The Long Earth

Hello.

First. 11. or 12. isn't too bad. It's still almost two weeks before Christmas. I'd come then already too, but I have a last lecture on the 15th. Though I'm thinking if it's just a lecture and no exam, I might just skip it and come on Friday too. Because that's the kind of thing you can do when you're in university.

Second, it's just three posts you have to do before this year's Christmas calendar -story. That's not a lot. Though if you want to write stories already, I can't really stop you. But there are a lot of other really interesting things out there too.

Ok, then to the point. I have been reading this book, The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. And I thought I'd talk about that, since the basic setting in the book is pretty interesting.
The point in the book is this: there are parallel universes out there. No one knows, how many, because no one has ever reached the end. But the numbers go at least up to seven figures into one direction from this Earth. There is a similar Earth in every one of those universes, which geography more or less matches the geography on the Earth we know. They're kind of in a line, so that you can move from one to the next to the next to the next, always into the same relative spot. So you only move from a universe to the next, but not into any direction as we understand it. It might be that eventually you'll come around and end back on what the people in the book call the Datum Earth, the original Earth where humans evolved.
Oh, right, cause there aren't humans on any of the other Earths.
Ok, so for a long time people didn't know this was possible. Or that the other universes even exist. But then, what I think was said to be 2015, so not so far away in the future as scifi usually is, a crazy physicist figured out how to make this small gadget (that gets it's energy from a potato) that enables you to step from one Earth to the next.
And that, of course, drives people crazy. Because the Earth is getting pretty crowded, and suddenly there are all there other Earths that you can get to just by clicking a swich and have the whole universe for yourself, if you just move out long enough that no one else bothers to come out that far.
And this people just taking off and leaving everything behind and finding a nice corner of a nice Earth just for themselves causes some problems on the Datum, obviously.
And I say nice Earth, because the Earths aren't exactly the same. Even though they're more or less the same, some of them are for example covered in ice, or water, of no ice at all. The climates vary. On some Earths the meteor that killed the dunosaurs never hit, and they're still there. You know, like they once were one Earth, and then just started to evolve into slightly different directions. The time is the same on all the Earths, so basically while travelling through the Earths you can see all the possibilities of what the Earth could be, if something had gone a little differently.
About half way through the book I realised that it's in fact the first book of a series of four, of which the last one hasn't come out yet. So apparently I'll have one more series to wait the next book to be published to.

Ok, so the reason I wanted to talk about this is not only that I really like the book, but because the idea of multiple parallel similar universes is quite fascinating. Of course I don't think it's true, because if there are multiple universes (like some physicists now think there might be, though I'm not sure if there is any actual evidence for it), they probably are not similar. Because I don't see a reason why they would be the same. Then again, I guess it's not impossible. Though I don't know really anything about this level of physics, so I think I'll just leave these questions to be answered by someone who might have any chance of doing it.
Anyway, I think the idea of the evolution of Earths in a multiverse is interesting. You can see all the what ifs that you might have about what the Earth is like.

I'm starting to realise I don't really know what to say about this...
The point is, that the thought of there being multiple Earts that you can just travel through for as long as you like, being literally the only person in the world most of the time... It's pretty...
I don't think it's possible for a person to imagine truly being the only person in the world. A part of me would really like to know what it's like. Simply because it's a situation no one in the world has ever been in.

The point is that the idea of millions of other Earths in the reach of humans is... well, actually kinda sad. The human kind has already almost screwed up one planet, they shouldn't get another.
... it's...
On millions of Earths there is so much we don't know, and all I want to do is just go out there and see the things and know all the things.
There is so much to learn on all those worlds.
And that blows my mind.
And then I have to remind myself, that I'm reading fiction, and humans don't have access to other worlds, and they probably never will, because they probably don't exist, at least not in the way the book sees them.
And I have to say, I am a little disappointed.

~matu