The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett

[mcbigski]

Just to pile on, my entry point was Guards! Guards! and that worked out just fine for me.  Solid thread so far Wert.

[SkynJay]

On 4/5/2021 at 6:36 AM, polishgenius said:

And ultimately I think the only one that really has to be read in order is Night Watch - in other books you'll have references to previous plots you won't necessarily get, but the theme of the book is usually reference to other stories, or fairytale tropes, or real-life stuff. Reading Witches or Fifth Elephant you'll get most of what Pratchett is driving at even if it refers back to events in a previous book.
In Night Watch obviously there is quite a lot of stuff about revolution and policing but it's also a book in large part in dialogue with earlier books in the series. So many storylines and jokes are built off already knowing the City Watch cast.

I did a big reread several years ago (the first time I had ever read them in order) and one of the things that struck me about Night Watch is that while I always took your point for granted I no longer believe it; Night Watch would be BETTER if you read other books, especially in little jokes and a few throw away cameos.  But I absolutely believe it can be read solo; it is a classic cat and mouse story that diverts in interesting ways.  Much of Vimes' history is irreverent(his drinking problem is now part of his history, but not front and center to the story)  and the supporting Guard cast that matters is introduced within the story itself.  Light Fantastic truly is the only book I think needs a lead up to be read.

And man, there is a lot of Eric hate on this thread.  It is actually the book I reread last, and I think it is pretty entertaining.  Not deep, and not high on the Pratchett list, but a nice diversion of a story and honestly about as much Rincewind as I need these days (some of the Rincewind books are a slog). 

[Maltaran]

10 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Hey, no dissing of The Last Hero. Those illustrations are magnificent. I agree the plot moves a little too fast for its own good, though.

I didn't find Unseen Academicals that bad, actually. Snuff I could see some arguments against, as it pretty much gives Vimes a new superpower out of nowhere and completely sidelines the rest of the Watch. In terms of the weakest Discworld books, no obvious candidates stand out, but Moving Pictures might receive an honourable mention, at least.

Oh, and in terms of strange timelines, I always found Rincewind's backstory a little strange to fit in. He first appears as a rather ordinary, if inept, wizard in The Colour of Magic where he has his adventure with Twoflower. Then he ... faffs around the University for a while (?) until the events of Sourcery, where he has another adventure that ends to him being banished to the Dungeon Dimension. He gets back from it in Eric, returns to the University. He spends some more time in blissful quiet at the University until Interesting Times takes him to the Counterweight Continent, whereafter a teleportation accident sends him to Fourecks in The Last Continent. After returning from there, he apparently stays full-time at the University.

But in the latter book, Rincewind is suddenly mentioned to have visited most of the Disc being chased around by people. Some of this happens "on-screen" in the aforementioned novels, but not nearly all of it, and we never see any implications of when it could have happened off-screen either. Later books (and appendix books such as the Discworld Emporium) mention him to have visited Nothingfjord, the Great Outdoors, Klatch, and a hundred other places we've never seen him have time to visit. Apparently he has had many chased-by-everyone adventures of the type we saw in The Light Fantastic, but when? For most of the timeline, his location is known and accounted for. He does not come across as well-traveled in his first appearance either. When did he have time to be chased all over the Disc, again?

At the start of Interesting Times he’s marooned on a desert island until the wizards use Hex to find him and teleport him back to UU, so my assumption is that his offscreen adventures mostly happen between Eric and Interesting Times. Eric ends with him getting out of Hell but never actually says he got back to Ankh-Morpork

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

I didn't find Unseen Academicals that bad, actually. Snuff I could see some arguments against, as it pretty much gives Vimes a new superpower out of nowhere and completely sidelines the rest of the Watch. In terms of the weakest Discworld books, no obvious candidates stand out, but Moving Pictures might receive an honourable mention, at least.

I'd say that Eric and Sourcery have strong claims to being the weakest Discworld novel. I think that Carpe Jugulum and The Last Continent are also reasonable contenders because they are redundant: Carpe Jugulum is just Lords and Ladies with vampires replacing elves and The Last Continent is Interesting Times with China swapped out for Australia. Interesting Times isn't great either, as it opens very heavily on the "dry frog pill" Bursar, which was a great one-book joke dragged out over far too many books.

