[ExI] What science fiction have you read, lately?

[Anton Sherwood]

Most recent fiction reading: the Long Earth saga by Pratchett & Baxter.
It begins in the near future when an eccentric engineer anonymously 
publishes plans for a "Stepper Box", simple enough for anyone to build 
and carry; it takes the bearer to one of two parallel worlds, adjacent 
in a chain of (at least) hundreds of millions, most of them effectively 
empty of hominids.

It soon emerges that a minority of humans have the innate ability to 
Step.  In one episode, an ancestor of the central character uses the 
talent to help the Underground Railroad -- and I thought, what if 
instead of sending the escapees to Canada you leave them in a side 
world?  They'd have to learn to live Paleolithic-style, but that's an 
easier life than farming.

(And anyone who interferes with the liberation, you can dump on the 
other side.)

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*\\*  Anton Sherwood  *\\*  www.bendwavy.org