These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 71, “It Belongs in a University”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s 2013 collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, with guests Rev Dr Avril Hannah-Jones and Dr Charlotte Pezaro.
Iconographic Evidence
This is the video from the Waterstones event for the launch of the fourth book, with Terry talking about Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species.This is the Eye of Magnus, the magical Great Big Thing from the videogame The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which Ben immediately thought of while reading the descriptions of Ponder Stibbons’ “Challenger Project”.
Notes and Errata
The episode title echoes Indiana Jones’ famous (and very colonialist) line, “It belongs in a museum!” Thankfully the wizards didn’t steal Roundworld from anyone…but if you want to know how this sort of thinking affects people in the colonised countries, we’d recommend Marc Fennel’s podcast (and television series) Stuff the British Stole.
The term “philosopause” is referred to in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, where Jack and Ian describe it as when “elderly scientists … stop doing science and take up not very good philosophy instead”. They didn’t coin the term; it dates back to at least 1996, and probably earlier.
Gregory Benford (1941-) is both an influential science fiction author and a physicist, but not a qualified theologian or philosopher. The first source footnoted in the book is the one for Benford’s idea of human- and universe-centred thinking, and it’s “a creature of double vision”, from Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Essays on Bridging the Gap Between Science and the Humanities, edited by Gary Westfahl and George Slusser, McFarland Publishers 2009, pages 228-236.
Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge: how do we know what we know, and what qualifies a belief as knowledge?
Liz has talked about “hounding the germ man to death” before; you can hear her talk about Semmelweis in #Pratchat48 (about Thief of Time) and #Pratchat54 (Night Watch). As on those occasions, we recommend this episode of NPR’s Shortwavepodcast to get a good short version of his struggle to just get doctors to wash their hands in a time when no-one believed in germs.
L-Space is originally described as a distortion of space into “poly-fractal L-Space”. While the Librarian frequently travels through L-Space, it’s not presented as a “space” where things exist, but a way to travel through space and time. Books create L-Space.
Narrativia as a Discworld goddess pre-dates this book by a couple of years, Pratchett having named her – and commissioned a statue of her – in 2011, as detailed in this Guardian article. This does seem to be her first appearance in fiction, though the production company Narrativia, which holds the media licensing rights to his works, was formed in 2012.
Charlotte recommended Bill Bryson’s 2003 book A Short History of Nearly Everything, as well as Pratchett’s own Nation. Avril recommended Marilynne Robinson’s 2016 collection The Givenness of Things: Essays.
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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 70, “Punching Up”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s 1993 Discworld short story, “Theatre of Cruelty”, with guest Caimh McDonnell.
Iconographic Evidence
Since it was available for free, there are lots of scans floating about on the internet, and it’s a shorter version than the one available for free on the L-Space web, we figure it should be okay for us to share the original two-page spread of the story from Bookcase magazine, including the original version of Josh Kirby’s illustration.
Notes and Errata
The episode title plays on Mr Punch, the concept of “punching up” in comedy (i.e. the idea that the targets of derision in comedy should be those with more power), and the other concept of “punching up” in writing (i.e. adding more jokes and/or pace to a script to improve it).
We’ve mentioned Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series of urban fantasy novels before. They follow the adventures of new police officer Peter Grant as he becomes apprentice to the last wizard in England, who also works for the London police. There are now nine novels, four novellas, a short story collection, nine graphic novels (originally published as separate issue comic books) and a tabletop roleplaying game. The best place to start is probably Rivers of London, the first novel from 2011, which was originally titled Midnight Riot in the US (but is now published there under its proper title). The first comic, Body Work, is also a good place to dip in, as are most of the novellas and short stories.
The Fortean Times is the magazine of the Fortean Society, an organisation founded by American researcher and writer Charles Fort. He collected and wrote about “anomalous phenomena” – unusual events and experiences which had gone unexplained by science, though apparently he did it to keep scientists on their toes rather than because he believed any of the theories put forth in his writing. The Fortean Times is still published in the US, UK and other countries today, and you can find them online at forteantimes.com (though you have to subscribe in print). Fort himself is mentioned in Good Omens.
