Released 21 Jun, 2012 in the UK. A Science Fiction novel in collaboration with {{wp|Stephen Baxter|Stephen Baxter}}. It is based on a pre-{{COM}} concept then called ''The High Meggas''.
Announced for 20th June 2013 in UK and 23rd July 2013 in US.
==Blurb==
==Blurb==
The possibilities are endless (just be careful what you wish for...)
The follow-up to ''[[The Long Earth]]''...
1916: the Western Front, France. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landcape of No man's Land gone?
A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where [[Joshua]Joshua Valient'e] and [[Lobsang]] once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth -- but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind... A new ‘America’, called [[Valhalla]], is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth -- and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government...
2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson has returned to the burned-out home of one Willis Linsay, a reclusive and some said mad, others dangerous, scientist. It was arson but, as is often the way, the firemen seem to have caused more damage than the fire itself. Stepping through the wreck of a house, there's no sign of any human remains but on the mantelpiece Monica finds a curious gadget - a box, containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a...potato. It is the prototype of an invention that Linsay called a 'stepper'. An invention he put up on the web for all the world to see, and use, an invention that would to change the way mankind viewed his world Earth for ever. And that's an understatement if ever there was one...
...because the stepper allowed the person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth, and if you kept on stepping, you kept on entering even more Earths...this is the Long Earth. It's our our Earth but one of chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side each differing from its neighbour by really very little (or actually quite a lot). It's an infinite chain, offering 'steppers' an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger - and sometimes more dangerous - the Earths get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently.
But, until Willis Linsay invented his stepper, only our Earth hosted mankind...or so we thought. Because it turns out there are some people who are natural 'steppers', who don't need his invention and now the great migration has begun...
Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation... [[Joshua]Joshua Valient'e]], now a married man, is summoned by [[Lobsang]] to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before.
==Characters==
==Characters==
* Private [[Percy Blakeney]] - A World War I soldier.
*Madison Police Department
** Officer [[Monica Jansson]] - A Madison police officer with more imagination than most, who is first on the scene when children start disappearing all over the city.
** Lieutenant Clichy
** Junior Patrol Officer Mike Christopher
** Station Master Dodd
*The House
** [[Joshua Valienté]] - Joshua was an orphan born in another world, and he would rather lose himself in a forest than in the crowds of our Earth, and can’t wait to get away from it again.
**[[Sister Agnes]]
**[[Sister Serendipity]]
**[[Sarah]]
**[[Freddie]]
**[[Billy Chambers]]
*The Black Corporation and [[transEarth]]
**[[Douglas Black]]
**[[Lobsang]] - A Tibetan mechanic reincarnated as a highly intelligent machine, with a high opinion of himself to match.
**Shi-Mi
**Selena Jones
* [[Brian Cowley]] a demagogue and founder of [[Humanity First]]
* [[Willis Linsay]] - The inventor of the [[Stepper]].
* [[Sally Linsay]] - Daughter of Willis Linsay and a natural stepper.
* [[Maria Valienté]] - The mother of Joshua, and at only fifteen.
* Rod Green
* [[Jim Russo]]
* Hermione Dawes
* [[First Person Singularity]]
==Things and Concepts==
==Things and Concepts==
*[[Humanity First]]
*[[Stepping]]
*[[The Black Corporation]]
*''[[Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag]]'' - song
A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where [[Joshua]Joshua Valient'e] and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth -- but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind... A new ‘America’, called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth -- and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government...
Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation... [[Joshua]Joshua Valient'e]], now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before.
