The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 7: The Long War Pt 1 (The Twain Twade)

Episode Date: September 7, 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 War Part 1!Character conflict! Hexagonal plots! Condiment logistics!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 Things we blathered on about:Greyhound Literary • The Phantom Atlas The ancient tools that shaped our woodlandsGam (nautical term) - Wikipedia Jumping the Shark - TV Tropes Zheng He - WikipediaTomás de Torquemada | First Grand Inquisitor of Spain | Britannica     Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I have a whole chicken that needs cooking today because I bought it for Sunday dinner and forgot that I was going to be on a boat on Sunday and there's no room for it in the freezer. I am very much looking forward to tomorrow evening being on a boat listening to jazz. Yeah, I like that. Especially because it's meant to actually be quite nice weather tomorrow.

Well, yeah, it seems like last proper summary day. Yeah, I'm making the most of that. Last night, I painted a conquer three times as a way to get back to nature somehow because I could not be bothered to think of any... I was like, I need to create something. And Jack has brought me back a conker from the farm. I should paint a conker.

Yes, I did not have to move. So at midnight, I was surrounded by three paintings of a conker. I was like, I look insane. I'm going to bed. That does not seem like a bad way to spend your time. That was lovely. It was very calming. So, yeah, I managed to wind down the stress last night.

So I'm doing all right today. I've got some work to do over the weekend still, but we'll do that. We'll worry about that later. I've got to remember, I've got to edit the podcast. I've got to actually add that into my mental scheduling. Yeah, I was trying to do my mental schedule for next week and add in the stuff that I've had to push back from this week because of things like bake off going wrong and then realized I'm like losing a whole day by needing to commute to my sister's house to bake biscuits. Luckily, next week's a watch week. So it's not actually,

it doesn't sound very stressful. Like I just have to watch season of television. But it's amazing how quickly the time I have to do that is like dwindling in next week. So I'm just going to... I'm sorry. I know. I will wear how life my ridiculous is. I'm so stressed about my biscuits and having to watch the office. It's really pathetic.

I'm aware how it sounds. I know it's not easy not to be, but there's a lot more stress there than there needs to be. Oh, yeah, no. I'm making myself way more stress than I need to be. I am fully cognizant of that fact. I am making everything much more difficult for myself. Okay, good. As long as we can stop the spiral before it gets too far, that's all.

It's not a spruly. It's not a crissism, it's a concern. Yeah, it's not so much spiraling as just sort of pointing out and going, oh. Yeah, no, fair enough. That is most of my week. And then I rally and realize actually everything's, sort of really quite okay. Yeah.

And that's what a sunny Sunday on a barge listening to jazz music is all about. Yep. I've got to figure out an outfit. That's the tricky thing. Oh, yeah. Outfit for a barge jazz party. The problem is I have like the ideal dress for Sunday evening jazz on a boat. But because the boat sets off, takes off, embarks from a small Norfolk village and we're

going to go for food in that small Norfolk village first. My ideal jazz boat dress is not really a Sunday afternoon meal in a pub dress. Finally, we can use all the skills we learnt in Cosmopolitan and Ms. Magazine, whatever, in the early noughties. About going from day to night. Yeah, turn an evening gown into a pub wear with a blazer if we're a, no, that's a bit too, 2010. What are you going to put on? I think what I'm going to do is just find something other than a floor length sequence. gown to wear. Well, that seems unfortunate, but fine.

I just feel like maybe I can't casualise a floor-length sequing gown. This is you, Joanna. For Sunday pub. Yes, but even I have limits. And I don't want to work. Now we found it. Yeah. There's floor-length sequing gown for Sunday afternoon pub food. Okay. Well, that's good. We've got A line. I guess that's like right the line, though, right? If it had been like an inch shorter, you'd have gone for it. Oh, yeah. If it was like mid-carve or something, I would be wearing that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

or if it was like just marginally less sequined but still floor length fine yeah to be fair you're also good you don't want to get all dusty walking around on the pub floor and yeah plus the only shoes i have that actually look like good with that dress are shoes i can't comfortably wander around in for a whole day oh yeah yeah i'm realistic now so i'm going with a black velvety dress that i can throw a shirt on over casual daytime shirt off different scarf evening see i know how to go from day tonight yay A statement necklace, perhaps? I might find, if I can find one that shouts enough. Yeah. Statement necklace is quite a phrase really, isn't it? Because a statement can be quite... Sattel. Sattel. I was about to say understated, but then I was getting myself in a world of trouble.

I do love, like, a statement necklace in the classic sense, though. I've come around to them. Yeah. My mum always wore them, always wears them. always wears them and I'm now finding their use as something that basically means I can wear what I want to work and if I put a statement necklace on top and now it's artistic not now it's a casual yeah this is why I have like whole drawers full of scarves it turns now it turns clothes into an outfit now that's a statement necklace and the statement is fuck you

I'm not sticking to your definition of necklace yeah it's on my neck therefore it's a necklace. Should we make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the true shall make you fress, a podcast in which we were reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and now we're talking about all sorts of nonsense, including this week part one of the long war. Yes, which is as adjacent to Discworld as you're going to get at this point. Yep, we are still in Pratchett territory. Not a large territory. Not a large territory. sure it is now. Goodness me. Infinite one might say. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously heavy spoilers for the book The Long War. But we will avoid

spoiling any major events in the Discworld series, I guess, in case you're hopping back and forth. And we will avoid spoiling any major events in the rest of the Long, etc. series. I'm sure there's a better name. I think it's just called the Long Earth series. But I like the Long, Et cetera. Let's do that. Yeah, the Long, etc. So you, dear listeners, can come on the journey with us on a twain so plush that the gangplank is carpeted excellent I love the word gangplank I love the word twain twain's great as well twain driver sorry every time gets me yeah I want to be a twain driver literally that's the first bullet point on my notes in all caps twain driver

excellent then it's got anything to follow up on a couple of bits this one's pretty old. Did we talk about the fact that Donner and Blitzen, the reindeer, mean Thunder and Lightning? No, I don't think we have talked about that. Okay, that's a nice little parallel to Granny A King's dogs. I also, I've had that written down in my document for some weeks, and I don't remember who or what told me that. So sorry if it was a listener, and I've forgotten.

The other bit is from a listener, I was only the other day, so I've still got that. And it was Artemis on our Discord, one of two Artemis's, I think, but has the book, The Phantom Atlas, which we've talked about definitely on a rabbit hole, maybe on the main podcast before, by Edward Brooke Hitching. Yes. And it has all, like, maps of things that weren't actually things, and it's all very lovely. But there is, in here, the Sea of the West. which was the fairly widespread at one point, believe that there was indeed a big inland sea. That's not going to come into focus, sorry, guys,

in North America, which is very cool. And as I suggested, perhaps this was the inspiration. Luxor elsewhere says that it might actually be just like geographical, geological history that's the inspiration, because there was an inland sea in it before the Rockies turned up. Yes. Who knows? Who knows? but I like an excuse to go back to this book.

I need to go for some of a copy of that one. Francine, would you like to introduce us to the book The Long War? Certainly. I actually don't have that much of a long introduction for this one. It was published in June 2013. It is the second in the series, and I'm just going to read the blur. A generation after the events of the long earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by stepping, where Dodgua and Lobs sang, and I said what I said, once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the steps. wise Americas with trade and culture.

Mankind is shaping the long earth, but in turn, the long earth is shaping mankind. And you're going to do a summary, so I'll leave the rest of that blurb, actually. It's quite love. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I think it was reasonably well received

as the second in what was obviously going to be a multi-part series. An overarching story series, so yeah. Yep. Excellent. Right. In this section, which starts chapter one and goes up to chapter 35, inclusive, because this is quite a long book.

First, a cobald meets a beagle. It's been a decade-ish since Joshua and Lob Sang set out on their journey across the long earth, and Joshua has settled down, married Helen Green and become mayor of hell knows where, up in the high megas. One fateful evening, Sally Lindsay arrives to tell Joshua about poor treatment of trolls across the long earth and wants him to do as jubty. Conveniently, there's an airship waiting just as Sally demands that Joshua addresses Congress. Joshua and Helen, along with their young son, Dan, make a plan to head for the

datum via Valhalla, the home of Dan's potential new school and workplace of Helen's father, Jack Green. Helen pays a visit to Jack, who cares much more about a new declaration of independence. Aboard the gold rush, a plush twain, the valiante family, head for the datum. Sally pops in and out along the trip, and eventually the family land back on the original earth, just in time for Joshua to get stabbed. Monica Yanson provides a base, Helen's in custody, and Joshua recovers enough to meet up with Senator Starling who laughs off troll concerns. Joshua visits Sister Agnes's grave, meets the new Agnes, and catches up over coffee. Meanwhile, the Reverend Nelson Ezeki, should really practice saying his surname, packs up, leaving

the church to set out in search of the mysterious lobsang. His journey takes him to Chicago and a mysterious winner, Bego. Also, meanwhile, US Navy Commander Maggie Kaufman sets off in the USS Benjamin Franklin, a brand new airship to go to go and out across the long earth as part of Operation Prodigal Sun, a mission to unite the US ages. Maggie visits small towns on sparse earths, deals with legalities, meets Sally Lindsay, learns to befriend the trolls and finally gets a troll call, a translation device that gives her a new perspective on sapience. Also, meanwhile, Roberta Golding sets off on the Chinese East 20 million expedition. Finally, Sally convinces Janssen to come with her to the Gap,

or as close as possible, for the sake of troll justice. At Gap Space, they learn that trolls are abandoning the human infested long earth, and they break out Mary and Ham. Mary and Ham. Icons. Ham's a lovely name. Ham is a lovely name for a girl. Yeah, good stuff. It was quite an eventful, first half. It takes a little while to get into its momentum, but I don't mind a slow intro for something like this. I'm just enjoying the world, to be honest. Yes, very much, though. I tried not to just make all my notes about the logistics of the various long earths, because that's the sort of thing I ever think. And I didn't entirely succeed, but we'll get to that later in the episode.

