Discworld on Page and Screen, Part 1: Serious Comedy
filfre.net
filfre.net
I re-read it recently and it was even better than I remember it being when I first read it as a teenager - I think because my extra life experience meant that I understood the themes of the novel more. Incredibly insightful social commentary.
Lastly, I think a really good shout out is Monstrous Regiment which is absolutely hilarious, especially if you don't know the characters and just incredibly wholesome.
Also a shout out for underrated options; Soul Music (great tag line, lovely observational comedy) and Carpe Jugulum (some fan favourite characters, but also one of my fav bit-part characters - Lacrimosa)
Without too much of a spoiler, but at the point whenever, uh, the physics and time gets weird, I was dying laughing about the interactions between the pyramid building brothers.
I also read it during the week my son was born this year and generally have some really positive associations with it :)
Is obviously also a reference to Jelly Babies - the rubbery sweets that were preferred by the fourth Doctor Who.
I have to say that Pyramids has always been one of my favourites, it doesn't have the depth of Nightwatch due to less history with the characters, nor does it have the biting satire of Small Gods, but as standalone "typical Discworld" novel it is outstanding.
I should re-read it again soon. Having moved countries I didn't transport all my books, but once I arrived here I made damn sure that I bought the complete set again. They're great comfort-reads.
For me the line that always sticks in my memory involves Pteppic getting dressed "and then he turned and slowly fell over". (I love the "Ptraci" lines too. Always paying off to be slightly foreign.)
Soul Music is indeed excellent.
As such, I'd recommend Going Postal as the entry point for the uninitiated.
To balance out this non-progressive take, Vimes' character arc is "what if a good cop made cops good?", which probably wouldn't work in real life.
Also, it had Tim Curry.
But the discworld doesn't actually need all that much introduction - each book is pretty self-sufficient but learning more about the characters just adds more to when they show up as Cameos (except, I'd point out, Monstrous Regiment, where not knowing who the "Butcher of Ankh Morpork" is actually adds to the story)
That was my introduction, when it came out, but I recommend Hogfather to most as it captures the wide breadth of his writing. There's a lot of great comedy in it, but also some serious and scary moments.
Partly (mostly?) for the spectacle of me trying to read a Nac Mac Feegle accent :)
FWIW I only recently learned that "crivens" is maybe a real expression, a much-shortened form of "Christ defend us". In the same way as "God blind me" reduces to "blimey"...
But it's an easy and quick decision / try: Discworld to me is a bit like Hitchhikers guide to galaxy, where I tell people to just read the first page - either you'll be laughing and hooked, or go "huh?"; either way it's not one of those books where you need to read 27 chapters and get to know characters etc before you make up your mind. It's a specific type of humour that not everybody appreciates, but those who do appreciate it rather quickly.
Then again my first Discworld novel was Making Money and I loved it even without context (and the “Industrial Revolution” sub-series starting with moving pictures remains my favorite to this day), so you could probably just start at Sourcery and go from there anyway.
His take on Death often fills the role of the outsider, trying to understand us and by doing so exposing our oddities, much like Data in Trek and other such characters. Possibly that is why the books that feature him heavily are some of my favourites.
It’s definitely one of the most Pratchett-y but not necessarily one I would recommend to read first.
Incidentally, I think the Wyrd Sisters cartoon is the most successful Discworld adaptation (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd_Sisters_(TV_series)). I must admit, I've not tried the recent series based (very loosely it seems) on Guards! Guards! I don't what to be That Fan who says they got everything wrong but...
1. Points off if you didn't mentally read it as tay-AH-tim.
I hesitate to use the word "unwatchable", but this series comes close. It is both an awful adaptation of the Discworld universe—and awful even otherwise.
It was the bit about a million-to-one chance
It will leave scars...
I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Pratchett but it is quite Pratchett adjacent.
I know the plot was a rather confused mismatch of several different Watch books - especially Thud! (The Summoning Dark), Night's Watch (The Carver plot line), Guards Guards! (The dragon summoning) along with several smaller references to other novels. But I do think it was rather coherent as long as you realized it wasn't following the books at all.