We can’t find a good reference for the edition of Good Omens with two Thursdays in one week, if that is a real error and not a fevered imagining of Ben’s. But there have been other notable ones: in some recent editions, Anathema is referred to as Agnes in one sentence when showing her index cards to Newt, and a persistent one in earlier editions was Famine saying his name had seven letters when cryptically referring to himself with a crossword clue. Some white editions of the book had a cover misprint in which the text and Crowley’s glass of wine appear, but the demon himself does not!
On Roundworld, “theatre of cruelty” is an artistic concept created by Antonin Artaud, a French poet and theatre maker (among many other things) active in the 1920s and 30s. His theatre of cruelty wasn’t literally theatre, or literally cruel, but rather a reaction against realism. He wanted performance to be something more visceral: a spectacle, incorporating music, dance, lights and everything other than text, performed by “athletes of the heart” who would surround audiences to shock them out of complacency and wake them up to the horrors and violence of real life. While not embraced widely, it’s been an influence on many theatre makers, notably director Peter Brook in his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, including a famous 1966 production of the play Marat/Sade. This YouTube video from CrashCourse is a pretty good overview.
Neil Gaiman’s Sherlock Holmes stories are “A Study in Emerald”, from the 2003 anthology Shadows Over Baker Street, and “The Case of Death and Honey”, from the 2011 collection A Study in Sherlock. “A Study in Emerald” won both a Hugo and Locus Award in 2004, and has been adapted into a board game by Martin Wallace, of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork and The Witches fame.
Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) was an American speculative fiction writer whose work encompassed novels, short stories, television (most famously the Star Trek episode “The Guardian on the Edge of Forever”), videogames and more. Angry Candy is his 1988 anthology about death, containing the award-winning short stories “Eidolons”, “Paladins of the Lost Hour” and “Soft Monkey”. Dangerous Visions was a 1967 collection of groundbreaking science fiction stories edited by Ellison and was hugely influential, not least for the way it included sex in the genre. It was followed by Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972, and he announced a third, The Last Dangerous Visions, in 1973, but it was not published in his lifetime. His failure to publish the book became a controversy in speculative fiction circles, especially after several of the authors who sold him stories died before seeing them in print; British author Christopher Priest wrote about the book for his own fanzine, eventually expanding the piece into a short book titled The Book on the Edge of Forever in 1988. Ellison’s literary estate is now managed by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, who announced in 2022 that The Last Dangerous Visions would finally be published in September 2024, preceded by new editions of the first two books.
Regular listeners will be familiar with Liz’s love for Diana Wynn Jones, and we’ve previously mentioned her 1988 novelette “Carol O’Neir’s Hundredth Dream”. It’s part of her Chrestomanci series of stories and books, set in a magical universe where there are a specific number of alternate worlds.
We’ve also previously discussed American horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965), most notably in #Pratchat58, “The Barbarian Switch”. Her famous story “The Lottery” appears in the many collections, including 1949’s The Lottery and Other Stories. Dark Tales is a more recent anthology, published by Penguin in 2016.
More notes to come soon!
Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.
These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 68, “Discus Ex Machina”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s third novel, 1981’s Strata, with guest EJ Mann.
Iconographic Evidence
Australian Bush Heritage’s thread of “Pedro Pascal as Australian frogs” first appeared in a Twitter thread, but we’ve embedded the Instagram version below. (Twitter is…not as stable as it once was.) Make sure you check out all of them!
Here are the first edition covers of Pratchett’s two early science fiction novels. Ben mistakenly remembered Pratchett’s cover for The Dark Side of the Sun featuring dragonflies, not bees; he may be remembering the later cover, also by original Strata artist Tim White, which depicts a robot insect which…well, it’s also not a dragonfly, but it’s more like one than Pratchett’s bees. Though the weird fungal creatures on his Strata cover do look like dragonflies – one of the many details that makes it entirely unlike the book in every way, aside from the inclusion of a lightning bolt.
