The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 10: The Long Mars Pt 1 (Humptulips Saloon!)

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel have emerged from Discworld and are now exploring the worlds of speculative fiction. This week, The Long Mars Part 1!Small Towns! Crab Towns! Mars! Find us on the internet:BlueSky: @makeyefretpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on BlueSky @2hatsjo and follow Francine @francibambi Joanna has a new book out! American Teen Dramas - From Sunnydale to Riverdale (Hardcover - Signed)Things we blathered on about:David Ford Rainbow Mars - The Silent Planet Wiki   Silurian hypothesis - Wikipedia Bozeman, Montana - WikipediaHumptulips - Revisiting WashingtonTTSMYF: The Dark Side of the Sun (41) | Strata (52)Brooke Bond Collectables - Tea Card Set Details - Out Into Space The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank - The GuardianSFBC Interview An SFBC exclusive interview with Terry Pratchett - L-SpaceIn conversation: Terry Pratchett and Gerald Seymour - The Guardian Robert Zubrin - Wikipedia US3652091A - Three player chess board - Google Patents Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

You can tell by the link I sent you to the history of Jack and the Beanstalk, which does have nothing to do with anything in this book. You went down a rabbit hole. Yeah, you can see how my research has gone this afternoon, yeah. Have you been to that David Ford gig yet? Yeah, that was not like last weekend the weekend before. How was it? It was really good, actually.

It was lovely. He played like that whole album and its entirety and then a few other songs. He did, like, rather than having like a full band, he just was, I just really want to sing a lot. So he had like three guest female vocalists and then a guy who was singing and also doing piano. So instead of like an opener, each of those vocalists came on and did like a solo song. Oh, cool. And then they did the main gig and it was really beautiful.

What was the venue again? It was Union Chapel, which is one of my absolute favorite gig venues because it's like a big, gorgeous old church. The acoustics are amazing. Also, weird one. I hadn't really thought about what the demographics would be for a gig like that. I'm used to, like, a lot of the shows I go to, just having to queue for a long time because there's no gender-neutral toilets, and I'm generally using the ladies. But this was, like, zero key for the ladies at any point, massive cues for the men's

at every point, so... Interesting. Very sausage-festy demographic. I guess we both got into David Fawyer, like, dude. Yeah, that's true. And then they were, they've been filming a documentary about this whole tour, because this was the last night of the tour he was doing, and I ended up getting interviewed for the documentary. Oh, cool.

No idea where that's going to be or how it's going to come out or anything, but if it does, I'll be in it. Nice stuff. The next day was also, like, so we stayed in London overnight after the gig, and we thought we'd have, like, a nice mutual rendez the next day before going home. So I am one of those people who, if I have to, like, change tubes more than once, I will look at if it's walkable instead. Yeah. And from where we were staying out on the DLR, it's like, well, we can get tubes and go into, like, Covent Garden, which is going to hang her out. Or we can just get the tube of the bank and go on a really lovely long walk along the South Bank and then, pass over into the city. That seemed like a lovely idea. So we did that, lots of walking and

then lots of walking around all day and then suddenly realized we were in a shit ton of pain from walking around all day. And then also it started getting dark and therefore everything was incredibly crowded. Then we were getting the train back towards our hotel and I realized, oh, we literally were going through Limehouse. It's like two stops from my hotel. And in Limehouse is a pub called The Grapes. And this pub is owned by Ian McKellen. It's like Gandalfe's staff behind the bar and stuff. And I've always wanted to go. And I was like, well, why don't we stop in line of house and get like one last drink before we go home and go to Ian McKellon's pub and I was like yeah great idea so we saw at this point it was like 8 o'clock in the

evening go off the train then realized it was a 15 minute walk but I was determined at this point despite the fact my feet were killing me walked all the way to this pub and it was closed for a private event ah I should have gone in crash it if there wasn't a bouncer oh yeah I'm not going to fuck with a bouncer I know I know my oats I'm currently wearing I have stropy gloves on yeah I'm going to cover those somewhere I'm not flexible enough to demonstrate it, but the socks I'm wearing match. Lovely. I'm not going to try and get my leg up to where the webcam is.

On the opposite end of the skill scale, here is my attempt to darn this secondhand jumper I got a long time ago. Excellent. It is only for gardening and DIY use this jumper. And apparently podcast use if I forget to get changed. That's fine. No one's looking at your arms. Not yet. See the amount of flailing I'm going to do today.

Sure, there will be plenty of flailing as we discuss this book. Speaking of which, should we make a podcast? Let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the two-shamakey for a podcast in which we were reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discord series and now are strolling down the corridors of speculative fiction. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of the Long Mars. Yay!

The third book in the Long Earth Cycle. Yes. Cycle? Well, there's more than four books. I think you can do like duology, trinogy, quadrology, and after that you just go cycle. Okay, cool. Otherwise you get silly.

You start doing pentologies and such, and I think that's a silly word. Is series not more traditional? Yeah, I feel like, is it, I feel like it's going to be, no, it is a series. I don't know why I thought it should be longer to be a series. No, I like cycle anyway. Let's stay with cycle.

That suggests it's going to start again at some point. Yeah, and it feels kind of noise. It ties in with all that horrible string stuff that they were talking about during the book. Oh, the string, yeah, I kind of just glossed over, literally. The words blurred themselves when I was trying to read them. It's like a modesty filter came over the book for me. My brain does that when a string theory comes up.

Cool. Right, no one's spoilers before we crack on. We will not be spoiling past when the end of this section goes up to, which is the end of chapter 24. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the first half of the book. And we also won't be spoiling any major events in the Discworld series because we'd be quite our press to. Yeah, at this point. On Discworldberg. Also, you should have read it all by now if you had this point on the journey with us.

Yeah. And The Journey, by the way, is mentioned here in its capital letters, as it should be, when they're talking about Joshua and, yeah. The Journey. It was nice to see that. Yes. I can only read it in that tone of voice now as well. The Journey. Journey, the journey. Right. Have you got some follow-up, Prancing?

Yes. There was some nice chat after our The Long Mars episodes back in September. Long War. This is Longass. The Long War, F said, look, it's time. No, I keep mixing them up. One of the things I really liked, by the way, everyone go to the Discord, linked in the show notes. There's always loads of cool chat. But DJ Ellis brought up that the Time Team podcast brought up recently the Silurian, hypotheses, which discusses the possibility of detecting evidence of industrially advanced civilizations before humans evolved, brackets. And yes, it is named after the Doctor Who species, which I think is pretty cool because we were talking about, obviously, the lizards and the radiation and the...

Yes, dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. Dinosaur. Dinosaurs with jewelry. Yeah. Glant dinosaurs. Right. Excellent. Let's dive into the Long Mars. Francine, do you want to introduce us to the book? Certainly. This is the Long Mars. It is the third. book in the Long Earth series. I've put series, sorry, in the long earth cycle, pentapus, published June 2014. It was originally, apparently, entitled The Long Childhood. Wikipedia tells me that,

and the reason I've not got any more information for this introduction. The Larry Niven book, Rainbow Mars, or more specifically the short story within it called Rainbow Mars, is about a protagonist visiting Mars and a time machine, finding it populated by the creations of lots of authors, which is Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, C.F. Lewis. It began as a collaboration with Terry Pratchett. Amazing. Which never went all the way. So the afterward in that book is called Spetz and the Beanstalk. Excellent. This book came out in, I think, 1999. So he starts by saying the book derives from events of more than 30 years ago when he was still a novice. He loved the idea of time travel being fantasy. Later on, he became familiar with Terry Pratchett's work. In 1990, a leaflet from dangerous visions, a bookstore in Van Nuys, alerted me that Terry Prattit, Neil Gaiman would

be into autograph good omens. That sounded like fun. I'd barely discover Neil Gaiman, but already I would buy anything by Terry Prattit. I went to say hi. We went back to my place. We started talking collaboration and spent our whole time that way. I tossed in the notion of a beanstalk that's a plant. We carved out a loose novel structure from there. I've got these notes around somewhere, but I've never looked at them since. We live eight time zones apart. He admitted to a tendency to blitz to start writing and never quit. And these things might make a collaboration awkward, unless I could get the jump on him, he'd wind up handing me a completed text. And we were involved in other projects. The Beanstalk would wait.

It's the 90s now. Every hard science fiction writer has written a Mars story. We've got red, green and blue Mars, moving Mars, Mars underground, Robinson, Greg Bear and William Hartman is competition. And then eventually it all came together. And he wrote it and he started Svets and the Beanstalk. And he saw nothing impossible about writing two Beanstalk stories, however, for the second maybe with Terry Pratchett, except that he never left it out. He never left anything out. It was his first insight to the writer, never hold anything back from the reader. It was basic to Robert Heinlein's style too. Take one idea and explore every implication. Especially he was saying he hadn't left anything from his original ideas to write with Pratchett. Yeah. So the fact that Igrazil

and a lot of Norsemen were left over into this story is one of Terry's suggestions. A lot of the six-hour conversation must have worked its way into the novel. Worried and embarrassed, he emailed Terry and told him what had happened. His opinion matches mine. I do. is a cheap. It's the writing that makes them golden. He tells me he's ready to write a beanstalk novel too, but set on the disc world, it's likely to follow wildly different physics. So yeah, it's just a cool little backstory of a novel that never was between Niven and Pratchett. Yeah. We're considering like Niven is the Ringworld author, so there's like the obvious. Yeah, sorry, I should have started with that really, shouldn't I?

We got it in there, it's fine. Yeah. This meeting was mentioned very briefly in a life with footnotes, in a footnote. Terry and Larry Niven met some years later and got along well. Niven seemed to regard Strata as an homage to his work, and Terry afterwards described Niven to Dave Busby as resembling a small stuffed owl, which was by no means necessarily a pejorative description in Terry's hands. You know, I would be delighted to be described as a small stuffed owl personally. Yeah, absolutely.

