h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a relative newbie to Terry Pratchett's Discworld, having only first read the "Colour of magic" about 3 weeks ago (since when I've read about another 10 ), I just wanted to add that, aside from the fantastic writing and almost subliminal homour, one of the greatest features of the Discworld series is that you can pick them up in virtually any order and immediately plunge into what's going on...but I can't go on writing all day, I've got reading to do... Good article!

That's true. Something I found about a few of the books is that it takes a while for the ball to get rolling, as it were. By 'ball' I mean comedy, and by 'rolling' I mean pick up in pace.

Sometimes they're a little hard to get into, but once you get past a certain point you just can't put them down.

Actually, I find that to particularly to be the case with his non-discworld books - Diggers, Johnny and the Bomb, etc...I think the reason that the discworld novels hook you quicker is *because* of the readily identifiable recurring figures like Granny Weatherwax, Vimes, Carrot, Detritus (just listing my 4 favourite )...once you've met them, as soon as you see them in another book early on, you immediately have a context for the story even before it really picks itself up off the ground...

Yup - indeedy.

The Characters are very useful from a Story Telling angle as they already inhabit "story space" and have a "shape" in our imagination which a story can be constructed around - much like Hannibal, Inspector Frost, etc....

Another Brilliant book is The Science of Discworld that uses an "experiment" at Unseen University - Which creates a Roundworld universe by mistake - to cover many topics in Science (physics, Chemistry, Biology) and includes lots of good stuff about Evolution etc... It seems to appeal to those with a fairly sound grounding in the Sciences and those without, explaining things by linking to concepts in the Discworld Universe......

Science of the discworld sounds good, i'll have 2 try & find some1 2 borrow it off then!

Just started to read the Thief of Time - v.good so far - different style to the others though - feels a bit disjointed - whic seems to be the effect he was after.......

Look to the left for info about Pratchett Films.....

Another Brilliant book is The Science of Discworld that uses an "experiment" at Unseen University - Which creates a Roundworld universe by mistake

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"Recursion Has Happened" said Hex, bidding Rincewind to "keep it safe"

So the Wizards, most specifically the Dean, created Roundworld (us).

Towards the end of its human phase, one little splinter of Roundworld (Tery Pratchett)returns the favour by creating the Discworld (them).

Hence recursion...

That is indeed an excellent book, have you read any of the sequels?

All three of them!

Although the most satisfying one was Volume One, that dealt with "hard science", as opposed to the "soft science" and "social science" of the sequels.

For my money, Pratchett and Cohen manage to cover exactly the same ground as Bill Bryson's "The History of Absolutely everything" in less pages and with more humour (although Bryson is a good read as well)

except, unless you is a time traveller (not unheard of in these fora), there have only been 2 SQLs...

Ah, now I see where you're coming from... took a while to work it out, but I feel I've confused my terms here.

"All three of them" was a sloppily ambiguous phrase I was using to describe "Science of Discworld", "The Globe" and "Darwin's Watch".

Alas, I am not yet blessed with a working time machine, so I know naught of a third sequel! (As opposed to the third book in the series, which was of course "Darwin's Watch")

Incidentally, a thought bugs me. (Well, it's two on Sunday morning, Wife is in bed, alcohol has been imbibed and my mind is still active).

In "the Colour of Magic", Rincewind and Twoflower briefly detour to what is presumably our Roundworld and manifest on board a jumbo jet, with the alter-egos of Zweiblumen and Rjinswand. (Or is it that the jumbo jet briefly detours to the skies above Discworld, or is it a case of both possibilities existing in the same phase-space at once?)

Under the influence of Roundworld and his own passionate belief that a thing called Science exists and can be made to work, the personality of Rincewind the Wizard is obliterated, and that of Dr van Rjinswand, the Nuclear scientist, takes over. This persists until Discworld reality re-asserts itself and the two find themselves falling toward a distant ocean.

Now, I'm not so bothered with the paradox that Rincewind appears on the Roundworld at least thirty years before the wizards get round to creating it (the Wizards, assisted by Hex, find they are able to travel backwards and forwards at will in the Roundworld's timeline - possibly stored in Hex's virtual memory?)

It's just that logically, Rincewind already has an alter-ego on the Roundworld, or will have for a very brief period. Shouldn't he therefore become Dr van Rjinswand again during his Hex-assisted visits there, and during the period of Rjinswand's eartly life, merge into his being again?

And I KNOW somebody's going to ask this.... what's the reasoning for the events of "The Colour of Magic" occuring (up to) thirty years prior to the "present" of the Discworld?

