“As little as possible,” though, isn’t none, for anyone on the Disc, and especially not for Death’s granddaughter. Despite her relentless common sense and lack of education in matters mystical, Susan has managed to inherit some of her grandfather’s nature—other people often have trouble seeing her, or remembering that she’s present, and she’s able to see things and do things that ordinary mortals can’t.
When she objects that adoptive children don’t inherit physical characteristics, and that acquired traits aren’t inherited either, Death explains that it’s morphic resonance at work, rather than genetics. The Disc’s magical field is presumably responsible.
Meanwhile, something’s gotten loose in Ankh-Morpork, much as in Moving Pictures—an idea, or rather, a whole package of ideas. This time it isn’t movies, though; it’s Music With Rocks In. A young man named Imp y Celyn,103 from the nation of Llamedos,104 arrives in Ankh-Morpork, planning to make his living as a musician. Alas, he breaks his harp, and replaces it with a strange guitar from a mysterious little shop near Unseen University.105
He then falls in with a dwarf named Glod Glodsson, and a troll named Lias Bluestone, and together they form the Band With Rocks In.
When this comes to the attention of Archchancellor Ridcully, he immediately recognizes what’s happening: “Stuff leakin’ into the universe again, eh?” A bit later he adds, “And then there was those moving pictures,” just to make very clear that this is the same sort of reality leakage. But this time it’ s not Hollywood; it’s rock ‘n’ roll.
The story is awash in references to, and puns based on, things from our world, far more than the Discworld norm; in particular, there are dozens of homages to scenes and dialogue in The Blues Brothers, Back to the Future, and Terminator 2, and several James Dean and Elvis jokes, as well as puns on and quotes from any number of band names, song titles, and lyrics, and an extended set-piece based on the teenage death songs of the 1950s. When I first decided I was going to write this book, I expected to have a lovely old time annotating them all, but then I discovered that the clever folks at Lspace.org had beaten me to it, so there’s no point in rehashing all their work. I can, however, at least say that I e-mailed them about a couple they’d either missed or deemed unworthy of mention.
At any rate, rock ‘n’ roll is loose on the Disc, and I’d think it’s obvious how this involves Death—and in his absence, his heir. Mr. Pratchett references James Dean’s “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse,” but there’s also the Who’s “Hope I die before I get old,” and any number of other relevant quotes—some of which seem a bit quaint now that the Rolling Stones are in their sixties and still going, though plenty of rock stars did die young, from Buddy Holly to Kurt Cobain.
But the music itself will never die. That’s part of the mythology, and we all know by now how powerful myths and stories are on the Discworld.
So the legend plays itself out—or maybe it doesn’t. As we saw at the end of Mort, in a scene that we’re explicitly reminded of in Soul Music,105 Death sometimes bends the rules. He arranges a happy result here, where certain things didn’t happen after all. As he puts it, “HISTORY TENDS TO SWING BACK INTO LINE. THEY ARE ALWAYS PATCHING IT UP.”
He doesn’t say who “they” are. In Mort he’d made arrangements with some gods, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened this time.
This may be a hint of things to come several books later, involving the History Monks.
Other hints are in references to several other anthropomorphic (more or less) personifications other than Death—we learn a little more about the Hogfather, Tooth Fairies, the Sandman, Old Man Trouble, and the like. There’s even a mention of the Soul Cake Tuesday Duck, which would seem to be the Disc’s approximation of the Easter Bunny.
We also see inside the High Energy Magic building at Unseen University, which has been mentioned before, but has not really been described. It seems Ponder Stibbons and several students have been conducting experiments there, and constructing devices that are the Discworld equivalent of computers. Their big machine uses ants rather than electrons, and glass tubes instead of wires, but it reads punch cards and can do simple arithmetic.
Stibbons thinks it can do more if they get more bugs into it, in a reversal of our own world’s attempts to remove bugs from computers.