Especially by Terry Bratchett. Yeah. Oh, I told that fact very badly, but maybe I'll be able to edit it together. It was a lovely fact and I enjoyed it greatly. Good. All right. Let's talk about what happened in the book then. As I already said, this section goes from chapter one to the end of chapter 24.

Inclusive. Inclusive. We've read all of those chapters, I think. So, in the immediate aftermath of the Ubloodstone disaster, Joshua and Sally, take step and help to heart while humanity embarks on a mass exodus. In the intervening years between then and now, Lobsan keeps an eye on things from distance. Joshua goes out on another sabbatical, at least until he gets a headache. Agnes and Lobzang discuss human concerns, and Joshua comes home for a visit. While on the datum, Lobzang informs Joshua of humanity's evolution and discusses crises of faith as they take a look

at the new Caldera. Joshua agrees to go out in search of this new humanity and remembers his meetings with Paul Spencer Wagner, originally of happy landings. Meanwhile, Sally meets up with her father, Willis Lindsay, at the Gap. There's a mission on In The Works and Willis. seen snow all about life on Mars. I'm not doing the bowie singing, but it's been in my head constantly. Sally has one request, and that's that Frank Wood tags along. After a little training and a brick moon launch, our rag-tag trio of antisocial misfits and Frank make it to Mars. There is life on Mars and it's Russian. After getting snow, the vodka-swilling cohort, it's time to step onwards across the red planets. Meanwhile, Maggie Kaufman sets up on a new mission,

captaining the Armstrong 2, with Cutter in charge of sister ship's Sennon, stepping all the way to West 200 million with some diplomacy on route. Douglas Black has stowed away on the Armstrong, too, the little scamp, but he's more than paid his way. Maggie insists on a stop at the eye of the hunter and recruits Snowy to the cause. The mission speeds up, there's a crab civilization interlude. The earth start getting dragger, but Douglas Black's determined. He's after the fountain of youth.

Good stuff. Cool. Helicopter and loincloth watch. Now obviously I could have gone the traditional route with any number of airships for the helicopter, but I personally have gone with the flying jellyfish. Absolutely. No, I think that's right. And in the tradition, of course, of the octopuses. Exactly. No. Similar vein, if not quite the same. And for loincloths, I have gone for the malted crab shells.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they are serving a similar purpose. Although this does beg the question, listeners, answers on a seashell postcard. Message in a bottle, surely. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense, actually. Messages in a bottle, please. Do crabs have loins? Oh. Discuss.

Discuss quietly and away from me, please. Discuss amongst yourself. Messages in a bottle somehow directed very specifically to Joanna. Thank you. I don't live near the sea. We live inland. That's so good luck. Get a crab to carry it for you.

Ask nicely. Don't knock over their civilization with your arse. Quotes. Who's first? Shall I go first? You go first, yours is first, I think. This is from chapter 8 when Joshua and Lobzang are on the Yellowstone wrecked datum earth. The scene was eerie.

The light coppery as the sun went down and the world was silent. There had been no traffic on the interstate for many miles, but nature was subdued here too. Joshua had not heard so much as a bird call as he inspected the spindly trunks of dead pine trees. Incredible. I love a post-apocalyptic landscape. I love the most poplips at the landscape. And this is a very good flavour of that, which is familiar landscape turned recently apocolates,

which are a horrible thing to say. But you know what I mean. And the lack of... We're in that kind of sci-fi now. Yeah. The lack of nature sounds as well as such a specific weirdness. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's such a constant,

especially like for you and I, like we're used to it as just such a constant background hum that if you don't hear it, it gets creepy. Yeah, I didn't see the wood pigeons. back garden for a day or two, and I started getting severely paranoid that the world was ending. But they turned up today, so that's nice. Oh, good. I'm glad your wood pigeons are all right. Yeah, I am too. There's been a lot bird for in the area, you know? Oh, yeah, there is that. Um, quote, have you got one? Yeah, I think it's pretty similar, actually.

And when he looked ahead beyond the curdled plane below, he saw a kind of cliff face, very far off, blued by the mist of the distance, shimmering in heat haze. Oh, amazing. Which absolutely is over the caldera, isn't it? Yes, this is just a little later on his journey. But the words curdled plain, I think. Incredible. It's just what a word choice. Loved it so much.

There's lots of philosophical stuff and all that we could have picked on this, but just back to our roots of amazing landscape description. Yes, very much so. All characters then, we'll start with Joshua. Yeah, let's. I he's become um I can't think of it there's like a really more obvious metaphor but his headaches is like this long earth alert system spidey sense yeah something like that yeah no definitely it's like a um like a tsunami uh warning yeah yeah yeah like one of those

canary in a coal mine yes that's what I was trying to think of I knew it was a bird so I'm happy that I came up with spiky senses first actually Do you want to just edit that out? We were just talking about birds' song. Yeah. I had birds on the brain and I couldn't get there. But yeah, the headaches is the warning system. And he's irritate.

Also one of my favourite things ever is like a hero or a protagonist who does not want to be part of a story. Absolutely. So Joshua, when he sort of, who having celebrated New Year's Day of 2045 with nothing stronger than a little of his precious stash of coffee, woke up with a headache and he yelled into an empty sky. What now?

Yeah. yeah I mean the universe does seem to be picking on him I love a reluctant hero but then obviously agrees to Lobzang's request to go and start finding people which begs a question and I don't know if you have any thoughts on this why is Lobzang asking this of Joshua specifically

I think probably the same reason he had him before he's very good at sensing what's going on with the long earth he's a natural stepper he knows the long earth well enough that he can survive in its extremities he's a good survivalist generally and Lob Sang finds him useful as

you know part of his spiritual progress I think yeah I just I thought it was interesting to think about because Lob Sang saw uses Joshua a little bit almost as like an external ambulance unit who's also providing some like conscious conscience-based feedback in a similar way to the way Agnes does. Yeah. But you just, I feel like Lobzang could have given him a bit more direction.

Like I've kept an eye on things, maybe aim for this earth. Yeah. Where did we get to in Lobang's journey by the end of 24? Where are we with them? Lobzang is off. He's, I think he's gone back to Agnes and has left Joshua to go and do this, basically. Okay, okay. Although obviously Loplang is also kind of everywhere.

Yes. And Joshua is, I guess, travelling and thinking about Paul Spencer Waggner a lot. We don't get a lot of Joshua's story. No, that's it. I got a bit confused by all the flashbacks and everything. Yeah, I think we'll be able to talk about Joshua's state of mind a bit better next week.

But, yeah, I mean, you know, life updates for him, now estranged rather than... Yep. I can go, if I can quickly throw in my now. becoming quite regular, I don't think the authors like Helen and I don't like reading it. But yeah, she only gets a very brief mention. Joshua is now estranged from Helen and Dan because she didn't like that he was staying to help after Yellowstone, which again feels weird because of course he would stay to help after Yellowstone.

Yes. Again, I think maybe you're right and they don't love it. I don't think they have Josh who would talk about her cruelly or anything like that. I think it's, you know, this girl and she was a girl. Yes. Married a dashing hero probably without thinking through what made him a dashing hero. And that is not an unheard of tale. No, that's very true.

And whereas, you know, you can very easily say, of course, your husband should stay behind to help after a huge disaster. In reality, if you have a small child with him and he's been gallivanting off all the time anyway are you going to say yes of course I don't know I hope I would but yeah I feel like the book kind of pitches her

as unreasonable a little bit and I don't know I don't like how she's written I feel like there's although she's not really in the book there's just everything about how she's written is very sitcom wife with hands on hips yes I definitely see what you mean there obviously that's one of my least favorite traits in the world

and Sally getting off a little bitchy comment about her as well, and I don't like that. Oh, I do, because Sally's a bit of a bitch, it's fine. I love Sally being a bit of a bitch. It's just the specific bitchy comments about Helen, I feel I can do without, because it feels like, again, it plays into a weird non-existent rivalry between two women because they're not actually rivals. Yeah, I think certainly framing it on this one, it feels to me like Sally's just, you know, doesn't think much of a,

not so much a rivalry as a way have you gone married someone who's quite so useless Joshua yeah there is that yeah but yeah it's going to it continually bugs me a bit about these books so i knew i wanted to get that in there anyway any other joshua thoughts um no apart from i i like the bit where he pretends that his hand's going to strangle him yes because that's a little here he is being a silly human man for a second he doesn't get many of those at the moment it's nice when he does get his silly little human moments yeah

should we talk about Paul Spencer wagner as that's who Joshua is mostly thinking yeah and this is a fun new yeah so this is this he's the sort of main example we've got of this new version of human which by the way can I say I've had two Barry songs in my head all day because of this

oh you pretty sings being the second one of course excellent yes well done Roberta Golding I think is our other example of this. I think that's why we spent so much time with her in the last book is kind of setting up for this idea of these new humans or updated humans. I know there's an natural name for them in the books, but usually I've read the whole book before we get to even recording the first half. I haven't this time, so I don't remember what the name is. Yeah, all you do when we're not saying it because they're that serious about spoils. Oh yeah, no, let's go with that.

I'm not just, I've forgotten what happens in the book. But yeah, so you get this very weird, hyper-intelligent and therefore less empathetic and understanding. Although with Roberta, I think it was showing that she wasn't less empathetic so much as it was a different outlet for it, wasn't it? She had the same emotional reaction, but later on her own in the bedroom after she'd gross, yeah. It's an interesting one actually, the way they talked about it, the outbreak of common sense and the few examples of that

to me that seems like when you read about the aftermath of any disaster you get examples like that you do I think I've talked about this at length before on this podcast but the inherent goodness in humanity you will always find people helping you will always find

people who do incredible things in the aftermath of disasters and help so many other people in them it's interesting that you'd be able to pinpoint these two or three teenagers doing something sensible. Yeah. Again, it's not empathetic because it is helping. And that comes from empathy, but it's the calmness of it.

