When I was a kid visiting Adventure Playgrounds, I always entered thinking, ‘This place is built for me and in it I can be anything, and anything can happen.’ Reading Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s The Long Earth series brings back those feelings. The premise of the series is that someone has leaked the schematics to build a small box that allows you to simply step into a parallel Earth, one that is almost exactly the same as our Earth but without any signs of humanity ever having existed. From this Earth you can either step back to our Earth or take another step forward into another Earth. This goes on forever, each Earth gradually differing with each step taken.

So the question becomes – what would happen if the human race were suddenly given access to infinite natural resources and land, with the only limitation being we can’t take metals from one Earth to another? With the exception of a few extremist religious groups, the majority generally deal with this new paradigm quite happily, and the day of the online discovery becomes known as Step Day. Human history has been changed forever. Though, predictably, governments immediately attempt to impose restrictions and, later, high taxes to the pioneers who move out to other Earths.

In The Long Utopia, 30 odd years have passed since Step Day. The core cast returns: Lobsang has retired, married Sister Agnes and adopted a child; Josh is looking deep into his past; the Next are more organised (whether this is a good thing remains to be seen) and a small boy’s discovery that you can step forwards, backwards and now sideways leads to the discovery that the Long Earth is in danger and this time the danger isn’t from us. As with all the Long Earth books, The Long Utopia slowly builds up to a spectacular ending and reading it will put you right back at the Adventure Playground again, wanting to be everything and everywhere at once.

Dani Solomon