Drumknott, the Patrician’s
secretary, was waiting by the door of the Oblong Office, and quickly ushered
him into the seat in front of his lordship’s desk.
After nine seconds of
industrious writing, Lord Vetinari looked up from his paperwork.
“Ah, Mr. Lipwig,” he said.
“Not in your gold suit?”
“It’s being cleaned, sir.”
“I trust the day goes well
with you? Up until now, that is?”
Moist looked around, sorting
hastily through the Post Office’s recent little problems. Apart from Drumknott,
who was standing by his master with an attitude of deferential alertness, they
were alone.
“Look, I can explain,” he
said.
Lord Vetinari lifted an
eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his
salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.
“Pray do,” he said, leaning
back.
“We got a bit carried away,”
said Moist. “We were a bit too creative in our thinking. We encouraged
mongooses to breed in the posting boxes to keep down the snakes…”
Lord Vetinari said nothing.
“Er… which, admittedly, we
introduced into the letter boxes to reduce the numbers of toads…”
Lord Vetinari repeated
himself.
“Er… which, it’s true, staff
put in the posting boxes to keep down the snails…”
Lord Vetinari remained
unvocal.
“Er… These, I must in
fairness point out, got into the boxes of their own accord, in order to eat the
glue on the stamps,” said Moist, aware that he was beginning to burble.
“Well, at least you were
saved the trouble of having to introduce them yourselves,” said Lord Vetinari
cheerfully. “As you indicate, this may well have been a case where chilly logic
should have been replaced by the common sense of, perhaps, the average chicken.
But that is not the reason I asked you to come here today.”
I just saw somebody express disappointment that the new Watch show is intended to be “modern and inclusive”
buddy. friend. pal. half the goddamn series is about Vimes unlearning his prejudices and the other half is about Vimes’s extreme dislike of people who abuse their power. if anything I’m willing to bet they’ll tone it down outof cowardice
Samuel Vimes is the embodiment of “always punch up, never down” and if you missed that I’m not even sure we read the same books
I reserve the right to bludgeon anyone who complains about this with hardcover copies of MonstrousRegiment and Snuff.
Anyone who complains about the show being inclusive is going to get a visit from the ghost of Terry Pratchett, who is going to beat the stuffing out of them
With his meteor sword.
Over the course of the books, the Watch has acquired:
a six-foot-tall cultural dwarf
a werewolf
an ex-‘splatter’ troll (like a bouncer, but hits harder)
a openly female dwarf from a culture that severely frowns on that
an ex-slave golem who set up an organisation to slowly buy the freedom of his people
a friendly-but-determined religious missionary from a desert country named Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets
a zombified revolutionary a-la Enjolras
a forensic accountant poached from the Patrician
a made-from-spare-parts mad scientist coroner
Nobby Nobbs
Over the course of the same books, it has developed from your standard medieval fantasy gang-of-thugs city guards to an extremely modern police force containing:
an alchemy-based forensics department
an aeriel traffic corps
a coroners office
a forensic accountants department
drug outreach programmes run by the ex-bouncer troll
a general community policing model
It has gone from a three man graveyard of a force to a political powerhouse capable of taking on basically any real or political power on the Disc, and it has done so in large part because of the reputation of its commander as a man who will tackle any crime, at any level, against any opponent, up to and including ancient demons and the gods themselves, or even the commander himself, to protect the rights of any Joe Soap on the street to be an idiot without getting shafted for it.
I mean. ‘Modern and inclusive’ don’t even cover it, you know?
Also given the fourth wall break nature of some of Prachett’s work, I wouldn’t be surprised if Vimes outright took a knee at some point, looked straight into the camera, and held up a sign saying “Black Lives Matter”.
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
This is not a story about me. It is a story about a time Terry Pratchett held a reading for Snuff I happened to be at. People asked all the usual sorts of questions they do when a famous, beloved author is there for a reading and a signing. He was hilarious and gracious about each one.
But the standout was when a kid, easily under 13, asked him a question about how to get good at writing. Sir Terry told him one thing that we could all hear, mostly standard stuff about writing a lot and only letting people see the good stuff, and the event moved on. He spent a good 10 minutes alone with that kid after the Q&A before signings telling him something else that only that kid will ever be privy to. Because Sir Terry wanted that kid to know a secret, straight from the goddess Narativia. Bless that man.
I went to a Neil Gaiman reading last night. It was really nice.
He said he hid from David Bowie when they were staying in the same little town (he was talking about meeting your heroes and how it’s a crapshoot, sometimes they’re even cooler irl, sometimes they’re lame, and he didn’t want to risk it with someone as formative to his life as Bowie). It was a clever misdirect from Gaiman regarding a question about how many of his friends and idols have died in the past few years. You could tell the audience really wanted him to talk about PTerry and he really didn’t want to, which is fine, my goodness. It really upset me when I heard about Pratchett’s death; I can’t imagine how a much more of a loss it is for his creative partner and lifelong friend.
Gaiman seemed burdened; he’s still working on the Good Omens show, even through this book tour. It didnt take away from the evening – if anything, his vulnerability brought an affirming immediacy, a rallying sense of “We’re all in this together, we’re all tired and sad, but here’s why books and stories are more important than ever.”
He’s always had great tenderness under all of his punk-rock pathos, something his introduction pointed out, and that sensitivity seemed a bit bruised and battered last night. It was interesting to watch him get sharper and funnier as the night wore on, to watch him tap into a lifetime of writing discipline and public speaking experience to connect to his audience in spite of obvious grief and fatigue. I’m interested to see how his emotional landscape affects future writing; I’d wager that it will make him better than ever, that his sorrow will carve out just as cool, just as weird, but even more humane art.
