The Long Mars

2040-2045: In the years after the catalcysmic Yellowstone eruption there is a massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to the Long Earth worlds.

Sally, Joshua, Lobsang are all involved in this perilous work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper, Willis Linsay. He is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars – but he has ulterior motives for wanting Sally to make the journey with him. For what he seeks is an advanced alien technology which he believes will help mankind’s post-Yellowstone recovery. Meanwhile Maggie Kauffman has embarked on a incredible journey of her own, leading an expedition to the outer limits of the far Long Earth.

And Joshua becomes embroiled in the appearance of the Next: super-bright post humans who are beginning to emerge from their 'Long Childhood' in the community called Happy Landings. A Next boy has been rejected by normal-human society and is incarcerated in the Madison Home and, now the authorities - inevitably afraid of anything or anyone not deemed 'normal' - order a crackdown on the abnormal Next children, sequestring them together in a military base. As Joshua and Nelson liberate the children a dramatic showdown seems inevitable over whether to eliminate this potential rival to mankind from the Long Earth...