In fact there is a small demon inside the box who will give you color prints as long as he has the paints but will resort to black and white if he has nothing else.Ĩ This collision of belief and doubt is central to the Discworld books and Hogfather in particular.ġ0 Most of the action of Hogfather takes place in the Discworld’s largest city: Ankh-Morpork Rincewind (on the right) is a very bad (as in “lousy at”) wizard who has this constant feeling that things could be run better if human ability would stop relying on magic all the time.ħ This Skepticism Runs Straight into the “Impossible to Deny” Fantasticįor example when Rincewind runs into the first Discworld tourist who carries a box that makes pictures, he hopes it is actually done with light sensitive paper.
Thus, this is a fantasy novel and it knows it.īack in the 1980s when thanks to Tolkien and Lewis the sub-genre of “Fantasy.” had been firmly established, Terry Pratchett sat down and wrote an anti-fantasy in which in pure British style he upturned everything. In one of his novels Pratchett's narrative says that the great Creator (or creators), having dutifully followed all the rules of mathematical probability, said: “Whew! Now that that is all done let’s have some fun!” Discworld can only exist with magic. Of course it is: there is no way such a world could exist within our physics. Pratchett’s Discworld rides on the back of a great galactic turtle named A'tuin on whose shell four great elephants stand upon which spins, like a great pizza, the Discworld. (The Colour of Magic)ģ In short, we not only are no longer in Kansas-we’re not even on a planet! Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star tanned shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the long waterfall of its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven. Hog-Who? Understanding Terry Pratchett’s DiscworldĢ In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters, through a sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination, thinking of little more than the weight. Presentation on theme: "Understanding Terry Pratchett’s Discworld"- Presentation transcript:ġ Understanding Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
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