Good Omens was awesome, though. I was spoiled by that. True labor of love.
I probably will give it another go, sometime. I like most of the cast.
i love Small Gods as a starter novel because it is pretty self contained.
Terry Pratchett I think is one of my favourite writers to read. The absurdity of his fantasy settings is just the right level of entertaining for me. Everything flows so smoothly that I sometimes get the subtle jokes only on my second read-through.
Anytime something is named, it’s probably a joke or reference of some sort.
It’s also quite fun how many of the “inpossible” setups or situations are just literally copies of real-life stories.
Same for me! Except I played it on PS1. I didn’t find out about the book series until like 10 years after. For better or for worse I now have a picture in my brain for Rincewind, Twoflower, and The Luggage purely based on the game. But still love it.
Humble, well-educated, polite, honest, and, from everything I've heard, a joy to work with.
I also saw his awesome ring with death on it. Im not much into mens jewelery but this things was honestly amezing (speaking as a discworld fun of course)
To truly get every joke you need a very in-depth knowledge of ancient, medieval, and modern history and literature. Even his basic puns often as not pull from famous European poetry or art.
The obvious send-ups are east to identify but reading through APF gives you the full depth, and it’s pretty incredible.
I read it with my 11 year old daughter and was expecting it to be fairly ho hum, but was absolutely blown away by the story and the satire.
Not only do I highly, highly recommend it for reading with children, it's absolutely a great read for adults.
Pratchett is a superb satirist (Vonnegut is the only equal I have discovered). His dialog is great. There are so many chuckle worthy moments. And then there are just really deep profound moments as well. You can read them in any order. There are reappearing characters, but each book stands on its own. They focus more on immediate content than overall plot arcs. The more you soak yourself in discworld in general, in any order, the funnier and more rewarding it all gets.
The book that has the most cross over with the reasons we all post to HN is probably Going Postal, because it satirizes the world of information dispersal. Who owns the content? Who gets to be the gatekeepers, etc.
If you like Monty Python style humor, you'll probably enjoy those that have Rincewind and/or the Unseen University the most.
I love any of the books with Death in it (Hogfather, Reaper Man, Mort, Soul Music, Thief of Time).
My son loved all of the Sam Vimes books. If you love police/detective stuff, this is for you.
If you want a little more plot, the Tiffany Aching series has that. Read all of these aloud (multiple times) to all of 3 of my girls.
I don't even know how best to introduce/characterize/promote The Witches (Weatherwax, Ogg, et al). If you value common sense and wish there were more of it in the world?
If you couldn't be bothered to read, then watch the BBC mini series "Good Omens", it's on Prime. It's derived from a book of the same name written by Pratchett and Gaiman (though I think Terry did most of it, since it feels much more Pratchett than Gaiman to me). And they did a superb job of adapting and staying true to the book.
I'm not sure I agree. I find the book definitely has a clear signature of both authors, which makes it so great. I love Pratchett and some of Gaiman works are absolutely genius (although I find that unlike Pratchett reading a book from him is not guaranteed to appeal to me, even for his popular books), so this combination is just a dream team, the only way it could be topped is if their story was published in an anthology edited by George RR Martin).
Probably my favourite sub-series was the Witches and Nanny Ogg. As I caught up to the newer books I found myself enjoying them less because it felt like there was more and more philosophising. Probably what happened was that they got a bit more sophisticated and I was too immature to understand many of the themes and allusions.
Time to start working through them all then! I recently reread Colour of Magic and it was enjoyable but also clearly had far too much going on.
Either Pyramids or Moving Pictures was the only one that I really struggled to enjoy for some reason.
If you're referring to the much-later books like Unseen Academicals, then sadly I think Terry's alzheimers affliction was probably to blame. As I understand it he reached a point where he was no longer able to type, but could still dictate. Certainly somewhere in that process they lost the tautness of the earlier works. Something to enjoy still (for me) but not quite the glittering jewels of his intellectual peak.