Marvelous. I do like long-earth logistic. Excellent. Before that, though, helicopters and loincloths. Go on. Yeah, no, there wasn't really much in this, but I did my best. I have put twains for helicopters. They're literal helicopters. Yeah, that's too obvious, franzing. No, no, come on.

No, the point of this fucking section, Joanna. Right, fine, there were helicopters. And it was called a little bird. Fine. There were helicopters called a little bird. It was a lovely sentence. A chopper clattered overhead, a little bird. All right, that's a good point.

Come on. I put up with your fake helicopters. I just wanted to talk about Twain. 500 episodes or whatever we've done. Something like that. God knows at this point. But yeah, let's talk about some Twains because they are better. I just like that they're called Twain's after the mum.

Mark Twain, but it sounds like a child that can't speak properly saying train and so Twain drive. It just is a delight. It's good. It's good to be a Twain driver. It's good to be a Twain driver. And it's nice that the little, let's go logistics. It's nice the little detail that we can have more of them on datumarth now because we can get helium from elsewhere. Yes. Because that is a problem. Listeners, you could all stop just randomly releasing helium into the atmosphere. We need it. I want to say MRI machines. Something medical as well as balloons. It actually has a lot of important uses, and maybe helium balloons are the best use of a finite resource. Yeah, but not to tell everybody off because I don't want this to be a helium PSA, and I've always said that.

Yeah, no, that is. From when we first started the podcast, Francine said, look, it's fine, I'll do it, but I don't want it to become helium PSA. And the reason my voice is quite a lot lower than it used to be is because I've had, like, a low-grade throat infection for several months and not because I've stopped taking my daily helium. we're going to blow this whole thing wide open the Francine Helium conspiracy of 2025 It's certainly more fun than the ones we've been looking at so far Loing cloth sorry Oh yeah so it's not a loincloth But I'm going to say Sister Agnes is Wimple

Because I like the fact that Wimple sounds like it's a much dirtier thing than it actually is No, agreed, that's fine We're either of the humanoid or the two-legging, two-legging, the sentient beasties wearing anything like a loincloth? There was no loincloth in the description that I saw. Okay. We can't rule it out, obviously. Yes, no.

I mean, I think there was an implication of loincloth somewhere about that, but... But not strong enough to overad the wimple. Yeah. Not strong enough. Yeah. Thank you for... If they had been specifically described as wearing a loincloth, I would have been angry. I'm sorry about the helicopter.

That's okay. I would accept it if we started reading books, that included a lot of helicopters if we started skimming over them, if we inexplicably got into like call of duty streaming or something. Yeah, I can really see that being the direction this podcast goes in. I got some new headspace. I'm so used to trying to find something else to call a helicopter. I forgot to look for the actual.

I couldn't see the helicopters for the birds. Yay. All right. Quotes. How about some of them? Yeah. Should I go first? Yeah.

It's a short one from Chapter 2, but at the moment I read it, I knew I had to include it for the sake of our dear listeners. It was one of the few trophies Joshua re-kept of the journey of discovery across the long earth that the two of them had made with Lobzang, or the journey, as the world knew it 10 years later. Ah, wonderful. We're ahead of our time. I know this came out before we started the podcast, but... Clearly, we knew it one day we would get to this point.

We did. and also it happens later chronologically within the book. So considering the intricacies of L's face, I think we're in the clear. Yeah, I think so. I don't think we've messed with the causal nature of the universe too much. Especially after you told the Discord off for doing it, we better make sure we're behaving. I'm just not sure how well it's going to work if they try and do the right of Ashkent in the Discord. No, you're probably right, I suppose, but at least it'll be entertaining.

Yeah, that's a good point. Anyway, sorry, favourite quote from you. This is when the reverend is speaking to the shepherd on the hill, all very symbolic, I'm sure. Then Nelson cleared his throat and said, You know, Ken, I've loved my time here in the parish. There's been a kind of peacefulness, a sense that although the surface of things changes,

the soul of them does not. Do you know what I mean? Um, said Ken. Perfect. And that's how I react when someone theologises at me. he's a good character though both actually yeah we get to see more Nelson I like someone just casually manhandling a sheep because it's the best way to deal with sheep now some different characters to start with though

including our hero should we start with Joshua let us start with Joshua I thought it was quite interesting that a really formative part of Joshua's character in the first book is how he feels the pressure and how he relates to the silence and it's mentioned once in chapter two that he sometimes missed isolation and the absence of pressure on other minds it's not really relevant to him or it's not brought up much in this book

no I suppose a large part of it was dealt with by dealing with first person singular yeah he knows what the what the silence is now yeah and perhaps just still in contrast with what he grew up with being in reboot is okay

but yeah it's not really even mentioned when he gets back to date him, is it? You're right. Yeah, and I would have thought it would have come up somewhere in Dayton or in Madison West 5. Of course, the headache might not come through as much if he'd been stabbed. That is true. I find a stabbing distracts one. A little bit. A little.

But yeah, no, he's settled down. He's a homesteader with a unfortunately young. Yeah, I sort of started talking about this right at the end of the last book and we cut, we cast six, I realize I think my thoughts were much more influenced by remembering this from this book, which is... Yes, and I'd forgotten this book. So I was being a Joshua Defender when I wouldn't have been with context.

Yeah, which is that, yeah, because when they meet at the end, the last book, Helen, is a really big fan of his. And then obviously, they get married from the way the book reads and the timelines and checking the Long Earth Wiki for timelines as well. They get married like a year later. Yeah, she's 17.

Yeah. So I'm okay with age gaps, but when you combine an age gap with that power and balance of one person being a really big fan of the other, I do get the egg. Yeah, it's interesting. She's not written at all like there's an age gap after that point. I do wonder if they'd kind of settled the timeline before they decided on this. They were like, ah, we'll fudge it. Because it's not really a, it's not like even a comic thing.

Like, you know, Conan and Cohen, sorry, and. Betty. No, Betty was knobs in drag. Yeah. I can't remember though. You know what I mean. Bethen, thank you. Yes, Betty, but Welsh.

That's that. But yeah, a bit of a weird age gap. Yeah. I have a lot of Helen thoughts. We'll get to those, but we'll finish Joshua thoughts first. Okay, yeah. They have a child. He's not on the thing, so I'll just quickly mention him now.

He's not very much like Joshua, which is interesting. But it seems to sound at. Yeah, and I like that they're kind of curious about genetic lineage and how it affects him stepping because Joshua was a natural steper. Helen's not a natural stepper and has a what's it called in the family the ones that can't step phobic yes thank you

so they're sort of concerned at how Dan's going to handle stepping and stepping on the airship and he's fine which is lovely I'm glad he is I'm really curious though phobics born elsewhere on the long earth that was something that hadn't occurred to me before this and so they end up having a very specifically, because I imagine there are people who are born in the long earth, if you were

imagining the massive outreach of this, who don't do a lot of stepping and kind of stick around maybe their earth and a few neighbouring stepwise colonies and such. Yeah, especially if you are like a pretty sick each time and like just, yeah, but actual phobics then having this very specific, isolated life around people who only got there because of stepping as a generational thing. Yeah, that is weird. Yeah. Weird to think about, I can't remember maybe we touch on it in one of the other books but yeah it's just interesting to think about other Joshua thoughts do you have any uh yeah probably hang on something else that occurred to me is um Joshua actually seems very passive in this book yeah that's it isn't it he's a little bit in

the long earth as well he kind of goes on the journey and then like just goes along with it and it takes a while for him to start standing up for himself on the journey yeah I love that we can use that so much more in this. He's always accompanied by Lopsang or Sally, who are very, very powerful characters. Yeah, the only time you really see him stepping up and do something without being prodded is when they come across the wreck

and he's the one who's in there helping and has to be brought out dangling by the ankle. He does go to Senator Stalin. But he's prodded to do that. Sally is pushing him to get that far and Janssen makes him the appointment and... That's true, but once he's in the room, he does also...

He's very assertive in the space. It's not that he doesn't care. But yeah, he does seem... I quite liked the description of his voice. His very voice was strange, a voice which laid down words as a poker player laid down cards with finality and decision. He seemed slow rather than fast, but relentless,

as hard to stop once he came rolling at you as an oncoming tank. Yeah, that's something Pratchett does a lot with quiet characters who speak very carefully and only say what needs to be said. Yes. Like you get a veterinary put up against moist one lip fig who sort of constantly speaks. Definitely.