A good many familiar faces return in this novel. C.M.O.T. Dibbler once again attempts to cash in on strange phenomena, and the wizards of Unseen University try to make themselves useful without much success, though the Librarian does have a hand or four in the eventual outcome. Sgt. Colon and Nobby put in a brief appearance; the more effective members of the Watch are noticeably absent, though Mr. Downey’s presence as master of the Assassins’ Guild establishes that this does take place after Men at Arms. The Patrician is not very involved, though he appears and we learn something about his musical tastes and his use of informers. In general, Ankh-Morpork has the same inhabitants we see in every story.
At this point in the series as a whole, it seems as if the supporting cast remains the same regardless of which sub-series we’re in, but lead characters from other sub-series—such as Rincewind, Vimes, or Granny Weatherwax—do not appear if they don’t have a major role. The supporting characters accumulate, too. We see Foul Ole Ron again, and Cumbling Michael, as well as the Librarian, the Patrician, and so on. Gaspode has a cameo.
It’s Susan who takes the lead, though; from now on Death is never really the protagonist, and his granddaughter takes over the series from him.
There’s an animated adaptation of this book; alas, despite multiple attempts, I haven’t been able to obtain a copy, so I can’t comment on it.
Death and Susan Sto Helit won’t be featured again until Hogfather, four books later, as seen in Chapter 24. First it’s time to see where Rincewind came out at the end of Eric.
21
Interesting Times (1994)
WE LAST SAW RINCEWIND climbing a stairway out of Hell at the end of Eric; the story did not tell us where he emerged, but he’s been noticeably absent from all the subsequent scenes at Unseen University. In Interesting Times, we learn that he came out on a desert island some six hundred miles from Ankh-Morpork, and he’s been living there ever since.
Alas, Fate and the Lady are playing a new game, as they did in “The Sending of Eight,” back in The Colour of Magic, and the Lady has once again chosen Rincewind as her pawn. Accordingly, Lord Vetinari meets with the Archchancellor and asks him to find Rincewind and send him to the Agatean Empire, which Ridcully does.
The Agatean Empire, which had seemed fairly American in The Colour of Magic, is now definitely based largely on legendary Imperial China, though there are bits from Japan thrown in, such as Noh plays, ninjas, and Disembowel-Meself-Honorably Dibhala’s habit of calling everyone “shogun.” (The Chinese have never made a habit of ritual suicide, so D.M.H. Dibhala’s name also implies a Japanese background.)
The Empire is a land of starving peasants, jammed cities, and unthinking obedience to authority—and that last bit is why I specify legendary Imperial China, since the real historical China saw plenty of peasant revolts and demonstrations of individual initiative.
As the famous line has it, when fact and legend disagree, print the legend. Mr. Pratchett’s parodies are almost always drawn from legends, rather than actual history.
It seems that Twoflower returned home to Agatea and wrote up his adventures in the outside world as a book called What I Did on My Holidays, which has been circulating as samizdat for years. This has become the basis for simmering unrest and talk of revolution, as Twoflower’s rosy and largely fictional depiction of Ankh-Morpork has a great many Agatean peasants thinking about how much more pleasant it sounds than their everyday lives.
Stories again.
The Grand Vizier, Lord Hong, has used this to stir up a small and inept rebellion he intends to crush to help in securing his own ascent to the throne when the ancient and ailing Emperor dies. Defeating
the Great Wizard whom Twoflower described will add a good flourish to the tale, so Lord Hong has asked the Patrician to send Rincewind along so that he can be suitably thrashed.
Meanwhile, Genghiz Cohen, also known as Cohen the Barbarian, has gathered half a dozen other elderly barbarian heroes into the Silver Horde106 to invade the Empire and steal . . . well, everything.
Rincewind is flung into the middle of this, and as usual manages to save the day without intending to.
This version of Rincewind is the later, less-interesting one we first saw in Eric, the magicless wizard who is the Disc’s greatest expert on surviving by running away. Cohen the Barbarian, on the other hand, is fleshed out a little, and even Twoflower, who reappears, has more depth here than he did in the first two volumes.
