Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion ... So Far

by Terry Pratchett

  Yeti. They are a form of troll which lives above the snow line. They are broadly like a city troll, but rolled out thinner, although a thick coat of fur appears to give them bulk. Yeti are very tall – more than twice as high as a normal person and most of that extra height is in their skinny legs and arms. Their feet are huge (of course). Their stride is a like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other and they can run at about 30 mph.

  The yeti of the Ramtops is one of the few creatures to utilise control of personal time for genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition – you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution, yet in the comfortable knowledge that, should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important bit, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not now, as a result of foreknowledge, happen. This makes perfect sense, because of QUANTUM. [TOT]

  Ymitury, Archmage of. A powerful wizard, parted from his staff, his belt of moon jewels and his life, by the WEASEL and BRAVD the Hublander. Ymitury does not feature in the records of Unseen University, and in any case any wizard who could be tricked out of his staff by a couple of wandering mercenaries probably did not deserve to have it in the first place; it is likely he was some sort of charlatan or possibly even a foreigner. [COM]

  Ymor. In his time, the greatest thief in Ankh-Morpork, and one of the last independent gang leaders to merge with the THIEVES’ GUILD. His headquarters were in the leaning tower at the junction of Rime Street and Frost Alley. [COM]

  Ynci the Short-Tempered. Apparently a past queen of LANCRE. A beefy young woman sporting a winged, spiked helmet and a mass of black hair plaited into dreadlocks with blood as a setting lotion. She was heavily made-up in the woad-and-blood-and-spirals school of barbarian cosmetics. She wore a 42D-cup breastplate and shoulder plates with spikes. She had knee pads with spikes on, spikes on her sandals and a rather short skirt in the fashionable tartan and blood motif. She carried a double-headed battle-axe. Her war pony was called Spike.

  In the strictest sense, she never existed. She was invented by King LULLY I of Lancre because he thought the kingdom needed a bit of romantic history. But she has an official portrait in LANCRE CASTLE’S Long Gallery, some armour in its armoury (in fact made by one of the OGG family at the King’s instruction), and she features prominently (because of that breastplate) in Birdwhistle’s Legendes and Antiquities of the Ramtops; there is therefore rather more evidence of her existence than most people leave behind them; in these circumstances actual reality is more or less irrelevant. [LL]

  Yob Soddoth. An outer-dimensional monster, recognisable from his distinctive cry: ‘Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat’. [MP]

  You Bastard. A camel. The greatest mathematician in the world. The origin of his name lies in the fact that camels believe that they really are called whatever it is people say to them most often. [P]

  You Vicious Brute. A camel and, like all camels, an accomplished mathematician. Created the Theory of Transient Integrals, and spent most of his life carrying a man who could count to twenty only because he wore sandals. [P]

  Yoyo, de. The de Yoyos are a noble family with a seat near Pseudopolis. Their fortunes have risen and fallen regularly. Perhaps this is why they have produced many explorers and adventurers, who have discovered obscure areas of the Disc hitherto known only to natives, peasants and other people whose opinions are too insignificant to count. The head of the family is titled the Compte de Yoyo; the current head, Guy de Yoyo, is a lecturer at the ASSASSINS’ GUILD (Modern Languages and Music). He is certainly a great traveller; he was a guest at the famous Samedi Nuit Mort Ball in GENUA. [WA]

  Ysabell. DEATH’S adopted daughter. When first introduced, she was a sixteen-year-old young woman with silver hair, silver eyes and a slight suggestion of too many chocolates. Not, of course, a blood relation to the Grim Reaper – no real explanation has been given as to why he saved her as a baby when her parents were killed in the Great NEF.

  It says a lot for Ysabell’s basic mental stability that she remained even halfway sane in Death’s house, where no time passes and black is considered the appropriate colour for almost everything. She certainly developed an obsessive interest in tragic heroines and also a fixation for the colour pink.

  She married MORT and became Duchess of Sto Helit. Killed in a coach crash. [LF, M, SM]

  Zacharos. A blacksmith used by URN and Sergeant SIMONY to help build the Disc’s first, and possibly last, ‘tank’. [SG]

  Zemphis. Walled town on the ANKH. It lies at the junction of three trade routes (apart from the river itself), and is built around one enormous square, which is a cross between a permanent exotic traffic jam and a tent village. [ER]

  Zen. A sub-sect of the Klatchian philosophical system of SUMTIN, noted for its simple austerity and the offer of personal tranquillity and wholeness achieved through meditation and breathing techniques; an interesting aspect is the asking of apparently nonsensical questions in order to widen the doors of perception. Learning how to beat six heavily armed opponents with your bare hands while occasionally doing unnecessary backward somersaults does not, strangely enough, appear to be in the introductory teachings. [WS]

  Zephilite, Brother. Brother Zephilite of KLATCH left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F’rum. He did many good works, was kind to animals, was renowned for his piety, simple wisdom and generosity, and all in all certainly magnified the name of a god generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. It is a sad fact that gods often don’t deserve their believers. [S]

  Zodiac. There are sixty-four signs in the Disc zodiac. These have included:

