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

to be sure, to be sure.

omy

I like the phrase "to be sure". It sounds Irish. .

To be sure.

Maybe I should change my name to that: Roadkill (ACE)- To be sure. The other candidate is "I still can't believe it's not butter"

i reckon is u double it it sounds more irish somehow. dunno y but it does

omy

What, "Roadkill (ACE)- To be sure to be sure"?

To revive this topic!

I don't think we've heard nearly enough of "Howandaland" in the books.

We know from "Reaper Man" that it's the Discworld version of North America; mrs Cake's "Indian Guide" One Man Bucket is almost a native.

It might be fun for Rincewind to end up there, possibly reprising a version of the Richard Harris role in "A Man Called Horse" or the Dustin Hoffman role in "Little Big Man" - ie, white stranger adopted by the Indians.

The local equivalent of the Sioux or Comanche might let him off being tortured to death in various interesting ways, on the grounds that the sacrifice of such a one would be an INSULT to the Gods... the principal Indian God might be "Manithree" (going one better than Roundworld's "Manitou"), or the trickster god Peyotl who appears to Rincewind, after he accepts the local ethnic dish of deep-fried cactus buds (cue pi$$-take on Carlos Castenada's Indian shaman Don Juan?)

What saves Rincewind might be when a familar (to Rincewind) animal is seen. He wonders why the Indians are shying away in fear, and he says "Good grief, it's only a HORSE. Haven't you people ever seen a HORSE before?" He recollects he has a sugar lump in his pocket, and offers it....

Peyotl would be a soul-cousin of the Kangaroo god in "Lost Continent", provoking a suspicious Rincewind to say "Haven't I met you before on Fourecks?" (note the suspicion that many Gods of the Discworld are in fact the same God, working overtime to garner more believers)

As before, Rincewind ends up being "looked after" by a stunningly beautiful and totally deadly woman, perhaps She Who Slays With One Blow Of Her Tongue, and there is a Mission to undertake, maybe in the form of dealing with white settlers encroaching on Indian land. (they'd be the ones who brought the horses)

Perhaps involving a Discworld version of the Seventh Cavalry, led by an utterly inept officer with a high-blown egotistic opinion of himself, maybe a cousin of Lord Rust?

Their regimental march might be something vaguely reminiscent of "Garryowen", which in our Roundworld is a cheerful trilling little Irish ditty for flute and drum and which, for some strange reason, has been taken up as a popular regimental march despite the fact that so many units which have adopted it as such have promptly marched, or charged, into disaster... (Eg the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn, the British Light Brigade at Balaclava, and at least one infantry regiment at Isandhlwana)

Rincewind(perhaps caught up, like Dustin Hoffman, with the Seventh Cavalry at the moment of doom) will know the resonances of this piece, echoing down the labyrinth of space and time, and the moment he hears the opening bars, he will sigh gloomily and say "This is really it. We're going to die. They're even playing the backing music."