Strata first edition; cover art by Tim WhiteThe Dark Side of the Sun, first edition; cover art by Terry Pratchett
Below is the earliest post we could find for the photo of the common snapping turtle with the “world” on its back. It’s from the source, the Twitter account for Task Force Turtle; see below in the notes for more on the turtle, and for an article where you can see it if Twitter becomes too unstable to supply this embedded tweet.
The episode title plays with the well-known Latin phrase “deus ex machina”, “God from the machine”. Originally used in Ancient Greek theatre as a literal stage direction, in which actors playing the roles of gods would be brought on stage via a machine, it has come to mean an unexpected plot resolution brought about by supernatural or implausible means, especially if those means have not previously been established in the narrative. We don’t think Strata is an example of this, but the Latin for “disc from the machine” seemed too perfect not to use.
The last in-person Australian Discworld Convention was Nullus Anxietas 7, held in Melbourne in April 2019. We recorded a live episode there: #PratchatNA7, “A Troll New World”, discussing the short story “Troll Bridge”.
Bush Heritage Australia is a non-profit organisation which was started as “The Australian Bush Heritage Fund” in 1991, with the purchase of forest land in Tasmania by environmentalist and former leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown. The charity now owns millions of hectares of bushland across Australia, which it manages in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. You can find out more at bushheritage.org.au, or follow them (and their very funny social media manager) as @BushHeritageAus on Twitter or Instagram.
You can read what Pratchett had to say about the Disc in 1981on Colin Smythe’s website, where you’ll also find early reviews – including one by Neil Gaiman! Of the Discworld, Pratchett said: “I am also working on another ‘discworld’ theme, since I don’t think I’ve exhausted all the possibilities in one book!”
Thanks to subscriber Craig, who shared a photo of the full blurb for the first edition of Strata, which we can also confirm was first published by Colin Smythe in hardcover. (See above for the original covers of both Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun.) Here’s the longer blurb:
A flat earth? Impossible. Kin Arad is the 210-year-old supervisor in charge of resurfacing the newly named planet, Kingdom. When she finds Jago Jalo, a man who has a cloak of invisibility and should have died a thousand years ago, in her office, she decides he must have an unusual tale. He has. He knows where such a world is. It is like the medieval earth…almost. Leiv Eiriksson is setting off for the New World, but he will never find it. Instead he sails to the edge of the world and its eternal waterfall. It is obvious that this ‘earth’ has been built by the Great Spindle Kings, makers of universes, inventors of the strata machine and the ultimate in claustrophobes, and Jalo lures the human Kin, the kung Marco Farfarer and the fiftv-six-syllable-named shand better known as Silver, to undertake a voyage of discovery with him: the rewards must be beyond their dreams…or nightmares. In Strata Terry Pratchett again shows the remarkably witty, imaginative and descriptive talents that have characterised his earlier works and show him to be one of the best s.f. writers of the younger generation.
Strata – blurb from the first hardcover edition (1981)
You can find many different covers for Strata at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. While many seem to use stock sci-fi or fantasy art, most use Josh Kirby’s cover (though some use his art for The Dark Side of the Sun!). The German cover by Katarzyna Oleska is Ben’s favourite, and is the only one to show Kin as a Black woman; we also like the French one by Marc Simonetti, though he inexplicably depicts Kin as a cyborg with red skin, though accurately makes her bald. The mass market US paperback has a cover by Darrell K. Sweet which gets special mention for the very retro image of Kin in a silver spacesuit holding a raygun while on a Viking ship menaced by a dragon, but it makes her white (and ginger) and leaves out Marco and Silver entirely.