  Celestial Parsnip, The

  Cow of Heaven, The

  Flying Moose, The

  Gahoolie the Vase of Tulips

  Knotted String, The

  Mubbo the Hyena

  Okjock the Salesman

  Perhaps Gate, The

  Small Boring Group of Faint Stars, The

  Two Fat Cousins, The

  Wezen the Double-Headed Kangaroo

  The Knotted String

  It would be more correct to say that there are always sixty-four signs in the Discworld zodiac but also that these are subject to change without notice. Stars immediately ahead of the Turtle’s line of flight change their position only very gradually, as do the ones aft. The ones at right angles, however, may easily alter their relative positions in the lifetime of the average person, so there is a constant need for an updating of the Zodiac. This is done for the STO PLAINS by Unseen University, but communications with distant continents (who in any case have their own interpretations of the apparent shapes in the sky) are so slow that by the time any constellation is known Discwide it has already gone past. This does at least mean that astrology on the Disc is a dynamic thing and not a repository for some rather unimaginative mythology, but it does rather reduce the science to something on the lines of ‘Look! There! No, there! Where I’m pointing! There! Doesn’t that look like a crab to you? Oh, too late, you’ve missed it.’

  Zoon, Amschat B’hal. A liar (see ZOONS). Bearded and tanned and dressed like a gypsy; he has a lot of gold teeth and hands heavy with rings. He runs and owns a barge which trades up and down the ANKH. He lives on the barge with his three wives and three children. [ER]

  Zoons. ‘You can always trust a Zoon,’ they say. They are an absolutely honest race; the average Zoon can no more tell a lie than breathe underwater. There is no physical reason for this fact. It simply seems that most Zoons cannot grasp the idea that something may be described as other than what it is. This is a drawback in a trading race, so once the Zoons discovered the essential role played by mendacity, the tribal elders began to encourage like
ly young Zoons to bend the truth ever further on a competitive basis.

  They introduced the office of tribal Liar, which is subject to much competition. (The Zoons’ most famous liar was Rolande Pork, with ‘My Grandfather Is Seventeen Feet Tall’.) The Liar represents the tribe in all its doings with the outside world. [ER]

  Zorgo. A retrophrenologist in Knuckle Passage, Ankh-Morpork. [MAA]

  Zweiblumen, Jack. Name applied to TWOFLOWER when, because of a brief dimensional crossover, he found himself on an aircraft instead of a dragon. He wore britches which ended just above his knees and a vest of brightly striped material, plus a little straw hat with a feather in it. For an explanation of the phenomenon, see RJINSWAND. [COM]

  TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN: EVEN MORE DISCWORLD STUFF!

  With the Discworld now comprising almost forty books written over almost thirty years, the Terry Pratchett interview from the first Companion (which was called, modestly, ‘Terry Pratchett: the Definitive Interview’) now takes on the air of an historical document. Almost. At the very least, it’s certainly interesting to see how things have moved on in the past almost twenty years . . .

  TERRY PRATCHETT: THE DEFINITIVE INTERVIEW

  By Stephen Briggs

  (from the very first Discworld Companion)

  Terry Pratchett is deceptively easy to interview. He was a journalist for many years and knows the ropes. It will sneak over the interviewer, after a while, that they’re talking about what Terry wants to talk about and have departed from the carefully thought-out questions. He is also skilled at deflecting personal inquiries, keeping Terry Pratchett the ebullient author carefully separated from Terry Pratchett the rather private person.

  It is known that he was born in Beaconsfield, Bucks. He is forty-five. His parents are David and Eileen Pratchett, to whom he offers grateful thanks for ‘pointing me in the right direction and just letting me get on with it. They took the view that if I was reading, that was all right’.

  He worked in regional journalism for many years, and spent eight years as a Press officer for what was then the Central Electricity Generating Board. He left when the income from his books made a day job ridiculous.

  He is married to Lyn and has one daughter, Rhianna. And that is about it. Everything else to do with his life is referred to lightly in the hope that the interviewer won’t detect, in the stream of words, that there are no actual biographical facts.

  But about Discworld, he will talk at length:

  I know you get asked this all the time, but we still have to ask it here . . . In your own words, where did Discworld come from?

  I used to say that the basic myth that the world is flat and goes through space on the back of a turtle is found on all continents – some school kids recently sent me a version of it I hadn’t run across before. And once you get into Indo-European mythology you get the elephants, too. But I’ve got asked so many times, and no one listens anyway, so now I just say I made it up.

  Do you think of what you write as fantasy?

  I suppose so. My views about this have gone all over the place in the last few years, but I think I’ve settled down now.

  The trouble is that many people think the boundaries of fantasy lie somewhere north of Camelot and south of Conan the Barbarian, which is like saying that Star Trek represents most of science fiction. And a lot of people who said they didn’t like fantasy said they did like the books, so I got a bit confused for a while. But if it isn’t fantasy, I don’t know what it is.

  You don’t know what fantasy is?

  Hang on . . . I’m thinking . . . Yep. I think I do know what fantasy is. Permission to expand on this?

  Go ahead . . .

