Favourite Authors - an occasional series
December 17th 2006 11:51
In this occasional series, I thought I’d tell you about another reading pleasure, Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series.
Running now for more than twenty years, the series is set on a flat world riding through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Because what’s really important about the series are the characters.
The great delight in the series is that, no matter how outlandish the story might seem, the depth of the characters keep you enthralled. You may think that fantasy stories are lame and for geeks, but you are doing yourself a great disservice here. The other great thing of the series is that it has gotten better and deeper as it’s gone on. Early on, it was very funny. These days, it’s still funny, but the characters have taken on a richness and depth rarely seen in contemporary novels (hence the title of a recent UK publication, ‘Terry Pratchett – Guilty of Literature’).
There are series within the series: The Death series, The Guards, Rincewind, and the Witches are the main ones, and over the last few years a few new ones have started, one featuring young witch Tiffany Aching, the other former con man now supreme government administrator Moist van Lipwig.
If you start talking about the characters… well, you’d never stop. The main city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork, has as a ruler the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vertinari; he makes Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ look like an apprentice shoeboy. The Chief of the City Guard, Sir Samuel Vimes, rose from street kid to become one of the most powerful and richest men in the city, a kind of British Clint Eastwood. Rincewind, a wizard so bad that if he dies the actual magic quotient per person will actually go up, yet has some strange powers all his own, like being able to flee at the slightest hint of danger (my favourite line about him is, that if a warrior can be an avatar of the Hero With A Thousand Faces, then Rincewind is an avatar of The Coward With A Thousand Backs). And Death – tall, very thin, black robe, scythe. TALKS IN CAPITALS. But he isn’t a killer. He’s just the Final Step, the Reaper, the Harvester of Years, the Ultimate Reality, And he has an abiding curiosity about humanity. So much so that he adopted an orphan girl, and even had an apprentice ‘to take over the business’ at the right time. One of the first, and funniest, passages I ever read was the opening section of ‘Mort’, as Death recruits young Mortimer as the potential Reaper (“They call me Mort, sir”. WHAT A COINCIDENCE, Death replies).
I once read an introduction to the Discworld that went something like this:
“You can’t talk about the Discworld to people who haven’t read it, because you’ll start raving about how it goes though space on a giant turtle, and Death rides a white horse called Binky, and there’s a dog called Gaspode that can talk, and the University has a computer that runs magic, and has a real spell checker… and soon you realise the person you’re talking to thinks you’re mad, and the only thing that can be done is to kill them and bury them behind the barn…”
And it’s like that, it gets into your system, and best of all, your imagination. Really, give it a try. You can read from the first one and in sequence (the later editions have the correct sequence), or if you want to jump into some of the stronger stories, you can try any of the first novels of the series in the series: ‘Mort’, ‘Wyrd Sisters’, ‘Guards! Guards!’ and ‘The Colour of Magic’. There are a couple of standalone novels too: ‘Pyramids’ (a take on ancient Egypt) and ‘Small Gods’ (not so much a poke at religion and spirituality itself as the organisation of religion).
There are much much worse places to visit than the Disc. You should go there. Now.
Running now for more than twenty years, the series is set on a flat world riding through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Because what’s really important about the series are the characters.
The great delight in the series is that, no matter how outlandish the story might seem, the depth of the characters keep you enthralled. You may think that fantasy stories are lame and for geeks, but you are doing yourself a great disservice here. The other great thing of the series is that it has gotten better and deeper as it’s gone on. Early on, it was very funny. These days, it’s still funny, but the characters have taken on a richness and depth rarely seen in contemporary novels (hence the title of a recent UK publication, ‘Terry Pratchett – Guilty of Literature’).
There are series within the series: The Death series, The Guards, Rincewind, and the Witches are the main ones, and over the last few years a few new ones have started, one featuring young witch Tiffany Aching, the other former con man now supreme government administrator Moist van Lipwig.
If you start talking about the characters… well, you’d never stop. The main city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork, has as a ruler the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vertinari; he makes Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ look like an apprentice shoeboy. The Chief of the City Guard, Sir Samuel Vimes, rose from street kid to become one of the most powerful and richest men in the city, a kind of British Clint Eastwood. Rincewind, a wizard so bad that if he dies the actual magic quotient per person will actually go up, yet has some strange powers all his own, like being able to flee at the slightest hint of danger (my favourite line about him is, that if a warrior can be an avatar of the Hero With A Thousand Faces, then Rincewind is an avatar of The Coward With A Thousand Backs). And Death – tall, very thin, black robe, scythe. TALKS IN CAPITALS. But he isn’t a killer. He’s just the Final Step, the Reaper, the Harvester of Years, the Ultimate Reality, And he has an abiding curiosity about humanity. So much so that he adopted an orphan girl, and even had an apprentice ‘to take over the business’ at the right time. One of the first, and funniest, passages I ever read was the opening section of ‘Mort’, as Death recruits young Mortimer as the potential Reaper (“They call me Mort, sir”. WHAT A COINCIDENCE, Death replies).
I once read an introduction to the Discworld that went something like this:
“You can’t talk about the Discworld to people who haven’t read it, because you’ll start raving about how it goes though space on a giant turtle, and Death rides a white horse called Binky, and there’s a dog called Gaspode that can talk, and the University has a computer that runs magic, and has a real spell checker… and soon you realise the person you’re talking to thinks you’re mad, and the only thing that can be done is to kill them and bury them behind the barn…”
And it’s like that, it gets into your system, and best of all, your imagination. Really, give it a try. You can read from the first one and in sequence (the later editions have the correct sequence), or if you want to jump into some of the stronger stories, you can try any of the first novels of the series in the series: ‘Mort’, ‘Wyrd Sisters’, ‘Guards! Guards!’ and ‘The Colour of Magic’. There are a couple of standalone novels too: ‘Pyramids’ (a take on ancient Egypt) and ‘Small Gods’ (not so much a poke at religion and spirituality itself as the organisation of religion).
There are much much worse places to visit than the Disc. You should go there. Now.
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