Balanced on the back of four elephants riding on a giant space turtle lies the Discworld. This world is a large disc where the ocean is ever falling over the Rim. A small sun and moon orbit the Discworld where light is slowed by the magical field so the Disc has time zones. Here magic and narrative play a role akin to physics and history in our world. Discworld is a series by fantasy author Terry Pratchett who is quite prolific; he has written over 35 books in the Discworld series alone.
I’ve read four books in the series: The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Small Gods, and Thief of Time. All have been purchased at Bookmans, a great used bookstore, but more on that in a future post.
The Color of Magic is the first Discworld novel and as such introduces the Discworld, where the local reality field is distorted by magic. The plot revolves around a failed wizard (Rincewind) and Discworld’s first and only tourist (Twoflower). Pratchett wonderfully parodies tourism; an especially humorous part is concerns the tourist attempting to speak the local language by consulting a book: when he needs a place to stay he asked for ‘I wish to be directed to a hotel, tavern, lodging, house, inn, caravanserai.’
The Light Fantastic continues the story. An entertaining passage reflects on how Death views himself (This occurs while Twoflower is attempting to teach Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence to play bridge.)
The Death of the Disc was a traditionalist who prided himself on his personal service and spent most of the time being depressed because this was not appreciated. He would point out that no-one feared death itself, just pain and separation and oblivion, and that it was quite unreasonable to take against someone just because he had empty eye-sockets and a quiet pride in his work. He still used a scythe, he’d pointed out, while the Deaths of other worlds had long ago invested in combined harvesters.
Small Gods tells the story of Omnia, a very religious monotheistic country that is a satire of the Roman Church or Islamic states. My favourite quote from the book is reprinted below.
Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues? And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time…
I am reminded of Jesus’ quote that, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.’ I love that in the Reformed tradition we emphasize the common grace of God and ordinary means of grace. God sustains us in ordinary means, and the signs he gives are water, bread, and wine, which point to signs that occurred long ago.
Thief of Time tells the story of the Monks of History and the son of Time. The monks channel time from areas where it’s not needed (like the sea) to areas where it is (like cities). A novice monk cannot be trained but is given to a sweeper as both work to find and destroy a device which would measure the fundamental tick of the universe and thereby stop time itself. The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse plays a role as well, temporarily abandoning his disguise as a punctual milkman.
The novels are very humorous and Terry Pratchett has dozens more books just waiting for me to read them.