It's always nice to see a character through a completely fresh set of eyes. Yes. As we've talked about before. De-familiarisation. Now I can remember that word. You move forward to Helen then. The Helen-Sally rivalry thing really rubs me the wrong way in this book. Why?

I think partly because it's an overdone thing in fiction of two women must be jealous of each other. And I feel like it's combined with the fact that the way Helen's written, it almost feels like she's written to be a bit, not stupid, but like naive. And so I think the book is almost putting her up against Sally and calling Sally the winner. And so you have these moments where, like right at the beginning, Sally goes, turns up at Joshua and Helen's house and Helen is quite clearly the defensive, on the defensive, she puts down the food and the ice cream and explains how Joshua built the ice house and Joshua could hear the subtext, even if sadly couldn't, this is about

ice cream, this is about our life, what we're building here, which you Sally have no part of. And obviously, Sally is in that situation because she is trying to get Joshua to do a big important thing and help stuff. And Helen is the person who wants him to stay at home and help run the homestead. I see what you're saying. On the other hand, I don't know how you would write their reactions in any way that would seem realistic other than this. That's true.

Realistically, Helen is a naive character. She grew up in this homestead. She married at 17 to someone she saw as this big adventurer after being pushed into choosing a direction by her dad in her mid-teens. Yeah. And she has started this relationship with someone she knows is like very famous and a big deal and an adventurer and it must be scary

to think of him going away and I think she would be jealous of Sally and Sally I think is quite a nicely not very nice person and is written like that I'm not sure she's written

like the winner I think she comes across as a bit of a dick and that's on purpose I think the winner in that almost like the audience should root for Joshua and Sally to eventually end up together

maybe I'm reading too much into it but that's how it almost feels like it's written to me like Helen's not really right for Joshua but she'll do for now until he realizes there's more out there than his homesteading. Maybe. I just don't see Sally as particularly interested in that. No, and I think that's the thing. The obstacle to Joshua and Sally being together is not Helen, but Sally. And Joshua, maybe.

Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's a bit awkward to read, but I think that's, it's genuinely how it would be, isn't it? How would you, how would you tweak it, do you think? I think oh just I mean sort of combining Sally in this because she's our next bullet point she has these moments of weird little

bitchiness about Helen that I think could do with being less of a part of it she calls her a gloomy little stay at home a dull little mouse and the dull little mouse is in the context of talking about Sally travelling through soft places it was a hell of a lot easier than plodding all the way out

step by step the way that dull little mouse Helen Valiente had once walked through a hundred thousand worlds with her family set up their pine near log cabin. Like I think there it's particularly, oh, that dull little mouse going on a massive trek to start a whole new life. Like it's silly. So I think removing some of Sally's weird bitchiness and, I don't know, maybe spending

more time with Helen, because it feels like a lot of the time spent in Helen's perspective is either Helen being insecure or Joshua thinking about how Helen might be insecure or Helen saying slash thinking things that do come off as naive. Yeah, we get that whole bit where Helen's talking about her life and then talking to, was it Thomas? Yeah, that exactly, like another scene like that somewhere, I think would have maybe made a bit of a difference. But even that scene when she's talking to Thomas, it's more Thomas's story than Helen. Well, yeah, but I think that's because she's just told her whole story to Thomas, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. And we don't need to hear it again. Yeah, because we've obviously read that whole story. And no, I think there's so few female characters in the book and like the two that aren't lesbians have this weird bitchy jealousy between them and I don't know, it rubs me the wrong way because there's nothing like that

from really any of the male characters beyond one guy possibly fancying moniker of it. I see what you mean, that they're treated differently. I do get that, the female characters, yeah. I, to me, Sally's jealousy towards Helen is not a romantic one and isn't tried to be framed like that. It is jealousy that her adventuring partner has been taken away to do what she sees is very boring and worthless considering his worth. And I think you are kind of invited more to think of her as being

unreasonable. Yeah, I don't think the book isn't treating Sally as unreasonable. I just don't think it needs, I don't think it needs to be there. Because I do think there's an undertone of, maybe I'm being overly, I don't know, petron, or something, by assuming that there's an undertone of romantic stuff within Sally and Helen, but it's not entirely romantic, but it is still, I don't know, it irks me to read the women immediately pitted against each other. Yeah, I'd have liked it if they'd been, and I expected there to be more of a turnaround after, for instance, Sally had grabbed Dan and stepped him to the next world and seen. Helen knockout and would be

assassin. I thought that was a nice moment where the two of them could have then had a, like a, oh, okay, no, you're more than what I thought you were. Yeah, you're capable of looming out someone who's just stabbed your husband. Exactly. I think that was a bit of a missed moment, yeah. Yeah, maybe I've overthought that.

I don't know. It is a fair criticism. It's, um, I just, I like Sally being a dickhead. Yeah, I think I may be defending it too much because I enjoyed it. I love Sally as a character. I like someone who's a bit of an asshole specifically because they're also aggressively

competent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Being an asshole because you're aggressively confident, it's a nice combination, isn't it? Yeah. You're all pissing me off by not being as good at everything as I am. But also I'm a little bit about Joshua being good at some stuff.

And yeah. But I think because the book kind of draws a line between Sally and Helen because they're both important women in Joshua's life and in a very different. way to the way Janssen and Agnes are very important women in Josh's life. It kind of forces a comparison that I think isn't quite fair to Helen because she sort of has to be not aggressively competent because Sally is so aggressively competent and a bit arrogant with it. I will say I'm not sure it's fair to say there's very few female characters in the book. I think almost every major characters whose perspective we see apart from Joshua

for a long time is female. Yeah, no, not few female characters, but I'm not going specifically the female characters in this kind of relationship with Joshua. Lots of female characters. A lot of them are very well written. That's part of why this is annoying. I see. Because I think it's one let down on the writing of a female character when you compare it to the others.

Yeah. And Joshua is weirdly passive about it. Yeah. All right. More Sally? Yeah. Do you have any other Helen or Sally thoughts? It's nice to see Sally kind of expanding her knowledge of the troll

and the long call and everything and then passing that onto other people not being kind of insular with it because she sees the benefit she's like right Maggie have a troll call thing whereas I think the Sally of 10 years ago

may have been a bit more like oh I'm the only person who can yeah I'm special yeah she's allowed herself to become a like more widespread figure yeah also like the crimes I enjoy that she'll do crimes

I think I wrote somewhere under Monica Janssen, just be gay, do crimes. Yeah, yeah. Icon, icon behaviour. Janssen's take on Sally, a homespun embodiment of some all-pervasive intelligence agency.

Yeah. She's tuned into the long earth and she's, as you said, she's grown from, in the book one, it would be she knows what's best for the long earth and she is the only one who can do it in this. She knows what's best for the long earth and knows how to go about getting people to work towards

that conclusion. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like speaking to Maggie about the trolls. How about Lopang? Yeah. I had a lot of theological thoughts about Lopzang in this section. Go on. Thinking about Lop sang as something like a godlike figure

and how he does almost approach that with his ability to be somewhat all-powerful and all-knowing. And you have the way Joshua thinks of him. Lobsang was Imagine God inside your computer, your phone, everyone else's computer and who despite all this seems pretty sane and beneficial by the standard of most gods and sometimes swears in Tibetan But that's almost immediately followed, this is in Chapter 3,

by Joshua still being bitter that Lobzang couldn't do anything to prevent the nuke in Dayton Madison And this is a very common sort of religious argument When someone starts losing faith, it's often along the basis of how could a god let these cruel things happen? Yeah, yeah. I really liked the gardener analogy. Yes.

I rather believe he might be more like a gardener, which sounds nice and be colic and harmless, right up to the time you remember that a gardener must sometimes prune. It's not quite the same as being a shepherd. No. And it's quite threatening this idea that Lobang might be more powerful the entire human race and could sort of take control, will slash be worshipped if he wanted to

and that's not necessarily the best thing and the idea that he is aware of that and brings in Sister Agnes as his conscience. Yeah, yeah. I think that's great. That's an interesting way to sidestep the power corrupts.

Yes. Or not sidestep it, but address it somewhat. Because if you look at, and I can't really remember where this Douglas Black thing goes, so we'll come back to this, but he's described as weirdly benevolent and like not letting the mask slip is there is a mask at all up to this point and obviously it's all very high capitalist and there will be people suffering as a result

and this that and the other but it's a little bit ain't rand in how he's described so far yeah and things like giving the twain technology out free of charge yeah yeah um but then how lopsang is described like lop sang must also be surrounded by people who are yes men in the same way that douglas black must be yeah And I think he's smart enough to realize that that is how you get very stupid. Like, I think we've talked before about the quote, and I can't remember who said it now, but that being someone like Elon Musk and just surrounded by people who are just saying, yes, yes, fine, every day and having no financial barrier to anything and all that.