It’s not unusual in Discworld stories to see things mentioned that aren’t relevant immediately but will be developed further in later episodes, and there’s some of that here. For example, the computer analogue that Ponder Stibbons and his students were building in Soul Music is now much larger and more powerful, and has acquired the name Hex, punning on “hex” as in “curse” as well as “hex” as in “hexadecimal,” the base-16 code computers are programmed in. It is now magically designing and building additions to itself, as well as being expanded by the wizards, and is capable of highly sophisticated calculations and starting to show signs of self-awareness. In Interesting Times it’s really only of secondary importance, but we’ll see more of it later.
We also have a loose end or two tied up; not only do we find out what’s become of Twoflower, but there’s also a passing mention of Hrun the Barbarian, last seen in The Colour of Magic. He’s given up heroing and taken up a job in the Guard somewhere.
The story ends with Rincewind transported to EcksEcksEcksEcks, the mysterious continent that is Discworld’s approximation of Australia; we’ll see more of that a few books from now in The Last Continent, as described in Chapter 26. It’s a bit unusual for Mr. Pratchett to so obviously set up a sequel, but this time he did exactly that.
For now, though, it’s back to Ankh-Morpork, by way of Lancre.
22
Maskerade (1995)
IN LORDS AND LADIES, Magrat Garlick married King Verence II and became Queen of Lancre. That rather took her out of her previous line of business as a witch; the two roles, while not totally incompatible, don’t mesh well if one isn’t trying to be a C.S. Lewis villain.
There’s also the detail that witches are supposed to come in triads: maiden, mother, and crone. The Lancre witches had Nanny Ogg (mother, we now learn, of fifteen) for the second role and Granny Weatherwax for the third, but Magrat’s marriage has left her unqualified for the first, so there’s a vacancy to be filled.
The most promising candidate is young Agnes Nitt, last seen in Lords and Ladies. Unfortunately, she’s gone to Ankh-Morpork specifically to avoid the job, and landed a role in the chorus at the Opera House.
From that start we find ourselves thrust into a plot that clearly leaked through from Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera, though it mutated en route. One might think that this sort of murder mystery/thriller would be more suited to Commander Vimes and the Watch than to the witches of Lancre, and a couple of Watchmen do make brief appearances, but mostly it focuses on Agnes Nitt, who does indeed take up her place as the third member of the coven at the end.
Maybe it’s just that the witches fit better into pre-existing stories than the Watch does; after all, previously we’ve seen them tackle Macbeth and Cinderella, and not slipping into the Hansel and Gretel role is a constant worry for the Disc’s witches.
At any rate, Granny is initially not inclined to go to Ankh-Morpork in pursuit of Agnes, as it wouldn’t look fitting, but when she learns that Nanny has written a rather indecent cookbook called The Joye of Snacks that’s been wildly successful, and that Nanny has been severely underpaid for this, well, clearly a trip to Ankh-Morpork to discuss matters with the publisher is in order, and if they then happen to stop in at the Opera House, well, there’d be nothing unsuitable about that.
The Joye of Snacks provides for a good many double entendres and the like, and also served as the inspiration for Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, one of the many spin-offs from the Discworld series. Many of these spin-offs aren’t sold in America, unfortunately, and I had to spend a great deal of money to have them shipped over from Britain while researching this book, and I’ll have you know (especially if you’re from the Internal Revenue Service) that I was forced to obtain them purely for purposes of research, and of course I didn’t enjoy reading them a bit, not one little bit, so those were entirely and completely business expenses, not at all for my own use. So there.
But as it happens, I was able to find Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook in the U.S., though only as an import. It includes a great many fine recipes, most of which might even work, though I wouldn’t necessarily count on it in all cases, and it also includes some very educational materials on etiquette and other matters, and several memos accidentally left in the front by the publishers. It’s highly entertaining, and if you’ve wondered whether it was worth buying, here’s my vote saying yes, it definitely is. And Mr. Pratchett isn’t even paying me to say that, nor is Stephen Briggs (who seems to have co-authored it or even written pretty much the whole thing), nor is Tina Hannan (who provided the recipes), nor even one of the publishers. No one is paying me to say that;107 I just like the book. So there.