Unseen Academicals is definitely a bit too one-note in its gags and it's also far too long. Any time a Pratchett book goes over 400 pages there's a risk of him becoming too self-indulgent and at almost 600 (!), UA is both the longest Discworld book and one with one of the least compelling plots. But it is hard to criticise the later books, obviously, because of the external factor of the Embuggerance.

Quote

 

Oh, and in terms of strange timelines, I always found Rincewind's backstory a little strange to fit in. He first appears as a rather ordinary, if inept, wizard in The Colour of Magic where he has his adventure with Twoflower. Then he ... faffs around the University for a while (?) until the events of Sourcery, where he has another adventure that ends to him being banished to the Dungeon Dimension. He gets back from it in Eric, returns to the University. He spends some more time in blissful quiet at the University until Interesting Times takes him to the Counterweight Continent, whereafter a teleportation accident sends him to Fourecks in The Last Continent. After returning from there, he apparently stays full-time at the University.

But in the latter book, Rincewind is suddenly mentioned to have visited most of the Disc being chased around by people. Some of this happens "on-screen" in the aforementioned novels, but not nearly all of it, and we never see any implications of when it could have happened off-screen either. Later books (and appendix books such as the Discworld Emporium) mention him to have visited Nothingfjord, the Great Outdoors, Klatch, and a hundred other places we've never seen him have time to visit. Apparently he has had many chased-by-everyone adventures of the type we saw in The Light Fantastic, but when? For most of the timeline, his location is known and accounted for. He does not come across as well-traveled in his first appearance either. When did he have time to be chased all over the Disc, again?

 

I believe most of Rincewind's crazy adventures happened off-screen in the six months he spent travelling with Twoflower over the course of The Colour of Magic. He may have also counted his trip to Al-Khali in Sourcery as going to Klatch.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Werthead

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Carpe Jugulum is just Lords and Ladies with vampires replacing elves

To some extent, but I liked Carpe Jugulum more, partly because I found the ending more satisfying and partly because while the main plot is eh the thematic sublot of faith, belief and the Church of Om is really strong. For a non-theist Pratchett really understood faith, and indeed some of the issues of the Church.


There were a few of them that recycled plots or ideas. Moving Pictures and Soul Music aren't too far apart, Guards Guards and Men at Arms have their similarities though the characters there carry it through. I wouldn't go so far as to call any redundant but to each his own.

 

On Unseen Academicals I think its big weakness is that it's one of the few subjects Pratchett wrote about that he didn't really get. Where, as I say, as a Christian reading his Christianity-themed books I get a fair bit out of them, as a football fan reading Unseen Academicals Pratchett didn't understand football fandom at all.

[Denvek]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

But it is hard to criticise the later books, obviously, because of the external factor of the Embuggerance.

The Embuggerance did affect the quality of the later books. Raising Steam is clearly an attempt to tie up as many open plotlines as possible in case he didn't get another chance.

[Plessiez]

 

I think Small Gods is definitely "supposed" to be set about a hundred years before most of the other books.  It just doesn't quite work out if you sit down and actually try to build a consistent timeline.

On 4/12/2021 at 6:03 PM, polishgenius said:

Depends who the cameos are I guess. I don't remember them but Pyramids has its own weird time thing going on that could explain some weirdness.

Some of the philosophers Pteppic meets towards the end of Pryamids are the same ones (or at least, have the same names as) the philosophers Brutha meets in Small Gods.  And while Pryamids doesn't have much direct connection to the other books, there are still a couple of links (Doctor Cruces from Men at Arms shows up at the Assassins' Guild early on, and I think there's a throwaway reference to the events of Mort as well).  Which suggests that Pyramids -- and so also the bulk of Small Gods -- must take place during roughly the same time period as the Watch books.   But on the other hand the character of Corporal Visit means that the Watch books obviously take place at least a century after Small Gods. 

Which I don't think is really possible to make sense of, beyond handwaving about History Monks (or, I guess, deciding that the relevant characters just happen to share names but aren't the same people?).  I think this is one of the timeline inconsistencies mentioned explicitly in Thief of Time, actually.