Yes, yeah. The ability to deal with what needs to be done in the most rational way possible. Yeah. In the face of something that is emotionally overwhelming to almost everyone. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think it's meant to feel a bit like, oh, in the same way that Happy Landings felt a bit or when we first read about it. and they were like, yeah, and there's no disabled people here. Yeah, there was like a flashback moment to when they had gone to talking about when Joshua

and Sally had first gone to happy landings together and this kind of too calm, a bit Steppford wives. And Sally had said, I wonder if there's something so big going on here that even Lob Sang would have to recalibrate his thinking. Just a hunch for now. I'm just suspicious. But also, like, we know how these books have been shaped, at least the last two books, which is that there's lots of hints throughout and then eventually a big disaster at the end.

So the first book has lots of hints at the end of step and movement and then you have the big bomb at the end. And then in the second book builds up the Yellowstone eruption throughout the whole book. So I'm wondering, again, not remembering the end, if this is a buildup to a disaster of a different kind with happy landings and with these strange children. Yeah. Because there is some sinister stuff in how Paul is described specifically. You know, he's taking, his parents end up splitting up because he and his sister are both kind of like this. they end up taken away from their parents and also kept apart from each other

Paul's father says he can slice you to pieces with words and he does it just because he can for curiosity to see what happens and he doesn't know what he's doing he's a kid but yeah did we talk about on the podcast

before there seems like something we have talked about but I cannot think what the context would have been about indigo children that's that kind of new age pseudoscience no i don't remember having this conversation um so the idea of it came from some oh god also i don't want to say scientist um but it was that they were this new generation of improved human beings and there were some paranormal abilities that they had and um they had they had indigo auras was the way

you can tell it's it's all this kind of shit you know yeah um a little bit weird little bit yogurt weaver with the usual weaving into eugenics that Wu tends to go when you let it go too far It does always go really eugenicsy, doesn't it? Yeah, but anyway, both Baxter and Pratchett would have been very aware of this at the time, so I'll link it and we'll come back to it next week to see how many parallels there actually are when this concept gets developed a bit more in the book.

Yeah, but it'd be interesting to look up. Yeah. Cool. There's obviously the parallels with which cookies and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, and there's the other thing. There's the like hints of satanic panic type stuff around it. The rhetoric that was turned on steppers first, and this idea of evolution is now being turned on these children.

Oh, and the changeling rhetoric. Changed thing, rhetoric, yeah. And then there's been conversation since that maybe the changed thing stories came out of, like, young children with autism. I am not saying people with autism are weird fairies. them saying that there was an understanding that's where stories could have come from. I think sometimes you are a little paranoid about what people might think of you. Yeah, quite possibly.

If one person got from that sentence that you thought autistic people were changelings, I would be so concerned for them. Right, fair enough. You are right. No, it's nice that you're considerate by. You put your point across better than you think you do is my. Thank you. But yeah, like we're in Niles,

and storyline, there's a little bit about a kid's, like, potentially being burned as a witch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's this immediate turning on, people turning on things they don't understand that leads to stuff like the witch trials and then the satanic panic. Yeah. Yeah, and then we get into the inherent badness of humanity is the other side of my ear. Yeah, yeah. Why I can't sleep coin.

It's the inherent goodness of humanity keep you up at night? Well, you know, if you think about that, it's quite nice thing. if you've been reading about it, but then he'd go, oh, but the inherent badness. Yeah. And then he said, oh, I forgot to do that bit of work, which is much less important than all of this, but somehow is keeping me up just the same. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, love sang.

Lbsang, getting a little bit as, well, speaking of insomnia and existential crises. Yeah, a little bit. I like his crisis of faith, but also his relationship to faith. I resisted, but I think by next week I will have probably done a bit more of a deep dive on the idea of the Bardos as part of the Bullis Faith. It's something I've done some listening to podcasts and reading about because season two of Severance had a very good episode called Chikai Bardot that took inspiration from that Bardot idea and that specific Bardot in particular. That won't talk about what happens in it because, you know, that's a show why it's not getting spoiled. But also the fact that as part of his hidden infrastructure in the ship that he's on with Joshua,

as well as the technological things that are hidden out of the way, there's also the hidden prayer room. Yes. The prayer wheel and the statue of Shrine to Buder. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea that that's just as sort of an important part of his ongoing maintenance, which is a very interesting way to think about his faith.

It is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me something and I'm not quite sure what, but it reminds me a little bit also of the research wizards in Unseen University who, you know, very matter-of-factly knows that they must have two CC of mouse blood, and a... Exactly. Yeah, it's...

You don't need the full right of Ashken Teva, but that doesn't mean you don't need some bits of it. Yes, yeah. And really, if you're going to do it, why not do it in style? I think Lob Sang would be on the side of the senior wizards for that. I do. I mean, I want to know, I want a crossover episode now with just lobsang and the senior wizards. But eventually,

yeah. Eventually, lobzang meets hex and it all gets really weird. Different lobsang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, I also want a lob sang and lobsang crossover episode. Yes, of course, yeah. I was speaking of Thief of Time. The cylinders in that, I didn't realize, we probably did talk about at the time.

They're based on prayer wheels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, the new forms of testing. he's got for himself, as suggested by Agnes. So he just has a guy who occasionally turns up and beats him up. Yeah, of course. Joj. I'm definitely pronouncing some names wrong.

And then also has someone who was another kid from the home trying to get him with a virus. Yeah. Penetration testing. Yes. The dodgiest sounding name for the most legitimate site. Well, actually, it's not really the most legitimate career. because quite often you get to rehabilitate naughty people. Naughty cyber criminals.

Nauty cyber criminals. I do quite like as well the kind of ongoing resentment Joshua has for him is starting to calm down a bit. Not that Joshua was necessarily wrong to feel those feelings, but even though there's the frustration that Yellowstone wasn't predicted, there is a bit where he says on the whole he had to admit Lopzang have been a force for good in the long earth. Yeah.

Yeah. And he respects Agnes saying Lop Sang's lonely. He needs someone to talk to. Yeah. Yeah. When you scale, like zoom out and see the Yellowstone thing, I suppose it maybe lends a bit of credence to Lop Sang's assertion that he couldn't have stopped the Madison bombing.

Yeah. Because if he could have, he would have stopped this thing. Yeah. predicted it like he's not omnipotent no he's not a god and that's very important to him as he's going through this crisis of faith

and this idea that he is possibly trapped in the Sipto Bardo that he talks about that he is stuck on the oh the not regeneration cycle resurrection, you know what I mean yeah yeah he's trapped on this step of this cycle and can't move forward that's about as far away from being a god

as you could be almost yeah yeah he's yeah he's accidentally trapped himself into this form that he cannot then move on from partly because he's trapped in a form that theoretically can't die yeah but I like this line where he says he sees himself as a guardian of mankind

and that this new entity may be reaching the end of its own long childhood and I want to be sure it means us no harm long childhood was the working title of the name of this wasn't it there we go there it is it's all coming together We got there. So Sally. Sally.

I like that straight away in this we get Josh and Sally working together in their traditional way, which is focused, get in, do good thing, get out. Like they are both fantastic people to have around the crisis. Yes. it's like the aggressively competent thing that makes me really love Sally doesn't carry so

yes of course you just go and do the good thing and you keep doing it until the thing is done and we do it in the sensible way yeah but then you get that contrasted quite early with Sally's

sense of wonder at the idea of the Long Mars where her dad says simply the Long Mars Sally Lindsay was used to wander she'd grown up stepping and there's a child she'd walked into

uncounted alien worlds but even so as her father spoke those words, she felt the universe pivot around her. Yeah. Just a, oh, fuck, I understand the implications or some of them. Also, I feel like there's a little underlying motivation to Sally. She lost the long earth as her personal playground. She can kind of go and have the long mars.

Yeah. It's the much, much bigger equivalent of the, oh, goodness. Who was it that this was written about? was it Boone or something, where if he saw a, he saw smoke from the chimney of a distant cottage, he got up and moved house. Yeah, that was Boone. That was mentioned in the first book. Yeah.

Oh, it was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But yes, it's very Sally as well. I've had interesting. She has, when she does decide to go to the gap and go, well, before the gap and go to gap space and meet her father there, she has, she has some, like, uncomfort and trauma around it, which I hadn't really thought about, because.

we saw her, you know, stride into the gap to rescue trolls in the last book. But of course, she fell into the gap. Unexpectedly, they discovered the gap when they were on that first mission. So, of course, you would have some fear and trauma around it. Yeah, yeah, proper near-death experience that. And yeah, when she had gone back in before, it was Sally in a crisis mode. Yeah. It was going, get trolls, get out.

Yes, steal trolls. But yeah, and then obviously we finally meet the mysterious Willis Lindsay, the inventor of the stepper box And he's just as infuriating As Sally told us We did I think we all knew He was going to be a little bit of a dick

And unsurprisingly he's a little bit of a dick Yeah I like him though Yeah Oh yeah The description of him as data list perfect Yeah and just the whole Mad scientist poking at things

Because we can Like relentless curiosity Yeah Yeah And how Sally has grown up to be This eminently practical person and you can see that practicality being something that grows out of living with relentless curiosity. Yes.

And eventually, you just get some of the eccentricities of your stereotypical academics, like when someone who's ripped him off of it is meant to go, the fraud. Also, I found it quite interesting that despite the fact Sally has clearly not had any contact with him for a very long time, he knows how to contact her, he knows where to leave a note for her. She doesn't get it right away, obviously. He's kept an eye out for her. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. He's got a little spider web of informants, I suppose.