The Discworld's "present time" could be defined as the "now", where Vimes is a new father, and during the contiguous time in which the events of "A Thief of Time" and "Night Watch" occur, he is flung thirty years back by a "magical accident" happeneing on the roof of the library of Unseen University, where he is attempting to apprehend the psychotic Carcer. ("Night Watch") We learn from Lu-Tze the History Monk that this is unfortunate fall-out from the battle with the Auditors to prevent them stopping Time altogether and therefore obliterating the human race ("A Thief of Time"). In helping Vimes return to his present, the History Monks are just tidying up loose ends and anomolies: the magical accident that hit Vimes and Carcer is the direct fall-out of their battle over Jeremy's Clock, and therefore both need to be returned to their own time-line to prevent further paradox from buggering things up big-style.

We also know from "The Colour of Magic" that we are dealing with a different Patrician, possibly one of Vetinari's immediate predecessors in the post. In this book, the Patrician has the political nous and the subtlety of mind to hold the job: but he isn't Vetinari.

In "CoM", the Patrician is described as obesely fat, ostentatiously dressed, dripping with bling and as having a sweet tooth for crystallised sea creatures and other similarly bizarre delicacies. This cannot be the soberly dressed, rake-thin, and abstemious Vetinari, to whom a slice of bread and a jug of water are a sufficiency.

One of the first things Vimes realises is that the ruling Patrician is the paranoid and mentally unstable creature who ruled when he first joined the Watch. This, and meeting the younger selves of several other Watchmen, (plus a twelve-year old Sybil with a robust attitude to intruders) allows him to put a date on things: thirty years before his own present. (The ungallant among us can also note that Sybil Vimes is currently in her early forties)

The Patrician in "Night Watch" has a lot in common, personality and gluttony-wise, with the Patrican of "The Colour of Magic".

Therefore we can surmise that Rincewind's first meeting with Twoflower may have happened during this Patrician's reign. (Although we can also note that there was at least one further Patrician in between the demise of Lord S. and the ascendancy of Havelock Vetinari)

If Rincewind was, at latest, in his early twenties at that time (not long since expelled from the University for breaching the maximum-security shelves of the Library) then he'd be in his early fifties now. Still young, by comparison with the rest of the Faculty (except Ponder Stibbons) and certainly physically fit enough to run away from certain death wherever he encounters it!

Oh, and in between his touring the Disc with Rincewind in "Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic", and their re-union in "Interesting Times", Twoflower returned to the Counterweight Continent, married, and raised daughters, the oldest of whom (Iron Butterfly)is in her early twenties. So this suggests a passage of time between first and latest meeting that supports the timeline.

Better stop here, or I'll end up constructing a timeline for the Discworld that will match those bloody maps for finely detailed anal-retentiveness...

Of course the finely detailed anal-retentives have already done a disc world timeline and it resides on the L-Space website. www.co.uk.lspace.org

Worth reading if you've got a week to lose

Damn, this is like probing a cavity... once you realise it's there you can't leave it alone.

Two further observations on Discworld time. People used to think it was impossible to construct a consistent map of Ankh-Morpork, let alone of the whole Disc: but once somebody started doing it, they realised with some surprise how easily it all fell into place and there weren't any contradictions there.

I'm beginning to feel the same way about the chronology of events...

let's see now.

i) Rincewind may (chronologically) be in his fifties "now", but we also have to bear in mind that at the end of "The Light Fantastic", he was consigned to the Dungeon Dimensions, where like Faerie the normal rules of space and time may not apply. He was there for an indefinite but possibly prolonged period of external "time", where the Librarian took care to preserve his hat, on the grounds a true Wizzard always returns for his headgear. This item of apparel had sufficient time to develop a layer of dust and decay somewhat before Rincewind finally returned for it.

Therefore it is possible that Rincewind's stay in the DD's might have taken years by Discworld time, but could just have been hours or even days of his own personal time. So the Rincewind who emerged at the incantation of Eric The Demonologist could well be an awful lot younger than his fifties.

ii) On a different and unrelated theme, we can surmise that the time of the prophet Brutha in "Small Gods" is at least six hundred years before the Discworld "present" - the key scene is where the Librarian of Unseen University pops back via L-space to salvage the contents of the Ephebe library, believed in his own time to have been lost to an act of Omnian arson several hundred years before, at least until a lot of scrolls popped up in Ankh=Morpork...

It has been suggested that PTerry has a brighter idea about this than people would think.

And if it doesn't work he would just say that the inconsistencies are different legs in the trousers of time.

....