I think it was Robert Evans who said this. Must be like the mental equivalent of being kicked in the head by horse every day for what it does to your intelligence. Yeah. Because there's absolutely no challenge. There's nothing to overcome. So there's nothing to learn. Yeah.

And there's no doubt and I think you need things like challenge. In fact, actually this links to a bit later on in the book. It talks about the fact that technological advancement is kind of stalled. I think it's during one of the Nelson's chapters because now there's so much plenty in the long earth. There is less doubt and challenge and less need to develop technology. Yeah, there are some very specific kind of horizontal progress almost, but things like the nanotechnology that they're expecting to get anywhere with. of just like, you know, it's fine. Yeah, we have these kind of matter printers,

which is a very cool sci-fi thing, and they don't really work. Yeah. I can't really do much with them anyway. Speaking of weird sci-fi things, though. Agnes? We have a revenant. You have a revenant?

Yeah. I like the combined resurrection process, which is we're going to go really, really technical with it, and then we're also going to have Tibetan monks praying over you and reading from the Book of the Dead for 49 days. Not sure which one it was, but one of those worked. And it does seem to be Agnes in a new body. This seems to be a reincarnated soul of some sort.

Yeah. And at the very least has all of her memories, taste, likes and dislikes. The bit where Joshua sees her for the first time and realizes it's her is really sweet. He says, I'd know her in the pitch dark. I can remember her walking through the dormitory every night before standing at the door and turning the light out. the click of that old bakelight switch held together with glue because there was never any money for a rewiring the way she made us all feel safe

besides she was never a good liar or any good at an Irish accent I'm sorry because Joshua needs Agnes he needs an Agnes in his life I think it's either Janssen or Sally someone points out Joshua surrounds himself with powerful women and that's because of how he was raised he needs the Agnes and the Jansans. Yeah and Agnes plays very different

but just as necessary role in Joshua's life, which is very, it was pretty maternal. Yeah. Pretty parental at least. And just actually feels like very strong protectiveness over him. Yes. But there's also a sense of like, I have a, in a different way to being Lobzang's conscious,

she has a like an almost spiritual concern for him in making sure he is going in the right direction and he is on the right path. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the fast and loose way she plays with the wrong. religion as well just oh

anyone who's willing to be a little bit fucky about Catholicism I'm a big fan of idea of

representative from the Vatican at her funeral mostly to make sure she was really dead

ah well didn't do his job did he clearly not Vaskin's letting the

side down in so many ways and then on to Jansen yeah oh one other thing about

Agnes the her her tits also irks me slightly yeah it seems like a realistic mistake from a bunch of male designers for something but yes even so yeah um unnecessary yanson

yonson you unfortunately isn't feeling very well after dealing with the data medicine fallout and now has leukemia yeah i quite i quite like it seems to come up quite a lot but i it's quite good in a way the way that illness is realistically treated in this yeah and has consequences. People just die and get ill. Yeah. It doesn't have consequences if your sister Agnes, of course.

Well, yes, but she's a very special case. Janssen, who is also, thanks to all of her work as spooky, very, very well connected, manages to get this meeting into Starling's agenda in a way where it can't be removed and we'll just keep coming back. Yeah. Obviously, very much on the side of good still

and very, I would say, usually persuaded by Sally to go and do a mission, which I'm sure she knew was dubious to start with and then very quickly became crime. I don't think it took a lot for Begay-Doo crimes if it's the right thing to do. Like Joshua points out, you always try to put things right

and you took it further than most. And I think that's all she needs is knowing this person who she cared for and trying to make sure things went right for him. Yeah. tells her that she has been doing the right thing gives her the motivation to, yes, all right, doing the right thing has given me leukemia,

but that won't stop me from doing the right thing again. Yeah, and like she throws herself over Sally when she thinks there's a nuke going off nearby. Yeah, she's automatically like the helper. Yeah, definitely. And not in a way where she's like saccharinly too good. No, no, it's just, yeah, very instinctive, protected stuff. It's all a bit vimsy.

Yes. In a very different way, but that part of it is. Yeah, different flavour of a person. A different flavour of vines Maggie Kaufman Yeah I like her because she goes in with She doesn't she doesn't starts

Very idealistic She's you know She's got her own command and her airship And that's a wonderful thing But she also doesn't go in thinking Yay America We are superior and must do this a certain way She's very open-minded about how she's approaching her mission

Yeah And very willing to get court-martialed For bringing the trolls on board Yeah it's interesting that she ended up in charge of this and you have to, I can't remember if there is some fraud from behind the scenes because she doesn't seem like someone Cowley would have put in charge. Yeah, it's someone watching her career with interest. Yeah. Or considering her a long-term investment, I think. Yeah. Long-term investment is the

phrase that gets used about people like Nelson and Joshua. Yeah. And Sally hones in on her as a goodish egg as much as Sally approved of anybody. Yeah. If, if, if, I got to deal with the US government coming out here, then you seem like a not horrific representation of the US government. Absolutely. Mostly because you're not doing. Chuck the bad guy off the boat. Yes.

The airship. Oh yeah. The whole situation of landing in reboot and everything going very tits up very quickly. And I enjoyed the scene because it was very funny watching Jack Green react to that. Yeah. And very calmly saying your cash is so unbelievably worthless in this situation. Yeah. especially after he'd been, let's be honest, a bit of an arthole.

Yes. I do you know, I think that might be why that's another reason why I'm kind of seeing Helen as not as badly portrayed as she might have been. And that to me, she's very much surrounded by all these, like, brilliant people, these, like, they're very clever, the politically active, the this and that. And they're assholes, like, in their various ways. Like, even Joshua does not seem to have enough concern for his wife and child in all of this. like fair enough if you're like this lone ranger saving the long earth in which case maybe don't have a wife and kid yeah and I think yeah I think yeah

Jack Green is a good example of just another like really interesting and good to have a round character who let's be honest always been a bit of a twat I wrote this in my note somewhere and I can't remember where I was going to talk about it but the scene where Helen is in Jack's office and he's completely ignoring his daughter because of the speech and all of that and then Helen says something about him blaming himself and she said you can't blame yourself for mum passing away.

Then since you can't blame yourself for what the son did, wrong, I think. And I wrote, um, in, Rod, thank you. I wrote erm in capital letters because I don't think he can entirely not blame himself for that. Yeah, I know. I think he should blame himself a bit. Yeah, because if they hadn't abandoned their child, then maybe their child wouldn't have been radicalised into nuking a city. Someone else might have done it, but that's not the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's bad. might not be in jail and your daughters might not have lost a brother and... Yeah. It may be taking some responsibility for one's actions is actually a good thing and should have happened there. Yeah.

But I suppose if you're out there doing good, whatever, blah, blah, there. Anyway, sorry, I've distracted myself from Maggie, who is doing good things so far. Well done, Maggie. I like that he's open to suggestions, to put it lightly, and it has now brought trolls on board. And a troll call. Troll call from some kind of mysterious benefactor. Yeah, it's fine. I wonder how that will work out.

Don't worry. Nelson. Oh, yes. Love Nelson. I'm glad. I vaguely remembered we'd see him again, but I wasn't sure how much of a character he was, so I'm glad he's quite present in this after the first book. I do pity him and his poor Victorian toilet.

Yeah, oh my God, I bet it's a macerator. Yeah. Dreadful. can't be doing with that nonsense. All the stuff with the quizmasters, I thought was quite interesting, especially talking about the entry criteria and the quizzes he had to pass. And the strongest intellect was good for nothing without a propensity for pack rat, fact accumulation,

and appreciation of serendipity and an endless interest in the incongruous, the out-of-place. So I felt very smug about that because that's the sort of nerds we are. Yeah, well, I think that's Pratchett's doing real, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I feel like practically in back to my... research and the learning bilesmosis and the yes the the uh the the the brewers of it all yeah absolutely and

he's another he's another interesting one who's kind of this incredibly bright person but has taken almost a sabbatical into the religious yes to kind of and he's kind of matured during that and therefore is not too much of an asshole and he's very willing to go on just adventure. Yeah. And the way he ends up sort of manipulating the quizmasters, he gets them searching by pointing out

things like the cat that might speak Tibetan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he knows how to speak conspiracy theorist. Yeah, the description of them as conspiracy theorists as well, as paranoid suspicion, a seam of malevolence. Yeah.

A capacity that needed an outlet. And yeah, him is sort of separate from that. He doesn't think like that. He doesn't immediately assume that Lopsang or Douglas Black are malevolent forces, but he's sort of fascinated by watching the paranoia within the group.

Yeah. And, you know, you can't help that obviously do the puzzles and the things and the this and then that. Yeah, because if you were presented with something like that, then of course you would. Of course you're going to do it. Yeah. And yeah, he's now reached the point where he's like,

okay, I've got to go and do this stuff while I've still got the energy to do it. Yeah. Like, there's a lot, there's a few characters who have this. There's so much left undone. Yes, I must go and do the things. Sister Agnes gets a pretty, almost unique way out of that.

But, you know, Monica the Anson's like, okay, right. What last heroic journey? Yeah, how much more stuff can I fix. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a sense of now the, I think it's like almost a, now the earth is, infinite and more concerned with how finite time is. Yeah.