He talked about the importance of escapism, how those kinds of stories free us from the daily grind of life, how dreams become real, how imagination can and does shape reality.
He talked about how important it is to support kids by letting them read things they like, that there’s no such thing as a bad children’s book, that we need to avoid the Victorian mindset of “enriching literature.” He cautioned teachers and parents that reading is the thing, not the kind of reading.
(My daughter was raised in a very booky home: I took her to the library weekly, read to her every night, played audiobooks in the car, went as a family to storytelling festivals, etc. But all of that couldn’t compete with bad teachers who assigned bad books, or who assigned good books {but never sci-fi/fantasy books, ever} and then handed out 20 page homework packets so young students would deconstruct and analyze something like Winn-Dixie or Shiloh to the point of revulsion. {She had to read that Winn-Dixie book in 3rd, 4th AND 5th grade, damn that school to hell}. She refused any recreational reading by the age of 13. {Remember years ago when Meg Cabot worried about this very thing in the New York Times and people flipped out? Like, how dare anyone, let alone a ‘frivolous’ YA female author suggest that the American school system was failing its children by regurgitating racist, sexist, BORING AS HECK books in its curriculum? Cabot was right, then, and Gaiman is right, now: if you let kids read what they want, especially escapism, they’ll become readers, they’ll WANT to read}. Do you know what got my kid to read again?? THE TWILIGHT AND GOSSIP GIRL SERIES. I will forever love S. Meyer because she jumpstarted my child’s reading habit after her teachers killed it. Some of you YA tumblr cops need to calm down, let kids read what they want ffs).
Gaiman amended this advice with an anecdote about his daughter. When she was 11, she loved the R.L. Stein books, and he said, well, if you like those books you’ll LOVE this one, and gave her ‘Carrie’ to read. To this day, she glares at him if she hears the name Stephen King.
He read a funny Thor-being-very-Thor story from his Norse Mythology book, and a terrific ALA speech about the importance of modern libraries, then ended with a couple of pages from Good Omens where Aziraphale and Crowley get drunk and talk about divine interference.
He truly is one of the most gifted speakers I’ve ever heard. He used his gentle, medodious voice, his expert pacing, while describing the ancient, sensory pleasure of humans gathering around a fire at the end of a long day’s work to listen to a storyteller, transporting for an hour or two into better worlds, leaving the hearthside freer and lighter and more thoughtful. He said we find ourselves in books, find other people, our people, who reach across time and distance to tell us we’re not alone, that we’re not strange, we’re not defeated, that there’s always wonder and possibility… at least in the pages of a book.
I hope Neil Gaiman gets time by his fire to sit and read, after he’s completed Terry’s last wish. I hope he finds warmth there, finds some of the comfort and maybe some of magic that he shared with me, with my people, last night.
Dug around in my archive drives for Discworld fanarts. I have a lot of Feelings I can’t articulate very well soooooo I’m not going to, just enjoy the draws xD FYI Zombie Reg is still one of my favorite faces I’ve drawn of all time, ever!
MAN I just remembered how I sketched the Vimes family portrait after I read Thud! I should find that and finish it…
I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.
Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.
We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this.
The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.
Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people. But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.
But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.
You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one.
You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up).
And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!
Wrong.
The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is?
The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.
So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
GNU Terry Pritchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
I recommend anyone who hasn’t read the article Neil Gaiman wrote before PTerry died about what an angry person he was. Not in a bad or aggressive way, but a seething fury at the people in the world who use their gifts or power to wreck it for other people. I grew up through Discworld books being moved from the ‘fantasy’ niche through to people acknowledging their sales and (gasp) being allowed on the ‘new releases’ tables (and yes it was Night Watch that led to a big change in that), but it doesn’t mean literary critics didn’t still write them off as being fantasy, and thus not serious. When of course we know fantasy is the most serious thing there is.
It’s always a riot when someone is like “you shouldn’t put words in Terry Pratchett’s mouth you don’t know what he would have said about current political events this is just liberals stealing his ideas for their liberal agenda” like thankfully for us he quite literally wrote them all down, all of them.
41 volumes of hopeful rage and defiance.
You should read them sometime.
Damn straight. He was my friend, and I stand by these words.
You don’t need to put words in his mouth because he already wrote about political corruption. He already wrote about abuse of power. He wrote about police brutality. He wrote about torture. He wrote about racism. He wrote about sexism. He wrote about war and bigotry. He wrote about women’s rights. He casually brought up contraceptives, birth control and abortion and never portrayed any of them negatively.
You don’t have to read into any Discworld book particularly hard to know that Sir Terry Pratchett had Opinions about all of these things and he broadcast them loud and clear.
The thing about Discworld, you see, is that it’s a very hopeful form of cynicism. It doesn’t just tell you that the world is crap, it says, well, yes, of course the world is crap, but that’s why you should be hopeful, and helpful, and kind, and why you have to be good, because maybe you can make it a little less crap.
Reason #33573743742 why I love the Discworld books.
Remember how Pratchett wrote that Reacher Gilt, the evil head of the Grand Trunk company who is responsible for deaths and the theft of the company and the exploitation of workers and however many other crimes, works out of Tump Tower
Going Postal was published in 2004
I respect Mr. Pratchett a lot, but Trump is 71 years old and he’s been publicly known to be a douchecanoe since at least the 1970s. You didn’t exactly have to be a fucking prophet to know in 2004 that he was a tremendous dickbag.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.