Quality varied throughout the run, but that was the only one that I actively didn't like. Even the last few, getting simpler, or more verbose, didn't bother me as much as that one did.
This is set in a disc shaped world as well and you can see the early shape of the discworld concept (the world but also the style of the books). It's like seeing him work out his voice.
I love discworld a lot. But Good Omens is, for me, the essence of the craft of dark humourist fantasy. So many observations on humanity.
And they never did, not in a single discworld book I have read later in my life (dark side of moon aside coz its not part of the series).
Anyways ... I also recommend strata - the ideas on this book are so vivid and clever that they stay with You for the rest of your life (mechanical deamon with small wings using super fast teleportation as a way to implement flight always comes to my mind whenever I hack a solution with unexpected tools)
I have fond memories of the ascendant of the Discworld series, Strata, which is IMO better than the book it’s riffing on (Ringworld). Likewise I enjoyed The Dark Side of the Sun, which riffs off a different theme from Known Space (though I don’t recall any of that theme ending as a theme in Discworld).
Good Omens was also another fantastic collaboration, between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
This isn't hard, as Larry Niven's Ringworld universe books are 1/2 "what if 1960s California culture was in space" and 1/2 "men reacting to high school physics problems".
I think you could write an effective parody of them by just having scenes where one character recites Wikipedia particle physics articles and another one gasps and says things like "this changes everything!".
Pterry's Usenet presence was a large factor in the popularity explosion; I recall returning the favor of loaned book with printouts of the alt.fan.pratchett FAQ.
He's well known for his fantasy novels, but he was also a humanist and an advocate for the right to die. Here's a great documentary by him, on that subject:
GNU Terry!
On a more Hackernews note, there's a special HTTP response header that is secretly used worldwide to honor Terry. X-Clacks-Overhead. A reference to the books in which it is said that a person never dies as long as his name is sent over Clacks (the Discworld internet / telegram).
There are lots of big sites doing it, because some developer snuck it in: https://webtechsurvey.com/response-header/x-clacks-overhead
Mozilla, Debian, XML, Python, VLC - it's heartwarming.
Pratchett came very dangerously close to writing serious literature. He also managed to write some of the most profound commentary on religion that I have ever seen. Try Small Gods for a rather unsubtle start.
If you want to do Pratchett then start at the beginning and work out - that's my advice. I was about 15 when the Colour of Magic came out and now I'm 52ish. There is also absolutely nothing wrong with randomly diving in but why not start at the beginning - no matter how daft it looks now? I actually rather like the first two books - naiive? yes!
Everyone has a favourite book because he attacked so many themes with alacrity. I see loads of calls for "read Monstrous Regiment" here - and it is an absolute belter. It is a very polite and beautifully handled feminist treatise with a hefty nod to the bloody nonsense that is civilisation in Europe.
"Small Gods" is not polite in any way and nor is "Winter Smith" - both are quite searing indictments on religion.
Anyway, Sir TP wrote stuff and it is rather good. I'm an engineer and the railway related stuff hits home even though I trained as a Civ Eng and now do IT! I shudder to think what would have been written by a Sir TP who understood say Python. We got Ant Hill Inside and the College of Inadvisably Applied Magic - we got off very lightly.
"‘SO, BANG GOES THE PERSONAL TOUCH’, Bath & West Evening Chronicle, 22 April 1978, p. 10. This is TP’s ‘Star Wars‘ piece that he tended to mention when talking of his years at the Chronicle, but I could not track it down when I searched the issues in the British Newspaper Library in Colindale, North London (now closed and moved to the town of Boston Spa). Perhaps it was in an issue missing from their collection, or I was looking in the wrong issues. Star Wars was released in London in December 1977, but only reached Bath the following April. Discovered by David Moger, to whom my thanks. CS"
If you have access to their archive, that will narrow it down to "only" 365 issues.
His deep love of the people of the landscape and people of Wiltshire and the surroundings, most obvious in the later Tiffany Aching books, was huge for me as a teenager growing up in this area. Articulated how I feel about my home better than I ever could.
edit: This was the exhibition https://salisburymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/terry-pr...