Magrathea is the fabled planet manufacturing planet which features prominently in the plot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As well as many luxury planets built during a boom in the galactic economy, it also built the planet Earth; the fjords were designed by planetary architect Slartibartfast, who meets Arthur Dent during the final chapters of the first radio series/book/film etc.
Speaking of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ben is correct: the original radio series was broadcast betweem 1978 and 1980. The first novel was published in 1979, while the original BBC television series was made in 1980, but broadcast in 1981. There have been numerous other versions, including an LP (which differs from the radio series), a videogame, a feature film, several stage plays, a comic book and, supposedly, another television series currently in production at Hulu.
The film Liz mentions with Olivia Wilde where remaining lifetime is a currency is indeed In Time (2011, dir. Andrew Niccol), a sci-fi action film starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake. It’s similar to the earlier film Price of Life (1987, dir. Stephen Tolkin), and also the 1965 Harlan Ellison short story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”. Ellison briefly sued Niccol (who is best known for Gattaca) and the producers of In Time, but dropped the suit after seeing the film.
Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by American author Larry Niven. In the book, 29th century human Louis Gridley Wu is recruited on his 200th birthday by an alien “Puppeteer” named Nessus to go on an expedition. He is to investigate the Ringworld, a massive construct surrounding a Sun which has an immense Earth-like inner surface. He travels there with Nessus, a cat-like Tzin named Speaker-to-Animals, and another human, Teela Brown. Their ship is damaged on arrival and crashes; its hyperdrive still functions but it cannot get back into space to use it safely. The crew head towards the edge of the Ring, hoping to find technology to help them repair their ship, encountering strange technologies and the remnants of the Ring’s civilisations along the way. As Terry Pratchett put it on alt.fan.pratchett, “I intended Strata to be as much a (pisstake/homage/satire) on Ringworld as, say, Bill the Galactic Hero was of Starship Troopers. All Niven’s heroes are competent and all his technology works for millions of years…but he’s a nice guy and says he enjoyed the book.” There are four sequels: The Ringworld Engineers (1979), The Ringworld Throne (1996), Ringworld’s Children (2004) and Fate of Worlds (2012), which is also the last book in Niven’s Fleet of Worlds series. All of these books are set in Niven’s broader “Known Space” universe.
EFTPOS systems, which allow a transfer of funds direct from a purchaser’s bank account to a merchant, first appeared in America in 1981. The system was slow to be adopted by consumers, and credit cards and cheques remained much more popular alternatives to cash. Australian banks were pretty quick to adopt a national EFTPOS system, in part because they had already had to cooperate to set up Bankcard, a domestic credit card implemented in the 1970s before the major card companies came to Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these things, it appears one of the main reasons Australians call it EFTPOS is advertising: the major company making and selling the infrastructure equipment, and marketing it to the public during the 80s and 90s, was “eftpos Australia”. EFTPOS is also popular, and known by that term, in New Zealand and Singapore.
Budgie is the nickname for the budgerigar, a small species of parakeet with long tails. Like Liz, many Australians growing up in cities don’t realise they’re native birds, in part because they’re so commonly kept as pets – very unusual for native animals! In country areas they gather in huge flocks at water holes. Their popularity is largely due to their small size, colourful plumage (usually white and blue or yellow and green, but many other breeds exist), and their ability to “speak” and whistle. They’ve been exported – legally and otherwise – to many countries around the world. A common bit of Australian slang for men’s swimming costumes is “budgie smugglers”, referring to the fact that they don’t leave much to the imagination and the wearer’s genitals are often outlined, appearing around the same size as a budgie.
The Wayfarer series by American author Becky Chambers begins with her debut 2014 novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which she originally crowdfunded and self-published. It was nominated for several awards and republished by Hodder & Stoughton in 2015. The Wayfarer of the series title is a “tunnelling ship” – a spacecraft which builds wormholes between distant parts of space for other spaceships to use as shortcuts. The original novel follows the multi-species crew of the Wayfarer and their relationships during one long mission. It has so far been followed by three sequels: A Closed and Common Orbit (2016), Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018) and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (2021), plus a short story, “A Good Heretic” (2019), though these follow different characters and stories in the same universe. The species who can communicate via coloured patches on their cheeks are the Aeluon, otherwise plain-coloured humanoids who are one of the more powerful species in the galaxy.
