internationally bestselling Long Earth series explores the greatest question of all: What is the meaning of life?

    2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day, a new society continues to evolve in the Long Earth. Now, a message has been received: “Join us.”

    The Next—the hyper-intelligent post-humans—realize that the missive contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence known as The Machine. But to build this computer the size of an Earth continent, they must obtain help from the more populous and still industrious worlds of mankind.

    Meanwhile, on a trek in the High Meggers, Joshua Valienté, now nearing seventy, is saved from death when a troll band discovers him. Living among the trolls as he recovers, Joshua develops a deeper understanding of this collective-intelligence species and its society. He discovers that some older trolls, with capacious memories, act as communal libraries, and live on a very strange Long Earth world, in caverns under the root systems of trees as tall as mountains.

    Valienté also learns something much more profound . . . about life and its purpose in the Long Earth: We cultivate the cosmos to maximize the opportunities for life and joy in this universe, and to prepare for new universes to come.

    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 14, 2016
    ISBN9780062297402
    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.

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    Reviews for The Long Cosmos

    3.5/5

    157 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I feel like you can really tell that Baxter did most of the writing for this novel, still enjoyable but know what you are getting into, a satisfying conclusion.
    • 4/5
      The final instalment in the Long Earth series, completed after Terry Pratchett's death. There is a call from the stars and a new type of stepping. We see resolution to some of the story lines but also a really good plot of its own, so that it doesn't feel like just a tying up of loose ends. I really enjoyed this series and this last book is just as good as the others.
    • 5/5
      As enjoyable an ending as I could have expected from.the series.
    • 5/5
      I know these books are not everyone`s cup of tea but I really enjoyed as they mixing Baxter`s SF style with Pratchett unique fantasy. This book which is likely the last one because of the untimely death of Terry Pratchett is on a par with the previous ones and a worthy closure of the story.
    • 3/5
      This final episode in Pratchett and Baxter's shared 'Long Earth' series has all the failings of the earlier volumes. By this tine, Baxter was doing nearly all the work; Pratchett made a couple of contributions, and they stand out quite clearly. This book has an introduction by Baxter which sets out quite clearly that the latter three books were mainly his work. And it is more of the same; multiple characters get into various scrapes, some characters come back into the story (though they had never really left) and one character who died two or three books ago is resurrected in flashback. The book draws thematically on Carl Sagan's 'Contact' and the Robert Zemeckis film of that book; the resemblance to the film is at tines quite marked. The book starts with a SETI message being received across the whole Long Earth, but its nature and origin are not examined in any depth, despite it appearing on the third page of the novel and so permeating the whole book.Whilst this series was a nice gesture by Baxter and parts of the publishing industry towards Pratchett, it cannot be counted as any sort of significant work.
    • 3/5
      Curiously less cosmic than the "The Long Utopia" that preceded this final book in the series. Though it begins with a mysterious message to "join us" that is received across the long Earths, the actual mission to do so is a relatively small part of the book, and quite anticlimactic. More time is spent on Joshua Valiente's ill-fated camping trip. It's not a bad story, it's just in no way "cosmic", nor much in the way of a satisfying finale.If you paid your dues with the previous four, go ahead and finish the series.
    • 4/5
      The Long Cosmos is the final book in Terry Pratchett's and Stephen Baxter's five volume and 2,000+ page Long Earth series.The series covers the period 2015 to 2071 and centres on the life of Joshua Valiente. In 2015 technology is made freely available which allows humans to 'step' from our Earth to a parallel and slightly different Earth, like moving from one jewel to the next on a necklace. It is possible to step along these Earths in either direction and there appear to be an infinite number of them. Some people, like Valiente, are natural steppers able to move from one world top the next unaided.The series focuses in two areas: the impact of infinite land on the human condition - technology, politics, social structures, agriculture and more; and, since humans only developed on 'our' Earth, what is the impact of subtle differences and random chance in these Long Earths on the development of life.In this last volume, the Long Earth receives a message from some alien civilisation and it is with step technology that humans are able to attempt to join some galactic collective. We also get to dive into some of the backstory missing from earlier books, especially Valiente's family history and the relationship between humans and trolls (a race of homo habilis like hominids, natural steppers, who populate and roam across the whole Long Earth).Although developed in outline by Pratchett and Baxter, the former's demise means that this is almost wholly written by Baxter alone. Having said that, there are enough in-jokes and cultural references to keep Pratchett fans happy.
    • 3/5
      More vacuous and more sentimental than its predecessors. Just a little fun pop science to help it along.
    • 4/5
      I feel like you can really tell that Baxter did most of the writing for this novel, still enjoyable but know what you are getting into, a satisfying conclusion.
    • 3/5
      Imaginative. There are multiple references that science fiction fans will understand and appreciate, but the wit, wordplay, and charming characters Pratchett is known and loved for are sadly absent.
    • 3/5
      This is (probably) the last book in the Long Earth series from the pens of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - not least because of the death of Terry Pratchett partway through this book, but also because, well, where else can you go when you put Earth into a chain of multiverse planets? Humanity, half a century or so after Step Day had sort of come to terms with the Long Earth with colonies spread right the way up into the High Meggers and beyond, but even the super evolved Next found themselves flummoxed by the call to JOIN US that rang through the humaniform multiverse.I have to say that some of the faults that were in earlier books in the series; most of the various scenarios more or less peter out with no real resolution and the scenes in the exploding forest reminded me of that scene in 'Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls' where Indiana gets blown out of the blast zone of a nuclear explosion in a fridge. Stephen Baxter gives a fair billing to Terry Pratchett but he did all the proof reading which did give it a slightly more unified feel to the book.