In THE LONG EARTH, there are millions upon millions of parallel earths that are accessible just by “stepping” into them. When people start migrating to these new earths, it’s not surprising that problems develop. Michael Fenton-Stevens gives an excellent performance, though the less-than-stellar writing drags him down during the first half of the book. His verve finally kicks in when the story focuses on the journey of Joshua Valiennté and an A.I. named Lobsang as they attempt to reach the final alternate world. One does wish that Fenton-Stevens had given the many Wisconsinite characters appropriate accents instead of generic American voices. But in most parts of the story his English accents works well. F.T. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Terry Pratchett died last week at the age of 66, after a lengthy and public struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He left behind an astonishing body of work—including a whole hilarious, complicated world. This is an introduction to that world—Discworld—as well as to some of his standalone projects, for readers who haven’t yet had the pleasure […]
No matter how weird things get on “our” world, in science fiction, there will always be places where things got weirder—enter the parallel universe. We often think of the “multiverse” as an invention of modern science and comic books (thanks, Flash!), but the concept can be traced back to the 17th century, when Duchess Margaret […]