The Lying Bastard, the spaceship constructed by the Puppeteers for the mission to the Ringworld and named by Louis Wu, was sadly not shaped like a disc. In most depictions, including the ones sanctioned by Larry Niven himself, it looks more like a fighter jet.
Silver actually says her name is fifty-six syllables long – considerably more than Ben’s guess of twenty-three! The “unpronounceable name” trope is a common excuse to give aliens, demons and the like simple names, even when their origins suggest they should have a language and/or culture very different to human ones. Doctor Who has several examples, including the Doctor’s own name (in the modern series a secret, but hinted to be very long in some of the books) and that of fellow Time Lord Romanadvoratrelundar, more commonly known as Romana (though when they first meet, the Doctor also offers to call her “Fred”).
Slashie and multi-hyphenate are both terms for those who diversify into multiple disciplines, particularly in the arts. “Multi-hyphenate” is more common in the screen industry, where one might be a writer-director-producer on the same project; “slashie” is a more general arts term, for folks who (like Ben) have several different freelance careers to ensure enough work. (Ben is an actor/writer/game designer/educator, among other things.)
We’re still pretty sure that the whole “you might outnumber me, but how many of you will die before you get me?” thing does appear in a Discworld book somewhere, but we haven’t been able to find it. Do you know where it is? Let us know!
The turtle that burrows underground and comes up looking like A’Tuin (or Torterra, if you’re a Pokémon fan) is the common snapping turtle of North America, Chelydra serpentina. They migrate to muddy holes where they bury themselves to hibernate during Winter. In 2018, a photo of one such turtle was taken in Maryland by Timothy Roth, a psychology professor working with Task Force Turtle. The photo went viral on social media and is now posted to various Discworld forums at least a few times each year, though this turtle hadn’t just woken up from hibernation… You can see the image above, and read the story of how and why it was taken, and learn more about the turtles themselves, in the LiveScience article “How Butt Gas, Drugs and Amazing Memories Led to This Weird Turtle Photo”, from December 2018. As EJ mentions, its often linked to the “turtle island” stories of several North American peoples, including the Lenape and Haudenosaunee.
Stephen Briggs’ unabridged audiobooks of both Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun were released by Isis Audio Books as boxed sets of CDs in the early 2000s. The same recordings were re-released around 2007 on “mp3-CD” – yes, a CD-ROM with the tracks from the original CDs as mp3 files. This format was playable by some CD players produced in the 2000s (and may still be playable by some in-car CD players now), but quickly became obsolete as solid-state media (like USB drives) became cheaper, and then the audio industry shifted to download and streaming. When the Isis unabridged recordings of the Discworld novels and other books were licensed for digital distribution via Audible, Apple Books and so on, it seems Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun were not included, but then the Isis Discworld audiobooks – including the earlier ones narrated by Nigel Planer – don’t seem available digitally any more either. (We assume they were removed to avoid confusion, now the new Penguin audiobooks are out; Tony Robinson’s ones are still available, but under the series title “Discworld (abridged)” to make the distinction clear.) You can still find the physical media versions secondhand, though, if you’re keen.
More notes to come soon!
Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.
Theses are the show notes and errata for episode 3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind”, featuring guest Cal Wilson, discussing the fifth Discworld novel, 1989’s Sourcery.
Iconographic Evidence
The photo used as publicity for Cal’s 2018 show Hindsight.
Notes and Errata
The episode title riffs on Hagrid’s famous words to an unbelieving Harry Potter in the first novel (and film), Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: “Your’s a wizard, Harry!”
Freddie Mercury was a first son of a son of undetermined order, so his magical powers clearly came from somewhere else.