Because I no longer have to think of the space as finite. Yeah. Yeah. I also just like the trope of the very large imposing man being very gentle and self-spoken and clever. Yes, that is one of my favourite tropes. And also, I just quite like the idea of an adventure in a Winnebago. Much as I like the idea of going out and homesteading across the long earth,

I'd probably hate it within days if I actually had to. but as a thought, love the idea. I think I'd get on better in a Winnebago than a homestead. But I don't think I'll ever be faced with that choice, so I think we're fine. Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to, in gunpoint, Winnebago, homestead or helium froncene. He can't ask me to make that decision. Bill Chambers. Sorry.

Yes, Bill Chambers, the town's secretary, accountant, best hunter, excellent cook, and amazingly good liar. I like that he's obviously very loquacious and what's a convincing liar. And also one of the lies is he owns the hair to the Blarnie estate. It's just nice. Yes. And it plays on him somehow still having the Irish accent despite effect to he's clearly lived in America most of his life, considering he's from the home. Yeah, absolutely.

The drunken Irish stereotype, obviously not amazing. But I support. It kind of seems like he picked it for himself, though, as in he's not out to the Irish. yeah he's just decided to be irish man yeah um i really like the moment where he's in the office with starling and he actually lets off because he's been kind of this character going along like he's almost the hired bodyguard type until he comes in and says um one world was enough for you characters but now we've gone out there and made something of it all and uh you lot who stayed home want a piece of the fecking pie and suddenly one world's no longer enough or you can't you just

leave us alone. And a character that's mostly very jocular, losing his temper is another trope I really enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. And you remember then that he was in the same home that Joshua was. Yeah. And all of those kids just wanted to be left alone and not labelled as a problem.

And eventually get to go out and have their own space is a very big thing for a lot of these kids. And also, you know, Joshua is being very careful in this meeting. He is speaking slowly and he is trying to remain polite. So having someone else be the one to say, oh, God, just fuck off. Could we just not? And then, Thomas Kiangu. Yeah, I wanted to mention him because he feels like a kind of throwback to the vignette characters from the first book.

We have less of that structure here. Yeah. Yeah, it's like we've picked a couple of the best vignette characters and flesh them out of it. Yeah. But I really love his story. I like going into more of the Aboriginal history and how it is in modern day and the fact that it's now not fucking great. which is very shitty considering how old this culture is yeah yeah and like finding the thousand of year old a picture and then a hunting man and following his hunting man into the

long earth and eventually setting off yeah and description uh maybe this was a new dream time a replay of the age when the ancestors moved across an empty landscape and in doing so had brought the land itself into being and it was the turn of his generation to become the new ancestors to begin a new dream time that might encompass all of the long earth thing. Yes. And going into the Aboriginal, like, legends and ideas about the dream time is really fascinating. We looked at that a bit in The Last Continent, didn't we? Yeah. Yeah. The community, they mentioned, by the way, dig along is a real place. It's a very small, about 333 people, Aboriginal community in Pilbara, which is Western Australia. Oh, cool. And I'm not sure how they

picked that one for the book, but I think they did. It was just on characters I haven't mentioned. we briefly talked about Jack Green already I haven't really talked about Roberta and the East 20 million mission just because

there's a lot of characters and more next week and there's more yeah more to talk about next week right locations then

so we have hell knows where oh well I think you should have written it down at least ha ha thank you

that's more than it is there carry on it's like a lot of places on the long earth it almost sounds like a too good to be true

kind of place they've got schooling, they've got so much functionality, they've got the right temperatures, they've got ice cream and booze as long as plentiful fish in game. Well, it is a bit too good to be true, isn't it? Because unlike most places on the long earth,

this one has Loplang's backup. Yes. Has had a lot of nice technology dropped off. Which has definitely made it a lot more functional. But I really liked the discussion of not having monuments. Yeah, yeah. Nobody had shed blood for this land yet,

apart from when Hamish fell off the town clock. and the mosquito. So why would you have a monument? You don't need a monument to a war that happened a million worlds away. No. It'd be interesting to pick a monument for somebody who'd done not wars too. Done not wars too. Well done for that scene. I really struggled through that sentence. It's nice to wait to have a monument until something monumental happens on this specific earth. Yes. Yes. But if I don't know, I feel like I'm the kind of person who'd like have a flint ready and then we'd be like waiting for something monumental and eventually I'd just like overreact and when Bill Lovell came back with a really good salmon yeah make a statue with

him holding a fish I think we should have a Bill Lovell statue maybe in reboot because I think that's where he ends up but you know actually Bill Lovell we haven't really talked about just briefly I would like to reiterate my love for Pratchett's love of the postal service and the romance fiddle which is led very much into the long earth he continues kind of postal being a postman way after he gets fired because the US government decides they don't need postmen out in the long earth. Neither rain nor snow, nor glom of knit, nor infinite parallel universes, nor the cutting off from the major governmental resources that used to drive you, nor whatever the weird mosquitoes are in this universe.

Could stay this man about his duty. Thank you. I forgot the rest of the sentence. I was carrying on till I remembered. Well done. I want to talk about you pointed out in the play. plan that I've listed three locations here and it looks like a confused address. Hell knows

where, Britain, Valhalla. Yeah. I like that we've got an update on how stepping is affected Britain because obviously we have the immediate step-day stuff, which was economic collapse, followed by no one really stepped that much apart from to maybe

basically get an allotment. Yeah. And now there's a second wave of immigration, hard-headed and industrious and whole new industrial revolutions going on in the long earths. The British seem to have the building of steam engines and railways in their jeans. Somehow. It's, we're not so far away from...

Yeah, we're not so far away from having red-raising steam that I'm not mildly delighted by the idea of trains connecting laterally in places across the long earth. Is that I hear in the distance? Is that Vimes ripping his shirt off? Somewhere, always. Vimes is shirtless on a train. and we can all be grateful for that. I'm really upset that, sorry, I'm just going to say,

I'm really upset that Paul Kiddby, as far as I know, it's not yet illustrated Fimes ripping a shirt off on a train, and I think we should write him a note. Yes, actually, listeners, if you could start that campaign for us, that would be ideal. Yeah, next year's Disquare Calendar, just Fimes ripping a shut off on a train every month. Sorry, Brisset.

The bit about the stow, nobody had like clear this. much forest since the Stone Age kind of thing. Yeah. It's talked about when we're talking about Britain for the agriculture reasons, sent me off on a small Google, and I found a delightful blog post by the Forestry Commission about the ancient tools that shaped our woodland. And it's talking about how when, after the stone age, not the stone age, the other one, the Ice Age.

Yes. The other one. One of the Twin one. When the Ice Age had kind of fucked off from Britain, as I believe, they just. just put it, and trees and people started coming back. And there were things called pioneer species of trees, which is quite cool. And I always forget that when we're talking 10,000 years ago, Stone Age, we didn't have a wooded Britain.

We had a barely becoming wooded again, or maybe 20,000 years. And there's this cool article about the various tools that they use during the Stone Age, and then during the Neolithic Age, which is where we are here, I suppose. which is where we have the agriculture and the need to, because I've said this in a bad order, but while we're still hunted gathering, clearings were good for attracting prey. Yeah, but not as wise for agriculture.

Yeah, suddenly we had all this stuff and then building lots more permanent buildings and yeah, history of axes and things. I'll link to that in a show notes. Yeah, that sounds really good. I can't wait to look at that. I've become so incomprehensible when I start talking about a random subject I'm into,

and it's very unfortunate. I can follow it I think most of our listeners can as well The problem is we decided to make this public I think our listeners can I think they've learned how to tune into your frequency at this point I hope so anyway yeah I'll look to that's cool more Britain thoughts

That's most of my Britain thoughts I mean anything to do with old trees Obviously very much excites me So I like the idea that there's a specific logistics to cutting down trees that are this old, which I also quite like that one of the only things worth sort of exporting once you get into the higher megas of the earth is things like really interesting lichen samples.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like the tree nerds have just got to be in heaven. Yeah. Some of it's got to be medicine and stuff. Yeah. Van Haler. Yeah. Now, this is an interesting concept. Yeah, and this is part of a Van Halen belt, which is what's been dubbed this inland sea belt. Yeah.

Because I guess it's a wonderful place to build if you can build on the coast of an inland sea. I love the idea. That sounded like the start of a Alice and Wonderland poem. Built on the coast of the inland sea. Yeah, yeah, right? Carry on. A city growing out in the high megas,

deriving from long-earth lifestyles supported by comers rather than fathers. And there have been precursors in day-to-earth, hunter-gather populations can achieve huge feats and develop complex societies. And I struggle to comprehend how the logistics of this could work, and I think it mostly works because very few people permanently live in Valhalla.

It's a symbolic space. But because I think about it in the, and I'm aware I've overthought this in the context of they go to a coffee shop on Valhalla. Yeah. And so I think about it in the context of running a coffee shop. Okay. Is how am I running a coffee shop

with a fully coma plus, I guess, some import-based economy from Twain's. Obviously. Trading, isn't it? Yeah. Is the thing. But then what's being traded from Valhalla?

