Terry Pratchett lives in Somerset, England, where
he spends all his time, and more, writing his rigorously
naturalistic, curiously entertaining, shamelessly popular
Discworld novels which have earned him extravagant acclaim
and puzzled stares from millions of readers around the
world.
He brings a love of the absurd to virtually everything he writes. Or so it seems. Most folk who discover one of his Discworld books rush back to gorge themselves, buying up a stack of them. Each seems to have a favourite character, most are eager to share a passage they found particularly memorable. Gentle enthusiasm bursts from pores when they hear that another is on its way.
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Terry Pratchett Links ISFDB Bibliography SF Site Review: Monstrous Regiment SF Site Review: The Wee Free Men SF Site Review: The New Discworld Companion SF Site Review: Night Watch SF Site Review: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents SF Site Review: Thief of Time SF Site Review: Nanny Ogg's Cookbook SF Site Review: The Truth SF Site Review: City Watch Trilogy |
Terry Pratchett Links SF Site Review: The Fifth Elephant SF Site Review: The Discworld Assassins' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2000 SF Site Review: The Science of Discworld SF Site Review: The Last Continent SF Site Review: Hogfather SF Site Review: Jingo SF Site Review: Feet of Clay SF Site Review: Maskerade L-Space Usenet - alt.fan.pratchett |
On a world moving on the back of a giant turtle, an expedition sets out led by Rincewind, an inept wizard, a naïve tourist with luggage moving on hundreds of little legs, dragons who exist only if you believe in them...
As Discworld moves towards a collision with a malevolent red star, there is only one possible saviour, Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world.
On his death bed, the wizard, Drum Billet, passed on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately, he didn't check on the new-born baby's sex...
Death comes to everyone. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.
An eighth son of an eighth son was a wizard. However, he had seven sons. And then an eighth son... a wizard squared... a Sourcerer.
Granny Weatherwax found that meddling in royal politics was a lot more difficult than certain playwrights would have you believe.
Being trained by the Assassin's Guild wasn't Teppic's cup of tea when he inherited the throne of the Djelibeybi rather earlier than he expected (his father wasn't too happy about it either).
The dragons lie dormant. Although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly.
Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Too bad he's not very good at it. All he wants is three wishes. But instead of a demon, he calls up Rincewind and his hostile form of travel accessory known as the Luggage.
The Discworld alchemists have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill? It's up to Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little") and Theda Withel ("I come from a little town you've probably never heard of") to discover it.
Death is missing. Dead Rights activist, Reg Shoe, suddenly has more work than he wanted. And newly-dead Windle Poons, a wizard, wakes up in his coffin as a corpse. Far away, a tall, dark farm hand is becoming really good with a scythe.
For Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick, witches travelling to Genua, things are never simple. They've got Mrs Gogol's voodoo, a one-eyed cat and a second-hand magic wand that can only do pumpkins.
Brutha has been chosen. His god has spoken to him. Brutha is a simple lad, but, he's quite good at growing melons. Among other things, he wants peace, justice, and brotherly love. But what he wants, more than anything, is for his god to choose someone else.
Magrat Garlick, witch, is going to be married in the morning... But the Lancre All-Comers Morris Team got drunk on a fairy mound and the elves came back, bringing all those things traditionally associated with Faerie: cruelty, kidnapping, malice, and evil murder. Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven to the rescue...
The City Watch includes Carrot (technically a dwarf), Cuddy (really a dwarf), Detritus (a troll), Angua (a woman... most of the time), and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving). Their job is complicated because there's evil in the air, murder's afoot, and something very nasty in the streets.
Other children get xylophones as presents but Susan just asked her grandfather to take his vest off. It's hard to grow up normal when Grandfather rides a white horse (Binky) and wields a scythe -- especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.
The oldest, inscrutable Discworld empire is in turmoil, due to the revolutionary treatise What I Did On My Holidays. War (and Clancy) are spreading through the ancient cities. Salvation arrives in the form of Rincewind the Wizard, who can't even spell the word, wizard and Cohen the barbarian, five foot tall in his surgical sandals.
Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick return to The Opera House in Ankh-Morpork, where masked figures and hooded shadows do wicked deeds in the wings and where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by an evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress.
The City Watch have to track down a murderer who can't be seen. Maybe the golems know something but the solemn men of clay have started to commit suicide. And the Watch has troubles of its own. There's a werewolf suffering from Pre-Lunar Tension, Corporal Nobbs is hobnobbing with the nobs and there is something quite odd about the new dwarf recruit, especially his earrings and eyeshadow.