Yeah, and I assume he's quite connected into the what is, the out-inet. Yes, the out-net, yes. The description of the stepping box, a gadget probably stolen out of the box from under Pandora's nose and released into an unsuspecting world. If you couldn't find him, that was dad all over, tinker-tinker. if you couldn't find him, just head towards the explosions and the wail of ambulances.

Exactly so. And again, it's such an interesting look at how Sally's character is formed, not just her extreme lonerness, but the practicality that comes from living with someone who tends to make sirens happen. Yeah, yeah. And in the aftermath of, you know, her mother dying early and her dad then becoming this extreme version of himself,

which didn't include a lot of fatherly instinct, by the looks of it. Yeah, he doesn't seem like a particularly caring old dad, does it? No, no. I love the fact, by the way, there's more of these coming up, but we've got so many older characters in this book,

like, in the series, I suppose. I mean, almost everyone important is over 35. Yeah, I mean, even Joshua was, what, early 30s, I think we worked out at the beginning of the long earth. Late 20s, I think. Yeah. Because it said he was 29 when he met Paul, Waggoner. Yeah, and then Sally's just a few years older than him. But yes, I like characters

in their mid-30s and 40s. Those are the sort of, you know, 16 and 70s on this bloody spaceship. Speaking of, Frank Wood, who is 61, and I'm really happy for Frank. I think Frank deserves to have some sort of nice time after everything in the last book. He's been rewarded for his goodness. I am missing. This sounds really stupid. I miss Monica as a character. I really liked what she brought to the last couple of books, but I am also glad she died and stayed dead. Oh, yeah, they can't keep resurrecting everyone, no.

No, bring back Agnes is great, because Logsang didn't in Agnes. But not everyone should be brought back, and I like that death still means death. Yeah, we said in the last one, didn't we? Like, it's quite realistic how many people in their circles, you know, just die. Yeah, because people do when she didn't die.

And, you know, Monica's case. is obviously the whole nuclear poisoning and shit. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy for Frank because he has always wanted to go to space and now, and then the space program kind of died off, but now he gets to go to Mars. And for five minutes, he thought he was the first human there.

Yeah, I have to say, well, I'm happy for him, I don't like the flag planting bit, like obviously, that's gross, claiming it for America, blah, blah, blah. I like that the Russians interrupted and went, nah, wrong national London, mate. Yeah, I mean, it's just oh no, it's a thing that's done. I don't

I think, like, Frank is a bad person for doing it or anything. It was what had to be done. It doesn't mean I like it. I really want to see that holographic flag. Yeah, me too. I haven't looked on the wiki, actually. Then I was thinking about the longevity of the holographic flag. And I'm assuming it must be solar powered or something to keep it going.

But it does seem like it would be simpler to just tying some fabric. Oh, holographic to me, I was thinking more like, you know, the holographic effect. You got on, like, shiny. Oh, I thought it was like a projection. like it was like he got it out of a policy in the bag yeah well you'd still have like the the stand bit of the flag yeah so I assume that's what he was getting out of the bag I don't think so

you could be right I need to go back and reread it just in my head I imagine it as like a projection thing however if you're right I think solar power would still work for quite a long time on Mars so that's fair we have robics and stuff up there yes but I like Frank discovering he'd become the uncle

with the connections to the space program and a trunk full of science fiction novels because goals. Yes. I'm never going to be connected to the space program, but I've definitely got a trunk full of science fiction novel somewhere. Read them. Yeah, I should probably do that.

And then him kind of busing up against Sally and Willis who were constantly at odds with each other and him being these odd man out in the trio. Yeah. And so he gets the moments where they're arguing about very important theories and Menaire and all these different people in relation to the Longmars. And this is when they see the giant like sandworm creatures. Yeah.

And Frank saying, look, shut up. Shut up, shut up. It's an homage to world science fiction dreams. There was a book I grew up with published 20 years before I was even born. I learned more about ecology from that novel than I ever did in class. And if you could ever argue that science fiction has predictive value, I assume also like this is meant to be a a direct Dune reference. I've not read Dune,

but the sandworms, I've got a Dune. Everyone knows the sandworms. Yeah. No, I've not read Dune. I should write Dune. It looks really big. I've watched,

I've seen the, I haven't seen the newer movie, but I've seen the David Lynch movie, which is a cinema. That's apparently one of the weirdest things you can watch if you want to get into June, yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure how accurate that was,

but it's a great movie. Yeah, yeah. No idea what happened. Fantastic. It was a very weird one where I was really confused for about half an hour and then I was looking up who one of the actors was in the process saw that it was David Lynch because I somehow

didn't know it was a David Lynch movie. It was just like my ex and I were just working through all the DVDs we had. And I went once I knew it was a David Lynch film, suddenly it just started working in my brain. I was like, oh, I didn't know I had to tune to that frequency. There were a bunch of really cool

facts about that film in a recent issue episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, so I'll find that and link it in the show notes. Excellent, cool. And about the June books, actually. Andrew Handamari read them all reasonably recently. Yeah, so then Maggie. Yeah. Off on another jaun.

Yeah. I like that she has kept trolls as part of her crew ever since the Franklin Exposition. I assume the trolls aren't named, but I am assuming one of them is Carl the N-Sign. You'd think so. I hope it is. Or maybe not. Maybe they prefer doing shorter terms of service. Yeah.

I did have a look at this as well. They were talking about the... Because there's the two ships. You have the Armstrong two. And then the... I don't know if it's pronounced Kernan or Sernon. I'm guessing Sernon. The Eugene A. Sernon.

And Sernon and his commander, they piloted the lunar module Snoopy in lunar orbit. This was the precursor to the Apollo 11 mission. So they were not the first people on the moon, but they did all of the testing and the pre-mission. They did the test drive. Yeah. They test drives.

piloted the lunar module Snoopy and lunar orbit within 8.5 nautical miles of the lunar surface and successfully executed every phase of a lunar landing up to the final powered descent. You need a really strong ego to withstand nearly, but not being allowed to be the first person on the moon. Right. So, yeah, so he was the premium Armstrong. And yeah, there's the setup here of, um, in theory part of their mission as well as traveling further than anyone's ever traveled through the long earth

is to find what happened to the Neil Armstrong one. Yeah, which I've forgotten how much detail we got on that. We didn't get a lot. It was in the last book, the Long War. The Armstrong one was like one of the other ships that was on the Franklin mission. Yeah.

But it disappeared. Right. But they passed the wreckage of another one, didn't they? There was one that crashed because I think that was the one No, that wasn't the one Joshua helped with that was like a random crash

Yeah They found some wreckage But yeah they're not in touch They haven't found the crew Right yeah yeah yeah I think it's specifically the crew of Neil Armstrong When they're looking for

So that's a fun thing being set up I assume And also why the fuck is Cutler here piloting the other ship Well because Because secrecy and mystery We are told exactly why Cutler is here Yeah I know

But yeah the first time I was like You don't get fucking forgiven for that, do you? Yeah, you were about to open fire on citizens and we're just letting you have a ship now. I don't like it. Which, by the way, has put me off Maggie completely, even though she's good in other ways, the fact that she says yes, I suppose I would have obeyed that order.

Yeah, no, I don't like that. Sorry, Maggie. I'm quite flexible with what I'll allow from my characters that I like pile, but... There are limits. There are limits, and I think that comes up as a limit. Yeah. Should we move on to Douglas Black? then. Let's. As I said, little scamp sneaking onto the ship, having his own entire private setup built

into the ship and not letting anyone know. Yeah. Hell of a stowaway. I mean, if you're going to stow away, yeah, with a bodyguard nurses, your own supply of oxygen. It's cheeky. It is cheeky. Right, this is the thing with Douglas Blackberry. I know I'm not meant to like this character. I am very anti-capitalist. He is an evil. tech lord but I find even though we've only really seen him in glimpses also he's like doing the weird watching people with interest thing

and that's very creepy and we don't like it and yet still I find myself quite endeared to this character I quite like him yeah of course you're allowed to you know villains are quite often likable but I feel like there's a bit more depth to him than just evil tech villain yeah we don't see a lot of that part of it

we must remember that part of it and this idea that like no Maggie's only seen him from a distance, as have a lot of people. And he's been there on the podiums and all of these big launches and stuff. But it's just this figure you only see from far away. Yeah. And to suddenly be in the room with him in his oxygen tent. Yeah.

It's interesting comparing him and his, like, obsession with reversing aging, with the current crop of odd billionaires like Peter Thiel, Teal. Yes. Yeah. Weird blood transfusion stuff. and all the other. Yeah, the old shiny man. Yes.

You know, the fascism. Yeah, the nasty, nasty fascism. I think that's the thing. I think Douglas Black's not really directly doing any fascism that we can really see. Yeah. Not to say he's not doing that. We're not seeing him do fascism,

which just makes him more sympathetic that I think because we've got so many real evil tech bros in actual life. I think that's probably part of it, isn't it? We've got some, you know, really badly, written villains in the real life right now. This one's more balanced. This one's too nuanced to see actually like something that would happen in real life. It's unrealistic that he wouldn't have already done a lot of fascism.

Yeah. But then also, you know, the search for the Fountain of You thing is interesting because is it, because part of it is this relentless curiosity. I want to keep living because there's so much to see and that I think is very relatable. Also makes me wonder why he hasn't pressed Lobstang to upload him into a similar state. Yeah, and I wonder how much of that is to do with this feeling of wanting control. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, feeling like you'd lose control if you end up spreading.

Also, would Lobsang do it? That's it. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. I really want to see him interact with Shimi. Yes. Sheimmy's hiding right now. Yes. Next character on our list, this is another one.

I'm going to pronounce the name wrong, I'm sorry, but Wu Yusai, I'm going to guess. I'm going to call her Wu because I feel like Wu, I'm fairly solid on that, say you say it. It's really hard to look up how to pronounce those phonetically written things. But I really like that she's here. We met her on the mission from the last book that Roberta Golding was on, and she was a very sympathetic character. Yes, yeah. And she's very sympathetic here.

as well, kind of even to the point of being able to just take Maggie Kaufman's hand at one point. Yeah. And sort of just being immediately rebuffed. Yeah. Being really good at like making people get on with each other, which is an incredible skill, like calming down any drama there was potentially was an engineering. Yeah, absolutely. The way she also managed to be really supportive towards like Roberta before and has obviously learned from Roberta as well. You know, she makes this point that we're rushing so much just as we did on the ship before. Yeah.

And we wonder what we're missing. Yeah. Yeah, you have to live with the reality of not being able to comprehend how much you're going to miss, I suppose, on a... Yeah, on this incredible 200 million scale. Because 100 million is a number. I just can't really even visualise. It's just very big, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, it is quite big. It's quite a lot. I'm also glad they're staying away from billions because this is written by two English authors, but set in America. So there's two different billions. It's tricky. It's tricky, yeah.

I don't know how we're going to get there. The taking Meggy's hand moment actually is a really great line. We see these worlds the whole of the long earth all at once through the eyes of a god. And tying back into this whole thing of Lobzang, trying very hard to make it clear he's not a god. Yeah. I like the, I know we had a similar description of the world's blurring together in the last book as well, but I do like that. that just how it's, you know, it's a long thing again, isn't it? I suppose it's, you know, the long exposure.

You can see it in your mind as how it would look. Yeah. And then this idea that eventually you hit a point of just really, really, really, samey worlds for such a long time. Yeah. Yeah. This, like, algae, purple bacteria covered worlds. Yeah, which again, makes sense, doesn't it?

If you, you know, try and read anything about prehistory and then you're like, oh, man, these are like inconceivable numbers of years where it was slime. Yeah. And also, like, tying it back into the Mars thing, the idea of whatever it could be that actually sparks life is so minor that it's so easy for it not to happen. Yeah, yeah. And yet it keeps happening. And yet it keeps happening. And those pillars of bacteria are creeping up on that poor crumen.

Life finds a way. Snowy, I wanted to talk about briefly as well. Noy is the one who bit off Joshua's hand, isn't he? Yes. Yes. Yes. Same one. We also saw Brian briefly, who was the sort of liaisony.

Yeah, feel bad for Brian. I feel bad for Brian. I quite like that Sally's gifted Brian, the dogs playing poker. Yeah. That's quite sweet. Yeah, he reminds me a bit of the cobald in the last one, whatever his name was. Yeah, I feel like he's not as bad. I feel like there's a mix of, there is definitely a wanting to be friends thing. But I think it's more wanting to be friends than wanting to be. Oh, yeah, no, I didn't feel, I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean in the, you know, the loose grass.

grasp of this bit of human culture that he's really enjoying nonetheless. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah, it made me chuckle. And, yeah, the idea of Snowy joining this mission. I respect to Maggie for that, for immediately going, yeah, we need this other perspective. Yeah, it's the, you know, underlining the importance of diversity in scientific endeavor. Any kind of endeavor, really.

Just a diverse perspectives. Diverse perspectives. You cannot get a comprehensive view of everything if everyone has the same background. And if you've got full different species to bring on board, absolutely. Yeah. And also, like, in doing this, we get to check in with The Hunter and Learners been fairly devastated with war again since we were last there. Yeah, yeah, the whole place got wiped out.

Like, as we kind of knew it would be, because they explained to us that it would happen, but it's still a lot to see it like, oh. And then this idea of Snowy, like, just now being someone who is interested in much more than war, because he's also evolved from his time. Yeah. And accepted there might be more than just. just fighting. Yeah.

Hell of a thing for a sentient being to get used to, isn't it? The idea that not only is my entire way of life, not the only way of life, but also I'm just going to start going to different universes now. Yeah. See ya. And then Roberta Golding. Sorry, we've got a lot of characters. Reversa Golding, we just see briefly, and I wanted to mention because she's there.

She's on stage with the president a couple of times. She's worked her way up in his kitchen cabinet. Yeah. Unsurprisingly. had a hand in planning Maggie's mission. And also with the Joshua and Sally going to help people, there's a family they help and they talk about a sensible young woman who came and sort of warn them.

Yes, yeah, yeah. So immediately going out and helping people and helping them before the ashfall happens. Yeah, yeah, that's it. It's again, not so lack of empathy, just a different way of displaying it. Yeah. Her instinct is to help.

And that she immediately understood that the ash hole was going to happen, that it was going to happen within a certain timeframe and to warn people and to deal with that specifically. I think Granny and Nanny would hugely approve of Roberta Golden. And I like that she's also, while she's there, just letting them know, this is not God punishing you, by the way. Yeah, yeah.

This is a natural, but, yeah. This is a natural disaster. I can see you're worried. Just see, God is not annoyed at you. And then lastly, I just wanted to briefly mention Nelson, because I'm always really happy to see Nelson. We'll see more next half, I assume. I hope so, yeah.

And within this, this whole thing where the church has gone back and forward, and now the Vatican has claimed that Christians do have dominion over the long earth after all. Yeah. A little landmark from the Pope. Oh, yeah, we've got the crisis of faith from the one of Nelson's old parishioners. Eileen. Eileen. Come on, Eileen.

Sorry. And the not those feet movement rejecting the Vatican's claim to the long earth. Oh, yeah, that's good. I love all the little fucking random shit like this that gets put in, like, the so realistically imagined factions of extremists that come out of just this, you know, completely world, so series of world-changing events. And the difference is in how, like, this mass exodus has worked with America versus how it's working with the British, because America, we see a lot of the American side

of how they're going about it. We see these big, coley speeches. We're seeing a very small part of England, but we're seeing it's obviously happening in a much smaller and more individual way. Yeah, because they've not had that huge impetus of now my home's covered in ash. Yeah. Now it's more of a, there is now a very long-running ecological disaster. Go live somewhere.

And it's snowing in August. It's not meant to snow in August. You can definitely see a particular type of English person going, snowed more in August when I was young. Exactly. But commenting on Facebook, like, everyone's making such a fuss about nothing. The government being alarmed. This is the BBC.

Definitely blaming the BBC for the young. I don't know around him. She's sitting there, arms across, shant. Champ. Champ. And then locations, and I'm really excited about this. Crabland. Crabland.

Everything turns to crabs. I've got a bone to pick with Terry Bradgett. I was checking, like, the actual length of the book, so I went to the end of the book, and there's a little acknowledgement that mentions that this crab civilization like this was first discussed in the Science of Discworld. But it said chapter 15, and it was not chapter 15 in my copy of Science. of Discworld. It was chapter 31. What edition do you have?

This was a Kindle edition that I downloaded specifically to look for the crab bit. But I think it's obviously to do with... Yeah. If it was an old edition, then fine, the chapters were numbered differently, but still, I like that it was acknowledged in the acknowledgement that Pratch has also been able to take

the initial crab civilization and develop a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, I love the giant crab. The giant crab, yeah. Um, because you see like, uh, in the science of disc world, this is the wizards kind of playing with this round world they've made and trying to make it to see what happens if you can get an intelligent civilization going. Yeah, they keep getting apocalypseed. Yeah. And the, uh, signs of what counts the civilization, because they're like popping for a coffee and coming back

and it's technically 10,000 years later. So you start with like, um, underwater cities guarded by carefully transplanted sea and enemies. Yes. Uh, shellfish farms, um, invented a primitive form of warfare and had built statues to famous crabs who'd fallen in the struggle. And then 50,000 years later, you know, the architecture is not great, but now they're farming seaweed. Yeah. And they've invented slavery. And now they were making rafts and preparing to travel to other places in a great leap sideways. Yay.

Yeah. The idea, by the way, just building the civil. civilization on top of this huge protector crab. Yes. I'm not sure I can properly express how much I love that as like an idea because it's like the folkloric thing of the giant that will rise again to defend one's land, except that's actually the truth for them. Like, don't fuck with us.

We have a giant crab. It's a really fucking big crab, guys. Don't fuck about it. Also, I just love the idea that in the Science of Discworld, they built statues. and for this one, Pratchett was like, wait, they would have to build statues. Yeah, they've got the molten chatties. They make their own statues. But yeah, this moment where Snowy is pointing out that they are probably, you know,

feeding the crabs to the children, it teaches the children to fight and blah, blah, and says, that's what we do. And Hemingway and Maggie realizing, like, it's a cultural logic deriving from the imperative of their biology. Yeah. And Snowy basically saying, like, yeah, you need other blood, other bodies to prove thought. And my blood is not yours. my thought is yours and explaining yeah we need diverse perspectives to find new ways of

understanding yeah absolutely do you really vain crabs keep their own uh casts of like particularly good shell years in their houses i would if i was a cramp yeah yeah or if i was me in the 80s obviously uh you know rhinestones were in yeah yeah if i was a hermit crab as well like if I found a really nice shop but then I outgrew it I would like keep that the same way I've got it I own some clothes

that I'm too small I'm too big for now but like I love them so I don't want to get rid of them yeah so you just kind of like adorn adorn yourself with your baby shell

it's like a fascinating now yeah it's probably a good thing we're not crabs for instance yeah I've often thought so yeah we may or may not have loins

if we were crabs we just don't know yet we just don't know and then we also go to Mars Yeah, slightly More exotically and also not Yeah Fucking Mars

I love the idea of going to Mars I've got a T-shirt that says I'm never going to Mars Fair enough We don't have to feel the same way about it No, no And I don't It's great here That's true

You know what we've got here Oxygen Yeah We have got stuff Greener-Oxygen plants lip balm yeah that's true they haven't got lit balm on Mars

instant coffee I'm just saying things I can see right now but there's even more there's more stuff outside of this room but in this room right now there's more stuff than you'll ever get on Mars that's when you take stuff with you too Mars yeah I guess

I don't know I don't know man have you ever read Mars books yet no I haven't yet no I'm just saying you know we talk the talk we've said this before with the whole pioneer spirit and becoming long-earth explorers. But we don't actually deal that well with discomfort.