On 4/12/2021 at 6:03 PM, polishgenius said:

But ultimately it's down to that Pratchett didn't really care especially early onA 

Oh, yeah.  (And I think he was right not to care:  the worldbuilding and setting of the later books is a lot better than that of the early books, even though it's not really at all consistent with them.)

 

[Werthead]

Discworld #6: Wyrd Sisters

The King of Lancre has died of natural causes. As everyone knows, it is very normal and even traditional for a king to die naturally from a stab wound to the back followed by a swift plummet down a steep staircase. As is also traditional, the king's heir and his crown have mysteriously disappeared and it's no doubt only a matter of time before he grows up and returns to reclaim his birthright etc etc. Some things are Traditional. Unfortunately, the new king and his scheming wife aren't hot followers of Tradition and as a reign of terror falls on Lancre, it falls to three local witches, a psychotic cat and a Fool to take a hand in events...

Six books into his Discworld series, Terry Pratchett decided to take on Bill Shakespeare. Wyrd Sisters mashes together the plot of MacBeth with influence from Hamlet and a subplot about making plays (including a Shakespeare-ish analogue character). It's also the first time that Pratchett seems to have consciously built up an entire community of characters in a book, with a view to revisiting them later on.

Our leading protagonist is Granny Weatherwax, who previously appeared (in a simpler form) in Equal Rites. This time around she's one of a coven of three witches, alongside the matriarchal Nanny Ogg and the young and (misleadingly) wet-behind-the-ears Magrat Garlick. Effectively having three leads is a new idea for Pratchett and allows him to spread the story out a bit more, even if Granny does come across as the effective leader of the group. Pratchett's characterisation is splendid as always, with the realisation of Magrat's anger issues at being constantly underestimated making for fun scenes and Nanny Ogg highly contradictory character tics being oddly compelling: she's a kind-hearted and funny person who inexplicably likes making life miserable for her extended relations and harbours a strong relationship with a cat she thinks is a fluffy kitten rather than a homicidal threat to the peace.

The wider community of Lancre is also established, with its vertiginous geography, literally-minded inhabitants (at least 25% of whom seem to be related by blood or terrifying marriage into Nanny Ogg's clan) and local colour, becoming, after Ankh-Morpork, clearly Pratchett's favourite place to write about on the Disc. 

Those with a working knowledge of epic fantasy tropes, Shakespeare in general and MacBeth in particular can likely see where the story is going, which is something that Pratchett anticipates and has fun with, especially how he overcomes the issue of the witches not wanting to wait fifteen years for the Hidden Heir™ to make his unexpected reappearance, resulting in arguably the most impressive display of magic in the entire series (we'll perhaps ignore the apparent issues this causes with the timeline, as Pratchett subsequently does). 

There is a lot of great comedy here as Pratchett riffs off various ideas and tropes (not to mention some nods to the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin), but there's also splendid use of a real-world theme, in this case propaganda. Words have power of their own, and can be a greater force than armies, and the deployment of the idea is intelligent and well-handled, and also done with relative subtlety, tying into the main storyline's use of a theatre troupe and their ability to create stories that are more memorable than real history.

Wyrd Sisters (****½) sees Pratchett evolving the Discworld setting even further away from the simple fantasy parody it started out as and into much more interesting territory, with a corresponding deepening and complicating of the worldbuilding and characters, whilst remaining funny.

[Jussi]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

Interesting Times isn't great either,

Interesting Times is my favourite Rincewind novel – the only one that I really enjoy.

[Werthead]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGKP2vVwcDg

The full-length 1997 Cosgrove Hall animated TV film of Wyrd Sisters is freely available on YouTube. I think Soul Music is on there as well, but split up into its constituent parts. 

[Kyll.Ing.]

On 4/14/2021 at 7:54 PM, Werthead said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGKP2vVwcDg

The full-length 1997 Cosgrove Hall animated TV film of Wyrd Sisters is freely available on YouTube. I think Soul Music is on there as well, but split up into its constituent parts. 