It's the night before Hogswatch, the Discworld version of Christmas and it's too quiet. There's snow, but no big fat man who delivers the toys. Susan, Death's granddaughter, has got to find him before morning, otherwise the sun won't rise. Unfortunately her only helpers are a raven with an eyeball fixation, the Death of Rats and an oh god of hangovers.
Ankh-Morpork gets involved in a war with Klatch and the Discworld equivalent of Atlantis, Leshp, is about to rise. It is up to the Watch, Vimes, Colon et al., to sally forth and prevent it all.
On Discworld's last continent, practically everything that isn't poisonous is venomous. Striding across the red desert comes a hero -- champion sheep shearer, road warrior, beer drinker, bush ranger and someone who'll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he's sober? It's a man in a hat, whose Luggage follows him on little legs, who's about to change history... it's Rincewind, the inept wizard who can't even spell wizard.
On Discworld, it's not a good time to be a priest, especially when you're caught up in a war between vampires and witches. The vamps are out of the casket and want a bite of the future. To get rid of them, you'll need more than a garlic enema. Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and the rest are back.
Commander Samuel Vimes of the city watch turns diplomat on a visit to Uberwald for the crowning of the new dwarf Low King. He must use his finly-tuned deductive skills to solve the mysterious disappearance of the dwarves' Scone of Stone, an ancient petrified pastry crucial to their coronation rite. Meanwhile, at home, things are afoot and all is not well with his faithful crew.
William de Worde establishs the Disc's first newspaper, The Ankh-Morpork Times. Intertwined with this is the comically macabre machinations of new thugs, Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin, who seem unable to fulfill their contract on one of the city's leaders. Toss in a few dwarves, Gunilla Goodmountain and Boddony, who demonstrate why dwarven mating rituals should be kept secret.
Jeremy Clockson is so keen about being accurate that he drives his fellow clockmakers around the bend. One day, a woman comes to him with a challenge: to create the most accurate time piece ever conceived, what folks call a "glass clock". As you can imgaine, this draws the ire of The Monks of History, last seen in Small Gods. Toss in Lu Tze and Lobsang, martial arts flicks, rock bands and how teaching should be done (Susan Sto Helit running afoul of her school's principal, Madam Frout), and we're off...
Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch and His Grace the Duke of Ankh, may be the richest man in Ankh-Morpork now and he is not wanting for anything. Well, maybe he doesn't have everything. He misses the old days of patroling the neighbourhoods. with his lads. Then a new breed of criminal shows up. Carcer. One night while tracking him, Sam, with the help of stray magics from the Unseen University, is fulng back into the "good old days" but things are not quite the same.
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Cohen the Barbarian has decided it is time for him to go and he wants to take the gods with him. With the tattered remnants of the Silver Horde, he's off to Dunmanifestin with a keg of Agatean Thunder Clay. It is expected that this will destroy the world. It's all up to Leonard of Quirm to invent the technology that might just beat Cohen to his goal.
Based upon the pied piper tale, we meet a band of rats led by a cat. By chance, they have gained human intelligence by eating the garbage dumped outside the Unseen University. They make their way by tricking Discworld's human inhabitants. With the help of a gentle lad named Keith, this gang infest towns with sudden plagues of rats that the boy is prepared to rescue, masquerading as a pied piper.
Miss Perspicacia Tick, a witch, has spotted a ripple in the walls of the universe. Miss Tiffany Aching of Home Farm on The Chalk, all of 9 years, wants to be a witch too and she's just dispatched a big green river monster with a frying pan while using her younger brother as bait. Shortly thereafter, the Queen of the fairies kidnaps said brother. With the help of a talking frog, loaned by Miss Tick, and an army of thieving, nippy, boozy wee free men called the Nac Mac Feegle (who used to work for the Queen), Tiffany sets off rescue him.
Samuel Vimes is Commander of Ankh-Morpork's police and now a Duke. He has been sent to Borogravia to stop a war. It is an unstable and backward country which seem always to be at war with someone about something. The army is recruiting again but choices for new personnel are slim. But they keep trying. A recent drive has brought in a new batch which seem odd, to be polite. It includes a vampire, a troll and an Igor -- a humanoid seemingly stitched together from spare parts. And then there is Polly a barmaid, who has disguised herself as a boy. They're thrown into the fray with little or no training.
Fledgling witch Tiffany Aching has been taken on as an apprentice to Miss Level, who is one person with two bodies. But young heroine has a big problem. Tiffany has been taken over by a hiver -- an invisible creature that controls and misleads the mind of its host until death. But our Tiffany has the strength to hide a portion of her mind despite being completely under the control of the hiver. But coming to her rescue are the cranky wee free men, the Nac Mac Feegle, along with the intrepid Miss Level. Better look out bad guys...