Because again, I feel like with combing, there's less consistency. And so if you don't have a consistent product to trade, you can't always receive a consistent product. And if you can't receive a consistent product, you can't sell a consistent product in somewhere like a coffee shop. Fish. Good point. That's all I've got so far.

You're right. It's difficult. I like the hexagons. Oh, yeah. I love everything about how the city is going out, the hot tar and oil aroma of this brand new city. The descriptions are amazing. And I love the idea of the school as well, being this one big central place. Yeah, no, it's cool. I think you're right. I think it's tricky to imagine it once you get past the initial. Ooh, I love it. But maybe someone, I bet somebody has it. I bet someone's written a cool analysis. We'll look at, I wonder if there's something on the wiki. Actually, I'm not going to look because it might be explained more in depth in future books. Yeah, that is a good point. We're not there. Yeah, let's not spoil things for ourselves. Do you only Valhalla thoughts?

Not really. I just, yeah, I just really like the idea of it and the hexkins. I like it. Yeah, no, I like the hexagons. Why haven't we done that? Yeah, no, I like the idea of having a really, having the space and time to design a city like that. Because obviously, new cities are a thing, but quite often they're either built in quite hurry because of a population boom in England, for instance, after the war, or they're

built in the footprint of something that was there before, or they're built, and death by committee, probably. Yes. But having something completely new and that couldn't exist in this world, obviously. It's just, yeah, it's fun. I bet they had fun thinking about it. Yeah, it's a really fun thought experiment. I went down a unhinged rabbit hole with the thought experiment.

Yeah. I did also like Roberta's textbook answer to it. Yes. Especially the final sentence, which sounds so much like a conclusion to an essay, which is, this is intensive gathering, colon, a uniquely post-stepping urban solution. Yep. Yeah, intensive gathering, quite cool. Yeah, it's a really fascinating context.

And yeah, I like Roberta talking about it. Yeah. Sorry, yeah, let's, sorry. We're thinking about hexagons. Little bits we liked. A bit we liked. I'm kind of cramming all my one, all of mine into one bullet point because there were so many little references in this, I loved.

This is a new technique for you. Yeah, hiding how many LVLs you've got. By just doing one bullet point in the point. Yeah, like this, go on. I'll try and be quick with some of them. Gam for airships meeting. Yeah. That does seem to be a word coined by Herman Melville in Moby Dick.

Lovely. just from the Wikipedia page for Gam. He gives his own dictionary definition because the word doesn't appear in dictionaries. A social meeting of two or more whale ships generally on a cruising ground when after exchanging hails they exchange visits by boats crews

to the two captains remaining on board of one ship and two chief mates on the other. Lovely. I like this also most exchange of hostages situation. The whaler thing that's mentioned a few times throughout this book hints to me at an unexplored mainly in his novel's fascination with Whalers by Pratchett. That's just how it reads to me.

Yeah, I should really read Maybe Dick at some point. This is one of those things I felt I should have done. Yeah. Speaking of Maybe Dick and Nautical themes, Dan's school play, how was your land show? Jump the Shark. Very good. Was it that bad? No, Captain Ahab really did jump the shark.

Big set piece, pretty impressive on warm water ski. And delights me because the phrase jumping the shark comes from an episode of, it means sort of a show has gotten too silly and has gone over the hill a bit in trying to do something impressive to get back viewers. And it comes from an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie tries to jump over a shark on water skis. Lovely. So the specific not just jumping the shark reference, but with a water ski involved. Yeah, yeah.

It's going one further there. Only one water ski. Well, you've got to. And it's a musical. I would like to see Moby Dick the musical. I'd prefer that in trying to read it. Yeah, me too, to be fair. Very small one, but the hotel they stay in in Valhalla is called the Heald Drum.

Yes, lovely. Oh, I put a note here. A Discworld party horn. I think at this point, we should have, like, you know, the little party blower thing. Oh, yeah, for every time there's a Discworld specific reference. Yeah, I'm down for that. if i remember that's going in here there's a couple of references i had to look up uh like what um the close encounters of the third kind devil's thing meant and that's where the film because i've

not seen close encounters of the third kind again really missing some classics uh i'm not sure i've seen it but i recognize that scene pretty well yeah uh no didn't it didn't even recognize that somehow like the culture you know that cultural ismosis where you know what happens in a movie or a book or something having never seen or watched it that's not happened to me with close encounters of the third kind. Interesting. There's the nerdy t-shirts at Gap Space. One of the t-shirts is

you didn't hear about the polar bear, which is a Lost reference specifically. It's a line from a season one episode, the one where Hurley builds a golf course, which is one of my favorite episodes of Lost. Oh, very good. It has been very long time since I watched Season 1 have Lost. It's one of my all-time favorite shows.

I was very pleased to see a Lost reference. I don't see a lot of Lost references. especially not in the disc world ones. And then slightly longer one, but the poem that Helen talks about, unwelcome by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, who was Sam Taylor Coleridge, his great, great niece.

I found the actual poem. I'm going to read it, because it's not very long. We were young, we were Mary, we were very, very wise, and the door stood open at our feast, when there passed us a woman with the west in her eyes, and a man with his back to the east. O, still grew the hearts that were beating so fast,

the loudest voice was still. The jest died away on our lips as they passed, and the rays of July struck chill. The cups of red wine turned pale on the board, the white bread black as soot. The hound forgot the hand of her lord. She fell down at his foot. Lo, let me lie where the dead dog lies.

Ere sit me down again at a feast. When there passes a woman with the west in her eyes and a man with his back to the east. This thematic of being brought low when these strange elements come in and almost wanting to hide until they go away as a, you know, then starting to apply that poem as a metaphor to the long earth and there's so many directions you can go in.

I just thought it was great. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's very poignant for Helen as well. Yes, very specifically. And hiding until it goes away, but also what it does to Long Earth when these strangers come and interfere and how it drives the trolls away because they would rather be elsewhere than, around the women with the Western arise and the man with his back to the east.

Yeah, yeah. It's just a really fucking perfect poem for this book, all of these books, but especially this book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's very good poem. I didn't enjoy reading it. I did. Yeah. It's unsettling. It is unsettling, yeah. Good, it's good, but I don't always enjoy poems I like. That sounds weird, but... No, I'm fully with you on that. It's like a very short episode of the Magnus Archives. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, what about you? What did you like? First thing I'll say, actually, the serendipital laboratory, laboratory. Yes. I particularly enjoyed. He was, after all, Douglas Black, the founder of the first serendipital laboratory. The logic was that, since so many important new discoveries and science were made by accident, the process would be speeded up. If you set up a situation, which a very large number of events, accidents happened and watched the results carefully. According to legend, Black had even deliberately employed people who didn't quite know what they were doing or had a bad memory or

had known to be congenitally unlucky and careless. It was, of course, a lunatic idea. Black did take some precautions, such as building his laboratory, to the same safety standards as were employed by explosives manufacturers. Incredible. It's all very Guild of Alchemists. Yes. And yeah, it's a very directed monkeys with typewriter situation. I always like the idea of a lot of innovation coming out of people who don't quite know what they're doing. I think there's something to be said for if you don't know what you're doing, you can make very interesting and unique mistakes. Yes.

And you end up thinking of a very interesting way to do something. Exactly. which I think is why a lot of speculative fiction written by people who don't know that much about science whatever comes up with some of the most interesting new ideas Yes Although there's a lot of hard science

That does hard science fiction That does come up with cool stuff too But yeah I like it all And then the other little bit I liked Was the Chinese airship names Or rather the small rabbit hole that sent me down Oh did you look up the eunuch?

Yes of course Yay! So, yeah, first of all, Liu Yang became the first Chinese women in space in just 2012, actually. So this was brand new when Baxter and Pratchett. Oh, amazing. Yeah. And then second, Zenghi, the eunuch admiral who commanded all seven treasure voyages in the early 15th century and is a very relevant fellow to this particular expedition. I don't know how much you know about the treasure voyages at the time.

Like nothing. I think I heard about this on those such thing as official, something quite recent. So it was in my head. But so these were basically just unprecedented shows of power, wealth, and technology. The Chinese, I think it was the Ming Empire. Yeah, sounds right. Ming Dynasty rather. I built this huge fleet of huge ships, like huge, huge ships.

These were just massive wooden propaganda tools almost. Depending on your interpretation of the texts and the various witness accounts and the possibly slightly over-egged Chinese accounts and this, that, and the other. The largest ships were between 60 metres to over 100 meters in length, and that is so, so big for a wooden ship. It's just so fucking big for a wooden ship. You weren't seeing ships like that again until the 19th century in Europe. And so they went to the coast of India, the Persian coast of India. I forgot them to write down, which bit exactly.

