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Comment by Rygian | Hacker News Reader

I've already read one where some weird alien ants hollow out the earth to make it spin faster, and take advantage of the increase in speed to generate power somehow (maybe by building a geostationary conductive belt around the planet, that acts as the "stator"?)

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Wouldnt hollowing the earth not change its rotation speed? And if the hollowed material would be deposited on surface, wouldnt the speed actually decrease?

Saying what book you're talking about is kind of a spoiler now for anyone that happens to be reading its series. Are there spoiler tags on HN? <SPOILER> The Long Utopia, book 4/5 of the Long Earth series by Pratchett and Baxter. </SPOILER> The series has very meh characters/dialogue, excellent ideas and sense of nearly possibility-unlimited discovery that's executed very well, highly recommend if that's your cup of tea. Ended up skipping all the flashback chapters near the end of the series though, that felt like a load of filler

I was wildly disappointed in that series. A great premise that fizzled out about 3/4ths of the way through the first book. I powered through, and started the second, and gave up maybe five chapters in.

If the concept of world-hopping intrigues you, Charles Stross's "Merchant Princes" series does it better.

I'm really glad to see this wasn't just my experience.

I absolutely loved the premise of the first book. Every time I think about it I get the same kind of excitement I feel when I come up with the perfect idea for a D&D campaign.

But the second book gathers dust on my shelf, and no matter how many times I think "I should get back into these!" I just can't. The first book ended in a fizzle and the second completely failed to keep my attention.

I'll take a look at Merchant Princes and see if that's more to my liking!

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