No, I actually would not last a week without instant coffee. Yeah. Like just being able to have it whenever I wanted. I wouldn't last a week just having instant coffee, but having to ration it. Yeah, yeah. I'd be so stressed. Also, I get claustrophic as fuck, so I simply cannot go, unfortunately.

You'll have to go for me. Well, I'll let you know how it is. But, yeah, the Long Mar is not paralleling the Long Earth. gives me questions. That's a hell of a hell of a reveal. Yeah. And I want to know about all the earths

they're going to, but via Mars. And obviously you can't just hop back and forth between Mars and Earth. Yeah. We are getting more into the hard sci-fi side of things in this book. Yes. And there is quite a lot that I simply don't understand.

But it's pretty well explained to the point where I don't feel like I'm missing parts of the plot because I don't understand it. So that's nice. Yes. and as I said my Kindle just puts on a little modesty filter whenever they try and explain string theory to me

My first one is a very little bit which is a nerdy t-shirt worn by Al at the Gap Space which has smugged me a kipper Would you like to complete the quote? I'll be back for breakfast Ace Rimmer from Reddwarf I still remember watching Reddwarf with you

I think it was when you were living with me and your partner was watching it and you had not seen tongue-tied before and we were possibly a little bit sleep deprived or something and both staring at the screen wondering what the hell it was going on. Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, that was a day. Anyway. Anyway, this is all going to get full of Reddwarf references if we don't quickly move on. Some American towns, Francie. Yeah, I just had to look at a couple of the real life American towns who were referenced in the book.

So Bozeman is the town nearest to Yellowstone from which Sally and Joshua rescue that family. which is now just covered in pyroclastic flow debris. It's Bozeman, Montana. It was quite an interesting town. Historically, it's the sites of nearby many conflicts between the pioneers and indigenous people. You'll find it anywhere in this part of the world. The guy who founded it, John Bozeman,

founded it around the time of the Gold Rush, which, by the way, I like us another kind of recurring theme in these books, the gold rush of the pioneers going west. all this, we retain. And I wonder if he's, sorry. Just formation of Gold Rush Towns is like a weird little thing I find really interesting. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, exactly.

You know, you get it in a few practical books as well, don't you? Like with the Hollywood thing and the... Yes. Yeah. And these, um, help others all sorts. Anyway, I wonder if this guy, um, slightly inspired that prick from the last couple of books. I've forgotten his name, uh, the Gold Rush guy. Yes, I know he mean.

Jim something. Yeah. Um, but John Bozman, apparently failed at mining and realized mining the miners would be more profitable. Yeah. He also died in an interesting way from the wiki. Bozeman was murdered on April the 20th, 1867, while traveling along the Elliston River to secure a flower contract. His partner, Tom Cover, which is a great name, by the way, Bit Brossi, I think.

Tom Cover reported they had been attacked by a band of Blackfeet natives, but some historians suspect that Bozeman was killed by Cover himself. cover story or perhaps even by a henchman of Pioneer Montana Ranch and Nelson Story cover story amazing named Thomas Kent

the subject is still a matter of debate and some theorise he was murdered in revenge for his habit of flirting with married women until I read that I didn't see the cover story of it and now I'm wondering if I've been pumped by a Wikipedia page no I'm going to believe it

Anyway, the other one was Happy Landings, which we learned is in the footprint of hump tulips. And the day I don't Google something like that is the day I've lost something special about my soul. Yep. Hump tulips is a censored designated place in America, which I guess means it doesn't quite count as a town. 236 people live there last count. It's one of those oddly transcribed from a native language names that meant hard to poll. polling, being canoeing. Right.

It was a logging outlet for the apparently famous 21-9 stand of Douglas fir, Township 21, Range 9, the greatest in the north-west. From the revisit W.A. website, Washington, I think. Yeah, W.A. Washington. Towering timber stood so dense that trees had to be felled in the same direction for lack of space. And one of the hump tulips saloons of the time, hump tulip saloon. hump tulip saloon That's a great kind of like Gwis

Golly Gwillikas Humph tulip A garrulous foreman boasted Give me enough snooce and Swedes And I'll log 219 Like it was a hayfield Dump the toothpicks into the South Fork

And ride them to tide water Like they was rocking horses I have so many thoughts about that sentence Those sentences What are snoops and Swedes And what are snoops and Swedes Snoo snuff kind of thing Swedes like the Swedish

lumberjacks and toothpicks toothpicks actually was the trees but yeah toothpicks into the south fork the fork of the river I guess

and ride them to tide water ride them to still water as if they were rocking horses right the specific breed of horse which kind of rock side to side instead of go forward

right yes definitely not making anything up there but yeah also a little you know that's mention as we get a riding along on there. Unfortunately, I doubt these chaps had any eagles to patch up their Swedes.

Sadly. Sadly. Noose just won't do it. Honestly, just the best collection of sentences I've heard all day. It's beautiful. Yeah. Hunt tulips saloon and all. But there's still like a, not a town, but like a hamlet there, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, small American towns are just weirdly fascinating because they're so built up. And not all in like a happy way, obviously, with the kind of coming to a rise around the street. I've got a friend who lives in Canada, who lives in a town that was part of the early gold rush. And so it's now like a weird, very touristy town, but also like a very functional town. Well, I suppose in the old world, there aren't that many towns where you can trace the beginnings like that, or rather that are so well documented. Like all of the weird stories that must come up every time you start a town.

most of them had lost in history for us. Yeah, but if you're in the space where it's all a bit more modern, then you have that whole history of it. The fact that this town started as a bunch of tents and people came here not to actually pan for gold, but to perform in those tents. Yeah, yeah. And let's not look into that anymore

if we want to keep the happy side of the history. Yeah, no mind. But yeah, no. The Bozeman had a whole long, history section that I didn't get into. So I just stuck to the chap and his unfortunate demise. He was 32. He was two years younger than me. I haven't started one gold rush town. I haven't secured any flower contract. Yeah, maybe we really aren't doing enough in our lives. Then again, I suppose we're not being a horrible

colonising pioneers. Well, yeah, actually, when you look at it that way, we're really doing very good things by just not doing those bad things. And, yeah, that's hopefully going to be enough to get us out of purgatory. Therefore, humanity is inherently good. No, let's not do that. At the other... Yes. I liked Lopsang's little joke, but also liked it as a concept

where he's going to have one entirely non-electronic backup, such as a few hundred monks in a scriptorium somewhere, endlessly copying his thoughts from one bound paper volume to another. A scriptorium on the moon, maybe. Incredible. a scriptorium it was an actual name for the medieval writing room which I had a nice I'm going to start calling my office the scriptorium I think you should get a little plaque for the door excellent yeah love that one other little bit I loved is the Russians yeah yes there's something

there's so much about it I love this idea that they were sent out as this vanguard that there was meant to be a city on this particular arid Mars by now but there isn't because because the yellowstone happened and Russia's kind of collapsed. What a weird thing, right? Mazagrad. But they're still there and they're still studying and they're still learning. They're like, well, this is what we came here for. So we're still going to do all of this.

Yeah. There's fully functioning place. They're breeding alpacres. It's the way they sort of see what they're doing is they're being close to where they need to be. This Mars is almost within reach for us for the alpacres for the rhub. name of more iconic trio the Russians the alpacas and the rhubarb the lion the witch in the wardrobe is working title actually

yeah yeah lost a time and history until Terry Pratchett brought back for the long pass and yeah I just love it because I think there's something very sweet and also sad about this tiny little group becoming exiles but still forging ahead with their study yeah yeah definitely I mean it's you know, Russian scientists have been ever so good at that over the years.

Yeah. The scientists that protected the seed bank during the seeds of St. Petersburg, Stalingrad. Yeah. And the amount of... And who died of starvation before they ate the seeds. Really? I didn't know the whole story. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'll find that for you. I better make sure I'd set the right city there.

Yep. But yeah, these places, because, you know, Russia are obviously... It's obviously these huge places of isolation. But then also, yeah, study. Yeah, I just love this story. I think it's very sweet. And the idea of an exile still pursuing their work is something I find very... It's romantic. It is romantic. It's romantic science. Yes. Which is like sci-fire, but this. But more whimsical. Yes. With alpacres and rhubb. Yes. Ray Bradbury would approve, I believe, of this Mars. Yes, very much so. Right. Let's go on to the bigger stuff here.

I want to talk about how this book is structured because I don't enjoy this as much as I did the first two and I was quite interesting this I try not to let what other people think of books affect how I read them but I am very aware that the Long Earth is a series a lot of people feel has kind of diminishing returns as it went on I have read all of them and I remember enjoying all of them I don't remember a specific feeling of diminishing returns

but I think in reading this because I'm forced to maybe slow down and not read it all in one sitting, which is what I probably did the first time I read this. Yeah. Because I know who I am as a person. And I think it's because you have, it emerges into three stories. You have Joshua's Hunt for the evolved humans, which is mostly just at the moment flashbacks. You have Sally's trip to Mars and you have Maggie's mission.