It's a massive fucking coast. But the Persian Gulf and East Africa, I think, for the last voyage. they brought back ambassadors from various countries whose rulers were willing to call themselves tributaries of China just going off what these voyages had shown them. They were heavily militarised and also just had all the, you know, China have been going for fucking ages at this point

as a thing talked about in this actually. Actually, I really like the way China's briefly described here as, you know, it's so much older than Europe and definitely than the new, the new world as we now know it and just the yeah the real contrast must have been

like how that went down and the immediate cultural shift and just I love that the detail of going into the next world and rebuilding the temples and things so that we can preserve this yeah definitely the Venetian Niccolo de Conti

who saw the ships in Southeast Asia said they do make I'm going to try and read it in the stupid spelling because that's why I liked it. They do make bigger ships than we do, that is to say, of 2,000 tons with five sails and so many masts. So many masts. I think it probably means five masts, but I just like this mast for Vinny and it just made me laugh. But yeah, so obviously he's a really cool guy to have

named one of these ships after because these are a show of Chinese technological strength again and just saying hey look how well we can do this actually yeah that's really amazing yeah that's cool also massive wooden propaganda tools title of your sex tape yeah yeah it's weirdly political tape everybody regrets that leaking title of your set tape sorry oh run the scene I'm the worst okay sorry sorry listeners should we Should we talk about the big stuff? Yeah. Online radicalisation.

Yes. A bit serious to go into after that segue. But there we are. I'll find a dick joke. Don't worry. Thank you. As we talked about briefly before, in the last book and earlier in this section,

when we were talking about the conspiracy series and their seam of malevolence and things like that, I think Pratchett and Baxter have done very well in tapping into some of the concerns about online radicalisation it was very much in the news at this time, of course, but is also much more in the news now because it's a much bigger part of our lives. Sock media, as it never became called.

I really like that that is a kind of little preseant sci-fi moment when it's really near sci-fi. I know, they've done so well, that's the only bit to me that jarred as I was reading. But yeah, I like Nelson being able to tune in to all of these different things and like, it's a little bit 80s hacker movie the way that he can get these streams of different information coming in in this way,

but it works well for the theme. And when you see how the conspiracy theories start rolling and how he's turning them to his advantage, but at the same time can very much see how kind of dangerous they are. And now you draw the obvious parallels with QAnon for these conspiracy theorists. But I think possibly a little unfairly because I don't think there are very many,

very clever people in Q and on. Yeah, I might be, I might be wrong, I might be wrong, clever people do fall for conspiracy theories. That's true. But there's a, they're definitely not an exclusive club. If you think also this is being written within less than five years, I think it's around three years after Twitter launched, in fact, possibly even less, I can't remember the dates off the top of my head now. And so Twitter was still at this phase where it was very niche and not quite as worldwide. And I know Terry Pratchett was an early adopter because he was generally an early adopter of what he thought was interesting technology. And early days of Twitter had a lot of this in a very different way to how it does now. And of course, Pratchett, I don't know about

Baxter, but I imagine he was fairly online as well. Perhaps it being on the news groups and everything for a very long time. And a lot of those would get pretty weird. Yeah. Like, again, you find very interesting people who have conversations with as he talked about, and we've talked about before, just being able to virtually meet people who then become like your base of knowledge for this one niche technological thing or this, that and the other. So it's all very, very cool. But I bet he did find some fairly unsavory thoughts on there as well. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. And then, of course, we see the rise of, again, some real horrible parallels, I'll be honest, mate. the rise of this particular flavour of populism in the US, which is not tied as much to the online, right, in this as it has been in real life because why would it be, but definitely has those undercurrents and the kind of spreading of the videos and the misinformation and this and the other.

Yeah, and they talk about things going viral, especially with things like trolls, the moment with Mary, but also things like the new Declaration of Independence and this whole concept of the out-internet, so information. it's spreading, but maybe not quite as quickly. Yeah. Actually, do you know, the good Samaritan, I will say the tone of it is very 2012 internet. Very. That reads like a Tumblr post. Absolutely. Very, yeah, very that particular flavour of, do you remember that fucking chili recipe post?

It's a bit like that, but with a few, few of that. Yeah. But, you know, you'd probably be pretty safe of everyone, too, if you were competent in the on a big if, I know for me, certainly. I understand why Joshua likes it because it expresses a lot of Joshua's frustration with early stepping. Yeah. And then we look at the,

probably the most obvious parallel between online radicalisation, as we know today, and the home alone and the other people who are swept up in this anti-stepper rhetoric and then eventually action. And so Monarcheer Janssen is talking to Joshua and saying, your would-be killer is called Philip Mott He's junior attorney working for a railroad company

No previous record, no significant contact with the police Not a phobic, not a home alone But he doesn't own a step-a-box He's hardly stepped at all as far as any of his character witnesses testify He has been running with President Cowley's humanity first As for years, some of the more rabid elements Which even Cowley now officially disowned So here we are with the Trump and the Farage parallels

Yeah Yeah. Everything, especially around Cowley, is very, it's tough to read it any time, but now. Yeah. I think the good grasp of some of the issues with this, in that you can't always tell who's falling down these rabbit holes. In hindsight, you can say, right, yeah, I mean, I guess he never really stepped. And now I'm looking into it, I can see he did, like, have contact with these humanity. But he didn't show the signs. And even with people like, you know, the homelones and the phobics or whatever, you can't just assume that's going to happen. And trying to set off any kind of intelligence network to stop this, even if you did have government backing, which now you don't.

Certainly in the US in this book. But it'd be incredibly difficult. I don't think I have a nice conclusion to this, just that I think it's very well portrayed. And it's very not pressing to exactly because this was starting and rolling. up to becoming the thing it is now. Yeah, it's just a very interesting portrayal and very, as I say, not prescient, but well done considering how quickly it was all happening. Yeah, which leaves actually quite nearly into my point,

which is how Terry Pratchett is very good at a specific kind of angry writing. And I know this isn't just Derry Pratchett. This is Stephen Baxter as well, and I'm sure not all of the fury in this is coming from Terry Pratchett. Pratchett writes humanity really well. and he's very good at writing the worst as well of the best of humanity. And I think when he is writing the worst of humanity, especially with things like the troll mistreatment here,

there is this just underlying level of fury. I'm pissed off because I know humans can be so good. Why do they have to also be so shit? Yeah, it's horrible to read, isn't it? You read that bit about Mary the first bits and you're just like sag inside, don't you? Like, ah, yeah, that's right. We fuck everything up. Yeah, we really do.

And obviously, he practically writes the best of people as well. I mean, you have Agnes and Jansen and Kauffman and Sally. but yeah so the story of Mary and internet and outenet were alike with flame wars between those who believed in mankind's right to do as it wished with the denizens of the long earth referring back to biblical dominion over human fish fowl and castle and creeping things and others who wish that mankind didn't have to take all of its flaws out into the new worlds which is such a tragic line and also such like a sally line yeah definitely yeah yeah And in talking about the treatment of the trolls, there's really specific imagery being evoked. Like, having them work in factories and pointing out that there is someone carrying a whip, whether he's using it or not. And then when you get to, this is when they're travelling on the gold dust, they stop in a strangely warm latitude. And the colonial mansion and trolls bent back in the fields and hearing their song. Like, that's so specific that it made it.

Yeah, that was incredibly on the nose, is there? Yeah, there was not subtlety there. It was somewhat brick-like. And you have then the horrible thing of reading Starling's reaction and how he sums it up, which is he calls it game preservation. And that's really hard to read because they're fighting over whether this should be, if the central US state of government is going to take an interest in this tool, is it under animal cruelty laws or is it under exotic animal laws?

That's the, yeah, and they're going in there and a large part of their argument is just something that this man's not going to accept. Yeah, which is the whole thing about the long call. He's immediately like, no, nonsense. Yeah. So, yeah, if the guy doesn't have any empathy for animals anyway, they can't get him on that front.

And then he's just straight up not going to even consider the idea that they might be intelligent. Yeah. you're not going to convince him for a second that there's any kind of sapience happening here. Yeah. Then you get, you know, the outreach programs, as it were. Yeah, the whole operation.

Prodigal son. Yeah. Which I don't dislike in Maggie's case and what she's doing, but you can imagine that that's not the only airship going out and doing things and they can't all be Maggie's. Yeah, yeah. But the bit where, you know, they're introducing the trolls to the people in the homesteads

that... don't like them yeah yeah and it the little moments like carl go and do the washing up and just how quickly it becomes really kind of normal and it doesn't take a lot to demonstrate this is a sapient being yeah but there are some people who aren't willing to believe it and so you have moments like um uh during pro le's cowley speech yeah um we try really hard not to do that day during the launch of Operation Prodigal Sun and this screen behind him that fills up with terrors, possible assassins and terrorists and murderers who are using the destructive potential of stepping and this grubby High Megas bandits who looked as though

they'd stepped out of a spaghetti western, an existential weirdness and distorted looking humanoids, and then Mary the gentle-eyed yet murderous troll, a picture that brought booze from the crowd, this idea that there is now this political frenzy that's just so anti and so willing to, which you're coming back to your online radicalisation point, there is, there is no way to then start convincing people in the other direction because there's such a firm, firm belief, unsweighable belief there. And they're already, they're already ignoring the contradictions and that if this had just been a wild animal who'd kill somebody, that's not something to boo.