I remember watching that a couple of years back. I liked it fine, the characters all used dialogue from the book, looked like themselves and behaved like themselves (wonky animation issues aside) but something felt like it was missing. Then I realized it. A big character was left out: the narrator. The narration - Pratchett himself explaining what's going on in a way only Pratchett could explain - is completely essential to Discworld. There needs to be somebody to explain that the Ankh is a river that oozes rather than flows, but that it's considered to be a very clean river on account of all the kidneys it has passed through. Somebody to say that scumble is the type of drink that can also be used to unblock drains. To tell the reader that Ankh-Morpork is considered the pearl of the circle sea - an annoing piece of debris wrapped in thick layers of mollusc secretion. That the Librarian doesn't mind being an ape, because then he can read the things Man was not supposed to know (as those ancient curses rarely have stipulations about orangutans).

All the little jokes, observations, and the clever wordplay that delivers them is what makes Discworld work. It's not just fantasy in a flat world atop a turtle. And these things are very difficult to convey or deliver in other ways than prose text with a narrator. I know there are very good reasons why narrations aren't easy to do on film (what are the characters supposed to be doing while the narration is being delivered, for instance?), but it's such an essential part of Discworld that the works feel flat without it.

[felice]

3 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

I know there are very good reasons why narrations aren't easy to do on film (what are the characters supposed to be doing while the narration is being delivered, for instance?), but it's such an essential part of Discworld that the works feel flat without it.

Hitchhiker's Guide manages that rather well, but it needs relatively lengthy digressions. Frequently interrupting the action with brief comments wouldn't work.

[Plessiez]

The Cosgrove-Hall animations are certainly a long way from perfect, but weirdly enough I think they're my favourite Discworld adaptions.  (Which is just a long-winded way of saying I don't like any of the live action attempts, I suppose.)

  I like Chistopher Lee as the voice of Death, too

9 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

 A big character was left out: the narrator. The narration - Pratchett himself explaining what's going on in a way only Pratchett could explain - is completely essential to Discworld

Yeah, this is definitely an issue.  The adaption tries to rework a lot of the narrative asides into dialogue but I'm not sure this approach works very well.  If anything, I think it results in the characters sometimes saying things they wouldn't really have said or just slightly misses the point. 

In the first coven scene, for example, Nanny Ogg's "I don't like abroad..." lines were originally a sentiment the narrator attributes to witches in general (and one that doesn't really feel true of Nanny Ogg herself).  And in the book Granny Weatherwax simply says that Magrat has managed "a good squint" (with the narrative pointing out that, adverse as she is to giving out praise, that means Magrat was probably managing to stare up her own nostrils).  But the adaption has Granny actually explicitly say "a squint's only good if you can stare up your own nostrils" (while shifting the actual praise to Nanny Ogg), which seems a little bit off to me. 

The unfinished adaption of Reaper Man (which was a sort of pilot for the Cosgrove-Hall adapations, as I understand it), actually does have a narrator, as it happens.  I imagine that at least some of the early drafts of the full series tried to include one as well, but decided against it for whatever reason.

5 hours ago, felice said:

Hitchhiker's Guide manages that rather well, but it needs relatively lengthy digressions. Frequently interrupting the action with brief comments wouldn't work.

Yeah, the Hitchhiker's Guide has the advantage of originally being a radio production, which I think lends itself more easily to adapations into other media than pure text would have done.  And I think it also helps that a lot of the narrative digressions have an already-established framing device (in the form of the Guide itself).

[HexMachina]

Its been years since I've seen it now but I remember a TV movie adaptation of The Hogfather (it aired on Sky One in the UK I think?) which I enjoyed at the time. Have just looked it up though and that was 2006 so I'm not sure how my opinion would hold up now

[Werthead]

24 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Its been years since I've seen it now but I remember a TV movie adaptation of The Hogfather (it aired on Sky One in the UK I think?) which I enjoyed at the time. Have just looked it up though and that was 2006 so I'm not sure how my opinion would hold up now

Cosgrove Hall adapted Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music; Sky One adapted Hogfather, The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic and Going Postal. Going Postal I think was generally regarded as the best.

[HexMachina]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Cosgrove Hall adapted Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music; Sky One adapted Hogfather, The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic and Going Postal. Going Postal I think was generally regarded as the best.

Thanks! I think of those i’ve only seen The Hogfather and maybe some snippets of the Colour of Magic/The Light Fantastic. Will have a look at the Wyrd Sisters link you posted

[Kyll.Ing.]