And it feels so disparate here. It's like that they had these cool ideas for three different stories they really wanted to tell. And none of them were quite a book on their own. so they put the three of them into a book and I'd much prefer the structure of the first one where it was one story and then the vignettes and the way the vignettes all eventually added up together yeah

and yeah maybe I don't know it just feels a bit disparate here and I want much more focus on Sally's story because the book is called The Long Mars and I just really want to see more of Mars yeah well I think we might yeah no I have obviously we've still got half a book to go and yeah I don't dislike this book

yeah I think I'm enjoying it more than I did the last one, interestingly. Less than I did the first one. But I think it's because I'm enjoying the kind of deviation into a bit more sci-fi. Yeah, I think for me, the first one, I loved it so much because it was like great, we've created this concept, and now we get to do

all of this speculating. And we get to do it in these. Pure speculative fiction. Yeah. And so you have that journey that's tying everything together, but you also have all of those little short stories and all of that speculation. And with this, there's like, there's lots of speculation. There's, you know, Maggie's, much bigger version of that initial journey

that eventually devolves into getting quite philosophical because there's not much to look at apart from purple bacteria. Sally's trip again is the most speculation like, oh my God, what could happen on different Marses is amazing. And then at the moment, we're not really, because we're only halfway through the book, we're not really

hooked into what Joshua's story is going to be. Yeah. But it feels like Joshua's story is the one that's going to build to the big disaster at the end if this is going to end on another big disaster. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what we both think by the time we get to the end of it, because usually we talk about it once, well, usually at least I know what's going to happen because it's been disqualified, and you know what's going to happen because you've just read the whole thing. And so that's got a colour.

There's definitely, our memories, about how we felt the first half, do you know what I mean? Very much so. But that's why I wanted to talk about this at the halfway point, because I think it really changes how you view the book as a whole when you hit that halfway point and go, ah, maybe I don't like how this is being done. Also, also a couple of things I miss. One is I really like Joshua and Sally together, not in a romantically shipping them away. I just love it when they travel together because the way they bounce off each other is so great.

Yes, Sally and her dad, the kind of point is, they're very similar, isn't it? Yeah, because of that they don't have the... Yeah, Frank is a great foil to them in a very different way. Yes. But then also, there's a bunch of stuff I want way more of, which is why I wish this had more of the structure of the first book, and a lot of that is the logistics of the rebuilding and mass relocation.

Because, you know, I talked about it in the last book when I took the, trying to work out the logistics of the meal, Helen served. I really like that stuff. I want to see how the mass exodus works in detail. I want to see, you know, there's a great bit in chapter 8 when Lob Sang and Joshua are hanging out and looking at the Caldera and where Lob sang kind of very briefly sums up how much the politics, he says, the politics of the new, of the data Earth have been reconfigured.

And so it's now it's Southern Europe, North Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Southern China, and then Mexico and Brazil, and Brazil is exploiting this final dieback of the rainforest to take over agriculture in the Amazon. And so I kind of want less of the long earth and more of data now. I'm really fascinated because I'm also fascinated by the idea of what happens if the Yellowstone actually does erupt. Yeah, I was reading quite a lot about that today, actually, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to make that my talking point.

And there's, I mean, good news is it's not going to happen in the way we were all told, probably. Like as in the lava pockets are a lot more spread out than we thought, so it wouldn't happen like this. Yeah. So that's nice. And also, obviously, it would probably all be a lot more tragic in the long run because there aren't an infinite number of parallel Earths to escape to. Oh, fuck, yeah. We got that. Yeah.

You were just thinking about your life on the lovely new long. I absolutely was, yeah, yeah. Oh, which one detail I really liked, actually, was talking about how the low-earths, the small townships in the low-earths don't often have things like bars and restaurants and hospitals and stuff because everyone goes back to datum for it. Yeah.

Weirdly, the low-earth towns are less developed than the ones up in Valhalla and the High Megas and that kind of thing. Yeah, there was one bit that I thought you'd particularly like because it was an over, it was like, looking at things from above thing, which was even following that,

however, the populations of mankind was still relatively concentrated was biased towards the centre, the datum and the worlds of the low earth. Further out, there was a long, long tail

out through the thick bands of more or less similar earth that humans are given labels, such as blah, blah. Yeah, the cor melts. But yes, no, I really didn't like that. That was almost my quote,

I think, but it came out, a bit chunky. It was hard to edit down. But yeah, I don't dislike this book. I feel like I'm mentally juggling, juggling three different short

stories in a way that two is less fun than those individual dives down into like a single town and the history of it. Yeah, yeah. So it's not really a criticism. I just think it's really interesting to look at partway through why this story is structured like this and thinking about what it is building up to and how much these three stories can eventually intertwine with each other in a way that's possibly more complex than a massive disaster bringing them together. And they don't necessarily have to. I mean, reverse goldersing story only overlapped with the other stories. in the last book at the very last minute she's at the part of the garden party yeah but thematically it really resonated and so that's what i'm looking forward to is how joshua story

and maggie's story and sally's story end up having like thematic resonance even if they don't physically overlap with each other yeah yeah but in the meantime i want more small weird stuff yeah and i feel like i'm missing a bit of the small weird stuff at the moment at this point in the book i think um i think one Slightly thematic overlap we've got with them. It's not quite in the way you mean, but the landscape change that we've got. So the focus has kind of gone away from the endless riches of the long earth onto the edges and the extremes. So almost all the description we've had of Maggie Kaufman's journey has been post the interesting bits.

Sally is going through the Long Mars, which is another extreme environment. All the stuff on the datum is surrounding this post-oferm. apocalyptic. Yeah, and that's a massive extreme. We're very much on the edges and the wastelands now, whereas before we were in the woods and the seas. And that I do find really interesting and like speculation about why the long earth gets so bland once you get past 100 million and is, you know, life, as we understand it's sentient life not spreading that far and how that informs, well, is Lindsay's theories about how sentient life is necessary for the long earth to develop. Yeah. And there's also, you know, there's like, you know, there's

a lot of thematic stuff. I nearly did a whole section on gods and I probably would have done if I had a bit more time for research, but there is a lot of thematic stuff of gods and power and overseeing and what it means you have Lob Sang, experiencing his own crisis of faith through this idea of resurrection and rebirth and being trapped in the bardo and his continuing existence, he's not a god compared to the Daedalus comparison with Willis Lindsay. Yeah, it's also not a god. Yeah. Definitely not a god, Willis Lindsay. Or Daedalus, I mean.

Yeah. No, but he's part of mythology in that practice history. And arguably sort of ends up a bit punished by the gods. Because he's the thing about the end of that story, I'm afraid, John. Right. Wait, did it not work out for Daedalus Nicarus? It was fine, actually. Don't worry about it.

I actually can't remember how Daedalus dies because he gets to the end of that and goes on to do other stuff. I can't remember. I'm not busting out the myth. Oh, you're going to look it up. I'm just going to wiki it. I'm not going away from a cyclopedia or anything. Death. Just stay away from the history of espionage, please.

One version of the story said he retired to the Creighton colony of Telmasos and was bitten by a snake and died. Another version of the story places his death on a small island in the Nile River, where he was later worshipped. Yet another version has him dying after being bitten by a water snake in Leicier. So three possible deaths, two of which are snakes. I feel like getting bitten by a snake is like that. kind of cop-out Greek mythology ending.

Like, ah, just like it, you got bitten by a snake, fine. Yeah. Well, what happened next? Uh, snake. Definitely bit by a snake. Poor snakes. Gives him a bad rap. Anyway, at this point, I'm just going to end up rambling. But yeah, that was sort of my point. I'm really interested in why this book is structured differently,

and how that lands it. Yeah, good stuff. What about you? I've kind of copped out myself here. Here is a snake. because there's various themes that I think we're going to end up talking about like the rise of the new species of humans

or things like that, what the long Mars means. I definitely going to come in the second half of this book. I thought I'd sidestep into the round world. Yep. And have a look at Pratchett and its history with its astronomy and space and his love of it, which is so clearly reflected in this book.

And as obviously as he is Stephen Paxter's I don't know much about Stephen Baxter. Fair. We've talked about Pratchit and sci-fi space stuff before, obviously, in several previous episodes. We had the Johnny series that came up a few times. The Dark Side of the Sand and Strata being the obvious ones. I'll link to those episodes and show notes because they were a little while ago now. Oh, God, they really were.

Yeah, we had a whole run of those. The first thing that we all learn about Pratchit and his love for space in the biographies is, that he had the Brooke Bond tea cards and that his whole family were bullied into drinking lots more tea in order that he got the full set, which I now have as well, because you can get them quite cheap off eBay turned out. I wish someone had told Pratchett there, his poor family drinking all that too.

Well, you couldn't then, I think. Back then, eBay, I think you had to travel to in person. Ah, yes, on your horse and wagon. Yes, to the big auction. Oh, that would be cool. It's a physical eBay space. Anyway, fuck the hell. Sorry.

I'll link to where you can see. Hi, Rezvers, version of them online. They are lovely. From a Life was footnotes. This was a very good time to be interested in the night sky, the mid to late 50s, with America and the Soviet Union ramping up their competing exploratory plans. And this obviously, I think, is reflected in this book.

You get a really nice, a light-hearted look at the American-Sovian. or as it is, as it is, not Soviet anymore, obviously, but the rivalry and the space race. Yeah, the space rivalry. Terry was notably aided and abetted, Rob Wilkins says, in his enthrlement by the Brookbond Tea Company. A series of 50 picture cards on astronomy approved by A. Hunter, PhD, Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. Terry marvelled at the coloured drawings of the planets, drank in the information on the back of the cards, collected them all, and it awoke in him an enthusiasm for astronomy that never abated. Still in the 50s, he went to see the light show at the London Planetarium with his mother.