  Earlier this year I did a tour in Australia. We even took in Alice Springs. So I hired a car and we drove out to Ayers Rock, because I thought: this is my third time in Australia, and I’ve been to too many places where I haven’t seen much beyond the road to the airport, so I’m going to do the Rock or die. Only you have to call it Uluru now because Australia has remembered it had an existence prior to 1770, or even 1642, and good for them . . . People have a name for some local feature for thousands of years and then a guy rides by on a camel and, because his people know about Geography with a capital G, it’s been ‘discovered’ and ‘named’ . . .

  Anyway, actually climbing the Rock is all part of the experience, so I got up really early and started out in the dark. And then I thought: I’ve never seen the southern sky at night. I remembered all those years when I wanted to be an astronomer and half the constellations in the star charts were science fiction to me . . .

  I stopped the car and let my eyes get accustomed to the night and looked up and there they were. And this is desert sky I’m talking about; no smog, no city glare, stars clearer than I’ve ever seen them before. And there it was: a sky I didn’t know . . .

  That’s fantasy?

  Oh, no. That’s just something new. This is the point . . . I looked down towards the horizon and there was Orion. It was the first constellation I ever learned to identify, when I was about eight or nine. I know Orion off by heart. But I was seeing Orion upside down.

  The other constellations weren’t unfamiliar. They were just ones I hadn’t seen before . . . You know ‘Oh, that’s the Sextant, is it? Oh. How interesting’. But Orion was unfamiliar – something old and commonplace presented in a new way so that you’re almost seeing it for the first time. That’s what fantasy should be.

  I know you don’t like the books being called parody—

  —only because people use it as a convenient word; I get the impression that they think I’m parodying something but they’re not quite sure what it is.

  All right, but how would you describe them? I know that fans take great pleasure in identifying bits of dialogue that echo scenes in famous films, for example. And then you put an echo of Shakespeare and a parody of Aliens into the same sentence—

  I think Shakespeare would have quite enjoyed Aliens. But he’d have put in more sub-plots. Hmm. If you can derive the film Forbidden Planet from The Tempest, then maybe you can work the process the other way around. [The interview was put on hold briefly for some specimen speeches from Shakespeare’s forgotten masterpiece, Xenomorph.]

  And next there will be a reference to some genuine but obscure fact, like Wow-Wow Sauce or the phenomena of the drone assembly—

  People have written to me about both of them, you know.

  Even drone assemblies?

  It’s part of the lore of beekeeping. The description in Lords and Ladies is pretty accurate.

  I do bury, er, resonances and obscure references in the text, but I hope I do it in such a way that it won’t spoil the narrative for readers who don’t recognise them. And I don’t use puns half as often as people think. But when I do use them, they’re signed like those roadside attractions you see in America. You know: ‘Five Miles to Next Pun’, ‘One mile to Next Pun’, ‘Pun next turnoff’ and ‘You have Just passed the Pun’. You have to be very careful with puns. Not everyone likes them. But sometimes they’re irresistible. They lie in wait.

  Anyway, one reason for using real world references is that reality is usually more interesting. For example, there’s the ‘Your Finger You Fool’ gag in The Light Fantastic. I’ve had a lot of mail about that over the years. But I didn’t come up with the idea! It’s based on real historical fact – or at least on what’s popularly believed to be real historical fact. In the great days of European exploration, the traditional way of finding out what a new animal or landmark was called was to point at it and ask some bewildered native what it was called, in a very loud English or Spanish voice. As a result, I believe, we call an animal a kangaroo when that really means something like ‘What is this white idiot saying?’ Although I came across a reference the other day that said no, this isn’t true . . . I’d better follow that up . . . We’re in Uluru country again . . .

  I saw a book on the origin of place names recently which referred to ‘Terry Pratche
tt’s Surly Native’ theory of place naming.

  Hah. But I didn’t make it up. And it’d be very hard to make up something as strange as the Dutch tulipmania in the seventeenth century, for example. Or the mysterious case of Thomas Crapper. Or the entire civic history of Seattle, Washington.

  Can we just pause for a moment on the case of Thomas Crapper?

  Well, if he invented the flush lavatory in Victorian times, how come the word was in use in the same scatological sense in the sixteenth century? I thought maybe he was bullied in the playground and grew up determined to make sure that being a Crapper was something to be proud of.

  Do you deliberately go hunting for this sort of thing?

  No. Research is what happens when you think you’re doing something else. I collect Victorian commonplace books, which I suppose were the forerunners of books like ‘Notes and Queries’ here or the ‘Straight Dope’ series in the States. And I also keep a look-out for old and slightly skewed reference books, of which Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is merely the best known. And if you put enough bits and pieces together in one place, you start making connections. I don’t know. We’re getting pretty close to the old ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ question.

  As matter of interest, where do—

  Look, ‘ideas’ is a misleading word. And probably meaningless. When people ask the question, they probably really mean ‘What thing triggered the book?’ They come from everywhere. The only one I can remember right now related to Small Gods. I was watching the news one day and some alleged holy man in Iran or Iraq or somewhere was pictured standing in front of a fountain flowing with fake blood and telling people how truly holy it was to die for God. And I thought: no, even I can see through that one. The backbone of the Small Gods plot was created right there.