Exactly. like if a lion bites come to death if you're anti-lion for whatever reason you're like ah stupid lion but you don't boo its picture because what's the point but yeah and speaking of just sidebar but the trolls helping out in the exotic animals place

and knowing how to calm down a tiger by just sort of putting your hand on the back of its neck and shoving it to the ground yeah I did write down of course the trolls are good with cats because of course the trolls are good with cats look and the good characters are good with cats there's something in the afterword I'll check it for next week but the Pagels

who run that sort of exotic animal rescue place are based on real people Oh is that I knew I remembered there was a character that was like a real person in this I was like ah whose name is it The Pagels lovely And yeah so understandably humanity

gets gross because humanity unfortunately can do that and I think a lot of this book is Pratchett being really annoyed that he is not, Pratchin Baxter have not written like, and the earth opened up and now there was a beautiful utopia. They've gone, the earth ended up and unfortunately humans fucked it up and it's really annoying that humans do this because imagine how good this could be. We wrote this lovely universe and then humans came into it. Yes, we wrote that bit as well, but obviously we did. Look at it. You've given it anxiety.

Trolls then making their decision to walk away from it all. Because I am me, I started going on, this is this big macro level, humanity has imposed itself on long earth, and this is the result. And potentially ecological collapse, like as Sally points out, trolls are the long earth, and they also fulfil a specific ecological niche. But then I started thinking about it on a micro level because of who I am as a person. So I was thinking about the logistics of the meal that Helen serves when Sally comes to visit. Yeah. So this is out in the high megas, in hell knows where. And obviously, I'm fully aware that we do have twain trade as part of this. Twain twade.

Twain Twade. Thank you. So Helen serves beer, burgers, home-brewed beer, home-raised beef, home-bake bread, and then later ice cream because Joshua built an ice house. So the logistics of making this meal and food storage. So they're farming cows, which is a very labour-intensive process and a very space-intensive process, depending on what kind of natural grazing material. Do we know it's cows?

Well, it says beef. Oh, beef, yeah, sorry. I got stuck on the ice cream. Goats occurred to me as well, but farming something that at some point had to be brought from, if not the datum, another probably close to datum earth, as opposed to finding something on this earth

that could be farmed or working more with wild game. Yeah, we're not sure it's definite cow, though, are we? Like, it could be a cow equivalent. Although, actually, no, because how are you going to domesticate that in one generation? You're right. Although I do assume they're keeping it on the step world next door. Yes. I also consider that

But so you have that That's a very intensive process Bread I assume some kind of Saladay we're not using packaged yeast We need is flour and water Where are you getting flour from Is this being brought in on a twain Or are you growing this and milling this here

Again it's very space intensive Are you bringing wheat stocks in To start that planting process Or are you finding a wheat equivalent On this earth and growing it And what is it doing to specific ecological niches If you are bringing in flour And growing it there and bringing in seed stock

because there is a lot of what's happening. I also have written some stuff about biosecurity, which I've decided to leave out of my talk game because of the Longhorn Beatles rucksack thing. I suddenly thought, oh yeah, I make posters about this. Don't bring in beetles. Bioscurity is a really fascinating aspect to this that I don't think, I would like to dive into you more

because of who I am as a person. But of course, we are the worst invasive species. We are the worst. And then also milling the flower. I think a lot about where, flower comes from in like post-apocalyptic and all sorts of different landscapes. I have a lot of thoughts about this in The Last of Us, which I won't share here. And so all of that to get your burgers, that is without taking condiments into consideration, which is a whole other

kettle of ball games. I'm assuming the condiments are part of the twade. I think your condiments have got to be twain trade. Yeah. But then if the data mirth is not in a great environmental state, which is talked about the fact this is in the future and it's not better, and they're already struggling with food production how much food can be produced on the datum and shipped out oh i mean i just i don't think they're necessarily all from datum we've got hundreds of thousands of worlds in between some people are just going to specialize in chutney yeah that's very true um but and i'm not there yeah i mean say obviously no i'm not because branceton pickle factory is not bad man oh yeah i've heard like saracha factories are one of the worst smells in the world

condiments so good factory so bad as we have got a condiment correspondent yocene if you want to send in any thoughts on specifically long earth condiment production um and then obviously i was thinking about it i started thinking about this with the ice cream actually because it's such a specific kind of labor intensive thing um the ice itself i do like there is kind of a plot hole filled that they mentioned this is a slightly colder one where the mississippi freezes over so that's where we're getting a lot of ice from um eggs so i'm guessing they've brought in chickens. Chicken they're easy. Yeah. Terrifying but easy. Milk and cream. We have cows. So obviously we are doing dairy

production as well and most of this stuff that needs to be kept chilled can be stored in the ice house. I have questions about how raw meat is being stored, especially Sally turning up with a bunch of game. Like that's lovely, but where are we going to put it? Ice house. How big is this fucking ice house?

There are limits, especially if you're supporting a population. Dry it? You dry it? Yeah, there's a certain amount of drying. much jerky is being eaten before you get really unhappy about jerky. I mean, a lot of this can probably be answered by looking up how they did it in the West during pioneer times.

Like, they're not plot holes so much as we just don't know. I'm not calling it. These are things I am curious about and that have to be thought about in this context. And yeah, and then sugar was one thing I was really stuck on with the ice cream until I remembered they brew this kind of marble maple spirit thing. And so I'm a shoot, I was trying to say maple bourbon, but I tried to say it all as one thing. Yeah. They have something like Maple. I'll sell their marble to make money on the Twain twade. Well, quite. The point is they can then use that as a sweetener for ice cream and such.

But the point is, this is very difficult to do in the world that they have and in the space that they have. This is very labour intensive and very specific ways. And it is very much a sense of making the long earth work to their familiar concept so that we can have things like burgers, beer and ice cream, as opposed to adapting menus and palettes to work with the long earth, which is why I think Valhalla is so interesting because in a sense that's doing that. But even then, it's organised in a very datum way of being a city with coffee shops and such. That makes sense. It makes sense for the first generation, doesn't it?

No, it makes perfect sense. Again, this isn't a criticism of the book. I think it's very interesting to look at. No, it is interesting, yeah. But you wonder in two generations' time, are you still bothering with burgers or if you got something else to watch tweet while you're watching the baseball equivalent? Yes. Making the long earth work to familiar concepts rather than taking it as it is in this small way with food

is also in a very big way of what they're doing with the trolls. Yeah. And in conclusion, capitalism is the villain all along. Oh, fuck. Dun, dun, duh. Oh, so worst twist ever.

It's every time. Yeah, this one is not really a twist. No. No, I suppose not. Merville. I was doing so long. No, I love it. No, I think that's the brand of our new maple bourbon enterprise.

All right. Before we start a maple bourbon enterprise, Francine, do you have an obscure reference finial for me? Oh, yeah, but it's not nicer. So at one point, Sister Agnes is called the worst catholic since Torquimada. So I looked him up. Yep. I think that's a bit harsh. Thomas de Tolcomada.

in the 1400s. I've been doing lots of 1400s reading today, and I'll tell you what, we weren't doing as fun stuff here as we were in China. He was Spanish. So I'll read the opening of the Encyclopedia Britannica's webpaid on him. He was the first Grand Inquisitor in Spain, whose name has become synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He was convinced that the existence, of Moranos, Jewish converts, Mariscos, Islamic converts, Jews and wars was a threat to the religious

and social life of Spain. And he tried to, well, he successfully got monarchs to persecute them. In 1484, he promulgated 28 articles for the guidance of inquisitors, whose competence was extended to include not only crimes of heresy and apostasy, apostasy, apostasy, but also sorcery, sodomy, polygamy, blasphemy, usury and other offences, was authorised. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2000. Amazing. Yeah. And also he was a large part of the reason the 40,000 Jews left Spain at about that time. Yeah, that is a bit of a harsh comparison. Yeah. You've got to imagine within the Catholic church, that's probably just like a, you know, a bit of banter.

It's like when he calls someone literally Hitler. Yeah, yeah. putting the wrong song on during a car journey or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Also, you know what? I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. Yay! An actual nice twist to come out of the horrible ending I've given us.

Well done, Joanna. Right. I think that's everything we're going to say about part one of the Long War. We'll be back next week with art two, which starts in chapter 36 and goes all the way to the end. In the meantime, of course, dear listeners, you can join our Discord. There's a link down below. Follow us on Instagram and The True Show Make You Frat on Facebook at The True Show Make You Frat.

On Facebook at The True Show Make You Frat. Join our subreddit, R slash TTSMYF, freddit, R slash TTSMYF.F, email us. Email us your thoughts, queries, castle, snacks, and horrible Spanish Inquisitors. The True Show Make You Freight Pod at Gmail.com. Burple and Condiment Thought. And if you want to support us financially, go to patreon. on dot com forward slash the true show make you fret where you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense and until next time dear listeners don't let us detain you

then i thought if i start looking at how they're going to come up with their own mustard i'm going to start learning how to like how to make mustard i know the concept of how to make mustard. Why don't the concept of mustard for goodness sake? Am I going to... If I look this up, I'm going to end up trying to buy some sort of plant and getting into making my own... Like a factory plant or like a...

No, like a mustard plant. Am I going to start then like becoming one of those people that makes their own mustard? And I'm not ready to be that person, Francine.