Book review: The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - a fun and fitting testament to a much-missed writing legend

The final work to bear the late Pratchett's name is an example of polished sci-fi adventure

David Barnett
Thursday 07 July 2016 17:07 BST
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It is only natural that attention will focus on this, the final - barring any lost or secret manuscripts discovered in the future - novel to bear the name of Terry Pratchett in terms of one-half of its authorial credits.

But it is, of course, a collaboration, the fifth in a series that was conceived by Pratchett and Stephen Baxter over dinner in 2010, three years after Pratchett announced to the world that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Pratchett and Baxter - himself a veteran science fiction writer, one of Britain’s brightest and most acclaimed - completed the series in three years, with the publication of the first, The Long Earth, in 2012. There has been one novel released a year with this, the final volume, coming a year after Pratchett’s death in March 2015.

It’s a very different beast to those used to Pratchett’s humorous Discworld fantasies - a hard, high-concept science fiction series based around the central conceit that our world is but one of an infinite number of parallel Earths, strung out like a multi-dimensional string of pearls.

The first book detailed the discovery of this multiverse and mankind’s hesitant exploration of these worlds that are geographically identical to ours but with no humans. Subsequent sequels explored the multiple Earths and beyond.

Although there are a core cast of well-rounded characters, including central protagonist Joshua Valiente, one of the first to learn how to “step” between the worlds, and Lobsang, a Tibetan motorcycle repairman who has been reincarnated as an artificial intelligence computer (one guesses that to be a very Pratchettian touch) the series has always seemed less about the people and more about the sense of wonder of good, old-fashioned science fiction.

More than that, it’s about exploration and discovery, and even rediscovery - if we found an Earth identical to our own but uninhabited and unspoiled, would humanity do things differently, or just make the same old mistakes?

The Long Cosmos, is the final book in the series and as such, not the best place to start if you’re unfamiliar. It involves a widening of the scope into deep space and the existence of other, older intelligences.

This book and the series as a whole provides polished sci-fi adventure - belying, as Baxter writes in his introduction, the fact that it was written quickly: “Time was not on our side.” It might not be as memorable for many people as the cherished Discworld, but nevertheless, it is a fine and fitting testament to the work of one of our greatest and much-missed writing legends… and a reminder that in the likes of Stephen Baxter, British science fiction remains in safe hands.

The Long Cosmos, published by Doubleday, will be available to buy from for £18.99 from 30 June

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