And 50 years later could still recall it in detail, and he described it. He was bought a telescope, obviously not a top of the range one, and he saw Jupiter as this rainbow blur in the sky, but his imagination filled in the rest. And then he, you know, started learning a lot about space. Indeed, while still very much a tykin shorts, one morning over breakfast, he spotted an error in the description of the planet Mars on the back of a Kellogg's corner. flakes packet and either egged on by his mother or entirely off his own precocious, precocious bat, it's not clear which, precocious bat, excellent, duly wrote to the manufacturers to point out their mistake. Alas, the mistake was in fact Terry's. The mass of miles was exactly as Kellogg's had printed it. Even so, he got nice reply and

better still, several complimentary boxes of corn flakes. Excellent. This enthusiasm for space never abated. He read a lot of sci-fi in his teen years. He didn't read a lot till he was about 10 or 11, but when he started. it was sci-fi and fantasy. In a later interview, he was asked about some of the sci-fi writers that inspired him. And he said, alas, I find it a shame that he has been so easily forgotten a writer called James Blish. And the interviewer says, Star Trek books, right?

And Terry Prattitt says, well, that's actually like saying, oh, yes, I remember the queen. She was that lady that opened a school. He wrote to the movie. One thing I've noticed, by the way, is when you read Terry Practor interviews that are transcribed like that with a Q&A, you know, the initials and the initial blah, blah, blah. It's so many of them start with, no. Like the interview will say, oh, it's this, right? And Territ Tratchel will go, no, it's this.

I love it. I love reading his interviews. He doesn't like fucking just mince around it. He's like, no, I'm going to give the correct answer. He wrote a trilogy. In fact, the best tradition of trilogies, there were four books in it, known as the cities of flight. But he also wrote rather heavier books like Black Easter.

I think he wrote a case of conscience. and the day after judgment that cities in flight was such a gosh, wow, science fiction it enthralled me. The premise was beguilingly simple. The very cheap space travel had been found and that people zoomed off to the stars

who had a universe of more or less agricultural planets. And it goes into detail about this off the top of his head he still remembers this, you know, 50 years later. He said, I read so much science fiction and fantasy in the 60s. I just used to devour it. Obviously, I'll link to that whole interview, which is delightful. And then when he was then working as a journalist, as we recall, he had a section of the Bucks Free Press to himself called the Children's Circle.

Yes. And the twee little things about hedgehogs or whatever were replaced by characters such as Professor Welk, who built a rocket intending to fly him to Mars and making sure to hang curtains in its windows and put a large brass knocker on its front door. Excellent. It was continually inspired by the sci-fi author as well. I mean, for instance, there's quite a detailed part of the book where he goes to WorldConn in 1965. And he's in the presence of these heroes of sci-fi in this terms. And it's one of the things that turns him into the person who was so happy to talk to fans and be a part of the community. But Arthur C. Clark brought with him a nail, allegedly from the HMS bounty and a piece of heat shield from a Mercury spacecraft and made the point that these things were only 200 years apart.

and that technology in the future crept up on you. And again, I think this is one of those things. And I really like how it's kind of paralleled in the long earth when you think about it. And that we're on full spaceflight over here and the kind of technology that doesn't yet exist in a working way. And at the same time, you know, Joshua's estranged wife is back home in pioneer times kind of. And happy landings. They're still, you know, going fishing for their dinner every night. That's very cool.

Later on, of course, Patrick writes some sci-fi books, and then some other books. I think we've talked about those a bit. Yeah, I think we would. He did some fantasy stuff, I guess. In his real life, when he had the money, he did his horizontal wealth stuff, as we talked about before, with the research that he loved doing. He built himself a library. But he also built an observatory. Yes.

What a thing to do. He wanted to call it the Patrick Moore Memorial. Warial Observatory, despite the fact that Patrick Moore was still alive. And came to the observatory. They did stuff there together, didn't they? Well, yeah, so they were friends by them, so we all, Patrick, has permission for that. And, you know, his friendship with Patrick Moore's lovely.

He used to visit Patrick Moore in West Sussex for Saturday night stargazing sessions, and I think Moore was in his 80s by them. And they would also include people like Brian May and John Coulshaugh. Yes. I'm pretty sure Pratchett was involved at the very least in getting the coat of arms for Patrick Moore, which he presented to him on a special episode of The Sky at Night. And I can't find a clip of this. And my kingdom for a clip of this, listeners. Yes, please.

I don't have a kingdom, but I'll be really happy. I'll be really happy. Yeah, we'll be grateful. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, there's so much stuff on this, that, like, you can't cover everything about his absolutely lovely. adoration of space and yeah yeah both space and science fiction yeah the same as everything that he researches and gets so into you can just see the

love of the knowledge and of the the possibilities and just like the little details in this of the space flight like again I don't know how much this is Baxter because he also writes fantastic about all the technologies that don't exist but they really do in his books so like

if we ever want to go back we need to accelerate again to match the earth spin, okay? Otherwise, it'd be like a leaf in a thousand miles per hour per hour gale. So if all else fails, find capacitated, you're out to touch with the brick moon. Love the brick moon, by the way. Press that button and the systems will take you home, comprehend. And it's like, the way that it's explained in the, we get to be the Sally figure here. Like, yes, I love that. We get to do the learn things. Also, I think, like, Frank as a character has so much of, like, Terry Pratchett's adoration and whimsy for both space and sci-fi. Yeah, definitely. And the way they go, those go together. That

passion for space exploration that comes from the uncle that gives you the sci-fi novels, although for Pratchett, it wasn't an uncle, it was a shop where they were furtively wrapped in paper, and it was pretty much sci-fi fantasy and porn. To like wrap it up a little bit, I suppose, there was a bit in an interview I was accidentally came across while I was trying to find this. As you saw earlier, I did end up in just some weird directions when I was reading about this. Yeah, no, I did. I could talk about this for years. But the question from the interview and The Guardian was Mr Pratchett, what gave you the idea for Discworld,

which is a hell of a thing to ask Terry Pratchettit's in later interviews, but this was in 2001, so he wasn't quite as sardonic as he might have been. This is a good example of serendipitous research. When I was about 10 or 11, I was very interested in astronomy because he were allowed to stay up all night. I later found out that you had to do maths as well, and astronomy largely consisted of doing maths in a small room in Cambridge. I subsequently found out that all science is doing maths somewhere. Even oceanography is probably doing maths in a small room in Southampton.

I realized what I really wanted to do was be a journalist so I could take an interest in astronomy without having to do all the hard bits. In the books of astronomy, you've always got a little chapter that in the 50s probably had a headache that meant even though it didn't say, let's have a laugh at all those silly old Greeks of the kind of things they believed. Invariably, there would be a description of what effectively is the disc world. Incredible. Yeah. And I found a bunch of what I didn't have time to do properly was come through all. the old Usenet groups and find his various arguments about space. They're awesome. I'll come back to this. I might come back to this on Patreon. Also, like, just thinking right back to the beginning

of the Discworld, which is, you know, his big fantasy story. It wasn't his first fantasy, but it was his first big fantasy story story. That one of the first storylines in Discworld is space exploration. Oh, yeah. It's the Cellinauts. We never agreed on how to tell them. We did. We agreed how to say it properly and that we weren't going to stick to it. Yes, excellent. Well, good. I'm consistent then. But yeah, he was starsing with space exploration even from the beginning of Discworld. And that's my extra little delight. Oh, yeah, we get to see it illustrated in The Last Hero, don't I? I forgot about that, yeah. Yeah. In case anyone had forgotten, we really like Terry Pratchett. We really like Terry Pratchett. Not to, like, dumb down Stephen Baxter's contribution and we love him too. But as you said, we're a Terry Pratchett podcast.

and, God, I love Terry Pratchett. I feel like I should go and learn a bit more about Stephen Baxter now. He's not going to find out. He's done the opportunity to go back to my learning about the things. Listeners, don't tell Stephen Baxter we didn't talk about him enough. Please don't let him know. It's fine. All right, Francine, do you have an obscure reference video for me?

I do, yes. At some point, Zubrin kits are mentioned, and they are these oxygen-producing recycling kits. that they're using up on Mars, longer and otherwise. These will be named after, I can only imagine, Robert Zubrin, who is an American aerospace engineer and an advocate for human exploration of Mars. Here's some pretty controversial takes.

He very much into the planting flags on Mars, I'll put it that way. He says that we are probably going to go to war in space, that kind of thing, very influential in both astronomy and sci-fi. He's one of these definitely stands the two, to the point where there's a whole cultural references section on him in Wikipedia, and I don't think it even mentions the long Mars. But, yeah, because I like to have one slightly irrelevant fact about my people I talk about, his first patent was for three-player chess, and he was 20 years old. Excellent. Ten out of ten. It looks hard.

Yeah, I don't. I can't play. two-player chess for once in. I don't want to know about three-player chairs. I know the horsey goes in Nell shape and that's where my knowledge ends. I'm okay with that. Yeah, I don't even know if it does in this one. So, yeah. I don't want to think about the three-dimensional Nal Shope. Right. I think that's everything we're going to say about part one of the Long Mars. We're going to be back next week with part two, which will start a chapter 25 and go all the way to the end of the book. As when we're back next week, we'll know what happens at the end of the book. Hooray. We're going on the journey too. We're also on the journey.

Keep an eye out also. There's a little bonus episode coming. That episode may I may not have something to do with the fact that I've got a book out. American Teen Dramas from Sunnydale's Riverdale is out now available in all the places you can buy books. And also signed copies are on my website. It's a very good book. You should read it. And if you do read it and you don't hate it, please leave a review somewhere, especially, you know, the bad book buying place because I am a slave to the cursed algorithm. Anyway, so as I said, we'll be back next week. In the meantime, of course, dear listeners, you can join our disciplines. There's a link down below. We highly recommend it. Everyone there is lovely. You can follow us on Instagram at the true show make you frat on Facebook at the true show make you fret. Join our subreddit our slash TTSMYF. Email us your thoughts, queries, castle, snacks, messages in a bottle and sea gulls. seashells, the true shell make, and sea seagulls on the seashore.

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The longer we do those outroes, the more you sound like you're listing off medical side effect. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm going for.