At any rate, this little side-venture (The Joye of Snacks, not Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook) allows Mr. Pratchett to get in a few gentle jabs at the publishing trade, something almost any writer is likely to do when given a chance, and also leads to the statement that moveable type was known in Ankh-Morpork, but forbidden by the wizards, for unknown reasons, which is why the city has no newspapers. This will change later, in The Truth, as seen in Chapter 31, but what the heck; it’s true for the moment.
Death appears toward the end of the story, elaborately dressed in red rather than his customary black; this references a scene that’s in pretty much every version of Phantom of the Opera, but perhaps most impressively in the silent film starring Lon Chaney. The movie is in black and white, of course—except for one scene, at a ball in the opera house, where the Phantom appears in red. . . .
That probably impressed the heck out of movie-goers back in 1925.
So the witches are three once again, and will return four volumes from now (in Chapter 28) in Carpe Jugulum, but for now we remain in Ankh-Morpork with the Watch.
23
Feet of Clay (1996)
SIR SAMUEL VIMES IS SETTLING into his role among the rich and titled, and overseeing the greatly-expanded Watch, when a string of mysterious murders comes to his attention. He’s hardly started on that when Lord Vetinari is (non-fatally) poisoned. Vimes, Captain Carrot, Angua the werewolf, Sgt. Colon, Nobby Nobbs, and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch must investigate.
This is the first time golems make a real appearance, though they’ve been mentioned before, and they’re all over this novel—as you might have guessed from the title. We also get a little more about vampires than we’ve seen before, and further consideration of werewolves such as Angua.
Überwald,108 a vast region of gloomy forested hills and backward villages, is mentioned for the first time, as the land of origin of both Angua (whom we’ve met before) and a dwarf named Cheery Littlebottom (whom we haven’t). We’ll be seeing much more of Uberwald.
A character named Igor appears, as bartender of Biers,109 a bar frequented by the undead, but he doesn’t appear to be the sort of Igor we’ll see in Uberwald in later books. In fact, much, much later, in a footnote in Thud!, we will be informed that he definitely is not one, and that he doesn’t appreciate attempts at humor based on this coincidence of names.
We meet Wee Mad Arthur, a gnome rat-hunter, who bears some resemblance to the Nac Mac Feegle, who haven’t been introduced yet but who will turn up later and be of some importance. This is the first gnome to play
a role in one of the novels, though we did encounter a family of them in “Theatre of Cruelty.”
Mostly, though, Feet of Clay, like most of the Watch stories, is about Vimes and Carrot solving crimes and pursuing justice and racial tolerance in Ankh-Morpork. This series is probably the most coherent and consistent of all the various segments of the Discworld oeuvre, and I don’t really feel a need to say much more about the individual volumes. They’ve settled into their mature form by this point. We’ll be returning to the Watch in a couple of volumes, with Jingo, in Chapter 25.
But first we see what’s up with Death and his granddaughter.
24
Hogfather (1996)
THE AUDITORS OF REALITY, last seen in Reaper Man, are back. This time they’re trying a somewhat subtler approach in their attempts to remove illogic from the universe, and have engaged the Guild of Assassins to put an end to the Hogfather, Discworld’s equivalent of Santa Claus—or rather, given Mr. Pratchett’s nationality, I should probably say Father Christmas.
Death undertakes to foil the scheme, filling in for the Hogfather on Hogswatch while his granddaughter Susan, now working as a governess, tackles the actual assassination plan.
The Guild of Assassins has sent a psychopath named Mr. Teatime (“Teatime” is four syllables, not two—each vowel is pronounced individually) to handle the job, on the theory that he’s the most likely to succeed, and that they’ll be glad to be rid of him if he doesn’t make it back. Teatime has, in turn, recruited a few helpers, and taken them to carry out his ingenious plan for destroying the Hogfather.
That plan takes them to places Death cannot go,110 so Death tries to keep things under control elsewhere by playing the role of Hogfather while Susan deals with the killers. Death’s appearance as the Hogfather at a department store, replacing their hired actor, is marvelous. There are good bits with the Death of Rats and his interpreter raven, as well.
The Turtle Moves! Page 10