The mighty alien fleet from the very latest computer game thunders across the computer screen. With his hands on the joystick, Johnny prepares to blow them into the usual million pieces. And they send him a message: WE SURRENDER. This time they don't want to die. They just want to go home. Johnny is the only human who knows. So he has to learn how to wage all-out Peace.
Not many people can see the dead (not many would want to). But twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell can. And the dead are nothing like he expected. They don't lurch about. They don't push through walls. They can't even dance like they do in videos. They're just people -- post-senior citizens -- and they're always in. But now the council wants to move them out so the cemetery can be sold as a building site. But the dead have learned a thing or two from Johnny. They're not going to take it lying down.
Johnny finds the local bag lady, Mrs. Tachyon, semi-conscious in an alley. Her squeaky trolley and batch of dubious black bags are nearby. Johnny wants to do all he can to help, as long as it isn't the kiss of life. But she holds the keys to time and Johnny finds himself an unwilling participant.
To the thousands of tiny nomes who live under the floorboards of a large department store, there is no Outside. Things like Day and Night, Sun and Rain are just daft old legends. But a devastating piece of news shatters their existence: the Store - their whole world -- is to be demolished.
A Bright New Dawn is just around the corner for thousands of tiny nomes when they move into the ruined buildings of an abandoned quarry. Or is it? Soon strange things start to happen. Like the tops of puddles growing hard and cold, and the water coming down from the sky in frozen bits. Then humans appear and they really mess everything up.
Somewhere in a place so far up there is no down, a ship is waiting to take the nomes home -- back to wherever they came from. To contact the ship, it means going to Florida (wherever that is), then getting to the launch of a communications satellite (whatever that is).
The Carpet is home for many different tribes and peoples -- from the empire-building Dumii, to the nomadic Munrungs, the proud Deftmenes, and the terrible creatures from the Unswept Regions. And now there's a new story in the making, the time when Fray begins to move, sweeping a trail of destruction across the Carpet.
Dom Salabos is heir to a huge fortune, he had an excellent robot servant (with Man-Friday sub-circuity), a planet (the First Syrian Bank) as a godfather, a security chief who even ran checks on himself and on Dom's home world even death was not always fatal.
The excavation showed that the fossilized plesiosaur had been holding a placard which read, "End Nuclear Testing Now". That was nothing unusual.
Using a novella about the wizards of Unseen University, who go about creating a universe in which planets come together as strange spheres and view the results of their experiment, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen explain the phenomena using our world's science.
Once agian the authors tackle the science of Terry Pratchett's fiction; this time they see what happens to culture, language, art, and science when the wizards fiddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity.
Crowley, Hell's most approachable demon, and an old friend Aziraphale, genuine angel and London book shop owner, have a problem. Armageddon - which will happen on a Saturday Night. Next Saturday, in fact. So they've got no alternative but to stop the Four Motorcyclists of the Apocalypse, defeat the Witchfinder Army and find and kill the Antichrist -- an eleven-year-old boy who loves his dog.
It contains everything you need to know about the Discworld. This edition, the first major revision since Hogfather was published (1997), covers the eight novels from Jingo onwards, including The Last Hero and Maurice and His Amazing Educated Rodents.
Genua, Klatch, Cori Celesti, the Ramtops, the Circle Sea, Bhangbhangduc and more. The cities of Pseudopolis, Hunghung, Al Khali and, of course, Ankh-Morpork. They are all there for you to discover. Better to get this map than buying the one done by the fellow creeping about the corner shop.
Wondering about the infamous Strawberry Wobbler? It's here. How about the one involving sheeps' eyeballs? One reader has described it as a mix of Delia Smith and Ainsley Harriot with the charm and charateristics of the good old Nanny Ogg.
A Discworld map describing the house and garden that Death built. It shows the rather odd golf course and the dark gardens. You can also find out the reason why Death can't understand rockeries, and what happens to garden gnomes.
Between Uberwald and Whale Bay, the Octarine Grass Country and the Widdershins Ocean lies the most exciting and dangerous terrain in all Discworld. This is a map of Lancre, where Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick live. It also features the Rock and Hard Place, and the Place Where the Sun Does Not Shine.
For the newcomer and the old hand alike the Discworld can be a fatally confusing place. From the great city of Ankh-Morpork, featuring a river you could skateboard across if it wasn't so knobbly, to the distant Ramptop Mountains and the mysterious Counterweight Continent, the Discworld is a place where Death waits around every corner...
It's a concise and possibly even accurate MAPP of the Great City of the Discworld including the Unseen University and environs.
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