The humour is great and it has way more fun with itself than I expected. If like me you have been putting off after ignoring many recommendations: just give it a try!
Similarly Pratchett is technically a fantasy author but some of his books are actually crime/detective novels, sci-fi, even romance.
Many people who say “I only read fantasy” are quite surprised when you point out many of the Guard books are just straight detective stories; similar to how many people are shocked to realize that Blues Brothers, is at heart, a musical.
https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/books/the-bromeliad/
Cool alternate way of looking at the world.
That's exactly one of the reasons I love the books. They seem to be able to wrap up a ton of concepts/stories I like in a way that preserves the quality and to top it off, incredibly fun to read.
... And then I read Thud. And then Snuff. Stunning books, that really made me think about some of the terrible issues we're still trying to deal with in our own Roundworld!
Also it just hit me ! Captain Vimes and Ronald Swanson (Parks &Rect ) They from the same cloth :)
His fictional universe evolved - but also circled back and reinforced itself. (Mostly!)
I watched “The Colour of Magic” the other day - unfortunately the book is not well represented by the movie.
I'm honestly surprised that Pratchett's ~20 novels beat the three Harry Potter books released in the 90's. That may be because I'm an American though, and while I knew one guy that had read some Pratchett in school seemingly everyone had read Harry Potter.
Interestingly; the first HP book was published in 1997 but the print run was only 500. The book wasn't published in the US till late 1998 and by that point hadn't even sold half a million copies.
I believe it kind of blew up in sales through 1999 but the UK -> US lag meant most of the sales were in the 2000s.
I typically recommend either Small Gods, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids or Mort as an entry into the discworld. There are so many good start points though.
I can never decide whether to recommend reading a specific character arc, or to read them in publishing or chronological order. I've enjoyed re-reading character arcs a lot though.
Unfortunately (for me at least), the recently re-recorded collection (by the Pratchett estate) using different voice artists (Indira Varma, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy, Steven Cree) don't capture the same 'magic' as the original voices and often fail to recognise and pronounce the subtle double and triple entendres (e.g. of the Nac Mac Feegles) - which suggests they and the editors don't fully appreciate the humour Pratchett intended.
Don't miss the "The Science of Discworld" series (book I (1999), II:The Globe (2002), III:Darwin's Watch (2005), IV:Judgement Day (2013)) where the chapters alternate between stories of the Wizzards (voiced by Stephen Cohen) of Unseen University accidentally creating Roundworld (Earth and our universe) and then tinkering with its evolutionary timeline in a battle with the Elves, eventually leading to humans leaving the planet using a Space elevator, and serious explanation and exposition of the sciences by Jack Cohen and Professor Ian Stewart (voiced by Michael Fenton-Stevens).
Those make a great introduction to science for kids young and old!
"The Folklore of Discworld" and some of the loosely related stories such as Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook (voiced by Penelope Keith - a skit on the Victorian era "Bradshaw's" railway travel guide [2] and a spin-off from "Raising Steam", featuring her travels on the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway), "The World of Poo" (Sam Vimes son's fascination with collecting poo specimens) and, unrelated to Discworld but written in the same tongue-in-cheek style "Dodger", a tale set in Victorian London featuring a lovable Tosher discovered by 'Charlie' (Charles Dickens).
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00glhzn
If you see the Hogfather screen adaptation he plays the role of the wizard Sidney.
I don’t know how close he was to Pratchett - but he has recently written a novel that supposedly was influenced by Discworld[1] (but not of Discworld)
I'm currently listening to thief of time which is weirdly good, didn't like it at first but it really is good. That and the last continent.
Obviously this is all secondary to the Night Watch, Sam Vimes is definitely on Hacker News somewhere, right? :-)
And all the old ladies are randy witches who ride Harleys. Ugh.
No, just the one
The high level of smart quips is kind of annoying but maybe that annoyingness is just transference from being made to watch too much Doctor Who. Well, it's better than American quip-based humor writing.