13 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Its been years since I've seen it now but I remember a TV movie adaptation of The Hogfather (it aired on Sky One in the UK I think?) which I enjoyed at the time. Have just looked it up though and that was 2006 so I'm not sure how my opinion would hold up now

It's on YouTube too, albeit probably not legally: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hogfather

Hm, looking it up, so is The Colour of Magic and Going Postal. The latter is the only of the adaptations I haven't seen. Might as well watch it later, before it is taken down.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Going Postal is the best adaptation imho.
Never finished CoM/LF; too much cut out. 

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Going Postal is the best adaptation imho.
Never finished CoM/LF; too much cut out. 

Yeah, it was weird trying to adapt two books (even short-ish ones) into the same timeframe as the other adaptations managed for one.

[Werthead]

Discworld #7: Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

Prince Teppic is the heir to the desert kingdom of Djelibeybi*. His father, a non-traditional man with odd ideas, decides to send him to get the best education possible outside of the Old Kingdom, by sending him to join the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild. Seven years later, Teppic is summoned home by sad news and sets about building the greatest pyramid ever seen on the Disc. This proves to be a Very Bad Idea.

Pyramids is one of those rare books in the Discworld series, being a total stand-alone. Its characters and events do not recur elsewhere in the series (brief cameos by Death and the Librarian excepted) and its events are barely referred to elsewhere. It's a viable jumping-on point for new readers, although in terms of quality it's not among the best books in the series, though certainly not among the weakest either. It's a middling Discworld book which, fortunately, means it's pretty good.

The book is primarily concerned about ossification, ritual and conservatism, how slavishly following ideas because they're old and "have always worked" is not good enough and can lead to long-lasting harm. It's also Pratchett's first tilt at religious fundamentalism, and how people in power use and abuse religious faith to further their own ends, although here he takes the idea to extremes by having the fundamentalist being so unflinching in his belief that he's become incorruptible by dint of every idea outside of his very narrow worldview simply bouncing off him. Pratchett would address these ideas again later on in Small Gods.

Pyramids risks being a lazy comedic novel using stereotypes (the times Pratchett does this, with "fantasy China" in Interesting Times and "fantasy Australia" in The Last Continent, are among the Discworld series' weaker efforts) and the presence of gags about pyramids, mummies and the Sphinx do occasionally teeter on the edge of Carry On territory, but Pratchett does back off and instead uses the setting as a framing device for more interesting ideas about religion and science. The result is probably the best fantasy novel inspired by Egypt outside of N.K. Jemisin's more original Dreamblood duology.

The novel also has an interesting structure which seems to be inspired by the original Star Wars movie. Although Teppic is somewhat more worldly wise, he does have a Luke Skywalker vibe going on, whilst his much more charismatic friend Chidder has a Han Solo thing . Chidder even owns an unconventional freighter which is actually a faster-than-expected smuggling ship (the Unnamed), and both have tension with the beautiful Ptraci, who turns out to have a secret identity you're already probably well ahead of the curve on. Oh, and there's even a hairy sidekick who can't talk English but is vastly more intelligent than anyone expects. Once this was pointed out to me I couldn't ignore it.

Finally, the novel riffs on the state of hard science fiction in the late 1980s. Back then there was a seismic shift going on as the SF genre stopped focusing so much on spaceships and adventure stories in favour of long, complicated novels and series about cutting-edge ideas. SF authors were scrambling to stay current ideas being theorised by the likes of Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time came out whilst Pratchett was writing Pyramids - even if they didn't fully understand them, leading to lot of novels about knotty time travel or black holes where the word "quantum" is subjected to a lot of questionable abuse. Pratchett has great fun riffing on this tendency, whilst also employing it himself, with the novel featuring some clever ideas on time running at different speeds and time warps stripping people of some of their dimensions.

There's a lot going on in Pyramids (****) - it was the longest Discworld book to this point, though still not cracking 400 pages - and sometimes it feels a bit crammed with ideas that it doesn't have time to fully explore, which is why some overspill into later novels (Small Gods addresses some of the same themes more elegantly). It's a funny book but also a smart one with some really cool ideas about time, space and advanced camel mathematics.

* Pratchett was reportedly disappointed that Americans didn't get this joke, so created the nearby kingdom of Hersheba just for them.