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All These Earths
The Skip Drive
It brought the stars so close, they almost touched the Earth. But there was no round trip...
The Drift
...because the "Earth" you returned to was never quite the one you left. It was on a different Timeline, where you might meet yourself...or find you never existed!
The Couriers
At High Skip the tiny, two-person courier ships could span the galaxy in weeks, linking Earth's far-flung colonies at last. But who would pilot them?
It brought the stars so close, they almost touched the Earth. But there was no round trip...
The Drift
...because the "Earth" you returned to was never quite the one you left. It was on a different Timeline, where you might meet yourself...or find you never existed!
The Couriers
At High Skip the tiny, two-person courier ships could span the galaxy in weeks, linking Earth's far-flung colonies at last. But who would pilot them?
- GenresScience FictionFiction
213 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 1978
65 people want to read
About the author
F.M. Busby
69 books27 followersFrancis Marion Busby
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._B...
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._B...
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 7, 2023
A fun, for the most part very Golden Age feel science fiction story, copyright 1978 (my edition with this cover art is copyright 1985). I had previously read F.M. Busby’s _The Demu Trilogy_, which I recommend, and was hopeful about this relatively slim book (it is 215 pages).
It to my surprise is really four interconnected books, with only the first book, “Pearsall’s Return,” focusing on the main character mentioned on the back cover, Woody Pearsall. Though it seems kind of spoiler territory, it is revealed on the back cover, the first book introduces the reader to the central premise of the setting, that advances in faster than light travel, while definitely enabling quick jaunts between the various colony worlds in the galaxy, also by accident after the latest advances put the crew of the _Hawk Flight_ into a parallel universe, an alternate timeline that is just slightly different from the original timeline, but one in which the central character, Woody, is dead and buried. The story deals with understanding what happened and Woody (and to a much lesser extent several others), seeing how they fit in with their family in this alternate timeline. Does Woody get together with his widow, Glenna? Can the crew get home? Can they prevent others from skipping into other parallel universes? This new technology, while sending people to alternate timelines, is really fast; can it not be still used?
Well turns out it can, but not by Woody and the crew of _Hawk Flight_, as for the next three books the protagonists are Woody’s son (in at least one of the timelines), Jay Pearsall, and his wife and fellow crew member Raelle Tremona. Part of a program that uses the faster, timeline-hopping Skip Drive to quickly visit colony worlds but also uses the universe hopping as a feature and not a bug, crewed only by people at peace with the extreme unlikelihood they can ever return to the home universe, Jay and Raelle have various adventures that embrace both space opera type deep space science fiction with various far flung colony worlds, and also always include elements of crossing timelines. It is an interesting combination, not like anything I have seen before.
Writing is mostly Golden Age in feel, with not a lot of time spent in character’s heads, it is sometimes difficult to tell characters apart, and one story, “Nobody Home,” brought to mind the gee whiz, optimistic, man-against-alien-nature writings in such books as Andre Norton’s _The Stars Are Ours_. The fourth and final story, “Never So Lost…,” has some very interesting worldbuilding on the colony planet Waterfall. A few sections could get technical but made sense given the type of story, survival on an alien world and fixing machinery. Though there are dangerous wildlife and people, most of the problems are caused by accidents, survival on an alien world, and challenges of the technology, including ethical and personal decisions.
Some of the stories almost stood on their own, like “Nobody Home,” though others like “Never So Lost…” did better as part of the saga, that one mostly reading as a wrap up for the series, though the ending was really good and could have been expanded some.
It to my surprise is really four interconnected books, with only the first book, “Pearsall’s Return,” focusing on the main character mentioned on the back cover, Woody Pearsall. Though it seems kind of spoiler territory, it is revealed on the back cover, the first book introduces the reader to the central premise of the setting, that advances in faster than light travel, while definitely enabling quick jaunts between the various colony worlds in the galaxy, also by accident after the latest advances put the crew of the _Hawk Flight_ into a parallel universe, an alternate timeline that is just slightly different from the original timeline, but one in which the central character, Woody, is dead and buried. The story deals with understanding what happened and Woody (and to a much lesser extent several others), seeing how they fit in with their family in this alternate timeline. Does Woody get together with his widow, Glenna? Can the crew get home? Can they prevent others from skipping into other parallel universes? This new technology, while sending people to alternate timelines, is really fast; can it not be still used?
Well turns out it can, but not by Woody and the crew of _Hawk Flight_, as for the next three books the protagonists are Woody’s son (in at least one of the timelines), Jay Pearsall, and his wife and fellow crew member Raelle Tremona. Part of a program that uses the faster, timeline-hopping Skip Drive to quickly visit colony worlds but also uses the universe hopping as a feature and not a bug, crewed only by people at peace with the extreme unlikelihood they can ever return to the home universe, Jay and Raelle have various adventures that embrace both space opera type deep space science fiction with various far flung colony worlds, and also always include elements of crossing timelines. It is an interesting combination, not like anything I have seen before.
Writing is mostly Golden Age in feel, with not a lot of time spent in character’s heads, it is sometimes difficult to tell characters apart, and one story, “Nobody Home,” brought to mind the gee whiz, optimistic, man-against-alien-nature writings in such books as Andre Norton’s _The Stars Are Ours_. The fourth and final story, “Never So Lost…,” has some very interesting worldbuilding on the colony planet Waterfall. A few sections could get technical but made sense given the type of story, survival on an alien world and fixing machinery. Though there are dangerous wildlife and people, most of the problems are caused by accidents, survival on an alien world, and challenges of the technology, including ethical and personal decisions.
Some of the stories almost stood on their own, like “Nobody Home,” though others like “Never So Lost…” did better as part of the saga, that one mostly reading as a wrap up for the series, though the ending was really good and could have been expanded some.
June 1, 2018
Great Space Opera from an overlooked master!!
I have been trying to think of the name and author of this book, one of my favorites ever. Then I saw the first two Rissa Kerguelen books (out in Kindle now, and which are even better than this book) and realized that I had forgotten all about F.M. Busby! I love this guy, and "All These Earths" is one of his best.
I have been trying to think of the name and author of this book, one of my favorites ever. Then I saw the first two Rissa Kerguelen books (out in Kindle now, and which are even better than this book) and realized that I had forgotten all about F.M. Busby! I love this guy, and "All These Earths" is one of his best.
April 16, 2020
The book that started my science fiction reading journey. What if you returned from space to a world not quite your own?
January 20, 2024
Pulp sci-fi at its average. In some ways this felt like a fixup collection of 4 short stories/novelletes from Busby. The "parts" as their called in the book all have the backdrop of the many worlds theory, although only 2 of them approach it directly. One of the stories is very similar to Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky. In general, a decent "classic" scifi with a lot of time spent with characters thoughts and MCs who in general are smarter than everyone else.
November 2, 2011
rather tame and unmacabre for Busby. Nice variation on the Popperian version of multiverse
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews