For our eleventh episode we welcome Pratchett fan Sarah Pearson to the mic to discuss a Discworld novel of two halves: Terry Pratchett’s Reaper Man! The eleventh Discworld novel, published in 1991, Reaper Man is the second book to focus on Death and the newly stable faculty of Unseen University.
The faceless bureaucrats of the multiverse have decided Death is sentimental and inefficient, and he’s been fired! While he heads off to live among humans for his remaining time – until his replacement comes to claim him – his absence means those who die sort of…don’t. That includes Windle Poons, 130-year-old wizard of Unseen University, whose return as a zombie gives him a new lease on life – much to the horror of his fellow faculty members. But Death’s absence is having other weird consequences: objects spring to life, non-human species spawn their own Deaths, and strangest of all, a warehouse in Ankh-Morpork mysteriously fills with small glass orbs…
Reaper Man‘s two mostly separate plots – Death’s forced retirement, and the wizards’ investigation of the alien lifeforms – bring back not only Death but also Windle Poons and the faculty of Unseen University, both introduced in Moving Pictures, alongside cameos by familiar faces like CMOT Dibbler and Fred Colon. Plus we meet a bunch of new and memorable characters: the Death of Rats, the Auditors of Reality, Mrs Cake and her daughter Ludmilla, and undead activist Reg Shoe and his friends from the Fresh Start Club. It’s a big cast, but then with two separate plots there’s plenty for them to do! We’d love to hear what you thought of Reaper Man; use the hashtag #Pratchat11 on social media to join the conversation.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:47 — 54.9MB)
Sarah Pearson appeared on the ABC quiz show Hard Quiz, and works as a captioner for television.
In our next episode we’ll be joined by editor Jackie Tang as we power on to the next Discworld novel and travel far from the lands we know in Witches Abroad! We’re recording only a week after this episode is released, so to have us answer them on the podcast, get your questions via social media before September 15, 2018 using the hashtag #Pratchat12.
You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.
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You spoke a few times about how the Ankh Morpork and Death story lines seem to be entirely different stories. They only really intersect in the last scene where Death and Windle meet up. The two plots are, in fact, so separate that they are printed in different fonts in the novel.
On the other typesetting trick, here’s Terry’s quote on the position of Azrael’s YES:
> “Do you really think I’m some kind of dumbo to miss that kind of opportunity? I wrote 400 extra words to get it on a left-hand page in the hardcover — then Corgi shuffled people in the production department when it was going through and my careful instructions disappeared into a black hole. Go on… tell me more about comic timing…”
Thanks armcie! I read the same comments about the Azrael dialogue, I think in the AFP. Ridiculous! I’m glad they fixed it in the newer edition.
As for the separate fonts, we did have a discussion about that but I cut it because it wasn’t clear that was really a deliberate choice – in my paperback, it looked like there were two different weights of fonts, but they didn’t seem to match up with the separate story lines. Is the font thing for real?
It certainly matches up with the storylines in my copy (from 1993) with the Death and auditor parts in a slightly fainter font, and everything else (wizards, mayflies, and the final scene) in something a bit bolder, and to my eyes with *slightly* more serifs. It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in the republishing cycle the font change overs offs had drifted for some reason – especially with what happened to the YES.
The front matter of the book says its printed in both Century Schoolbook and Cheltenham Roman fonts – a quick look through other Discworld books reveals a surprising variety of different fonts were used (a surprise to me, I’d have thought a publisher would stick with one) but they all only list one font per book.
Pratchat 11 Reaper Man! | Visible Procrastinations
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Great episode! I’m reading the Discworld universe through by series. I’ve already read the City Watch, and Rincewind series, and am now into the Death branch. My plan is to crank through them this way, and they read through them in overall order. Though I may adapt my schedule to keep up with you all. In my 34th year of life, I’m a newbie to Terry Pratchett, and I look forward to always being reading one for the rest of forever. I’m grateful to have nerds like you making podcasts like this!