Ben talks a lot about Dungeons & Dragons this episode; if you’ve no idea what it’s all about, his article “What Even Is Dungeons & Dragons?” will get you up to speed. (Content note: the article is a little sweary.)
Some of Terry’s thoughts on J K Rowling can be found online in his interview with The Age here: “Mystery lord of the Discworld”, Peter Fray, November 6, 2004.
A person who doesn’t realise they’re no good at what they do might have a form of cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, named for a 1999 psychological study.
Hook turns might not be widely used by cars outside of Melbourne, but they’re a common way for bicycles to turn across traffic at cross intersections in many parts of the world.
These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 57, “Get Your Dad to Mars!“, discussing the third book in the Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter Long Earth series, The Long Mars, with guest Joel Martin.
Iconographic Evidence
(This is the section where we add pictures, where appropriate! Watch this space…)
Notes and Errata
The episode title is a reference to famous Mars sci-fi flick Total Recall – the 1990 original version, that is, directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, and featuring the memorable line “Get your ass to Mars!” The film is (fairly loosely) based on the Philip K Dick short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”. A slightly straighter film adaptation of the story was released in 2012, starring starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel was directed by Len Wiseman of Underworld fame. We talked a lot about Dick in #Pratchat56.
Joel was most recently a guest of the podcast in June 2021 for #Pratchat44, when we discussed the second Discworld novel, The Light Fantastic – three and a half years after he first appeared to discuss the first one, The Colour of Magic, in #Pratchat14.
You can find out more about The Dementia Centre at their website, dementiacentre.com, or you can find The Dementia Podcast at dementiapodcast.com. You can also just search for “The Dementia Podcast” in your podcast app or directory of choice.
We previously complained about the lack of war in The Long War in #Pratchat46, “The Helen Green Preservation Society”, with guest Deanne Sheldon-Collins.
Warhammer 40,000 – or “40k” for short – is the franchise of science fiction war and roleplaying games made by Games Workshop. A futuristic reimagining of their medieval high fantasy Warhammer setting, it has space alien versions of elves (Aeldari), undead (Necrons), orcs (er…Orks) and more. But the most famous factions are humans – specifically the genetically modified super-soldiers of the various chapters of Imperial Marines. These Space Marines are technologically enhanced stormtroopers fanatically loyal to their undying emperor, and full of more testosterone than strictly necessary. The franchise is still going strong with many tabletop and digital games currently available, despite its “Imperium of Man” being a fascist regime, and most of the other factions aren’t much better. In the “grim darkness of the 41st millennium,” there aren’t really any “good guy” factions, though the alien T’au Empire might come close. (Ben has seldom played, but his favourite faction – back in the second edition at least – were the weird Space Orks.)
Terry Pratchett died on the 12th of March, 2015. The last Discworld novel to be published before his death, Raising Steam, was released in November 2013, while The Long Mars was published on the 19th of June, 2014. His last three novels were the last two Long Earth books, The Long Utopia (18 June 2015) and The Long Cosmos (14 June 2016), and the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd’s Crown (2 June 2016).
A quick guide to the timeline of the Long Earth so far:
2015 – “Step Day”, when Willis Linsay releases the plans for the stepper box on the Internet, giving the masses the ability to visit the Long Earth.
2030 – “The Journey”, Lobsang and Joshua’s trip into the Long Earth which makes up the bulk of The Long Earth. The nuclear bomb in Madison goes off in this year.
2040 – most of the events of The Long War occur in this year, including Maggie’s mission as captain of The Benjamin Franklin, the titular “war”, and the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
2045 – the main events of The Long Mars are spread across this whole year.
The Long Mars was indeed originally titled The Long Childhood, but The Long Cosmos did not have an alternate title.
“Stoke Me a Clipper” requires a little bit of backstory: in the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, one of the characters is uptight Arnold Rimmer, a lowly technician aboard the eponymous mining starship who died in an accident with the rest of the crew. Three million years later the Red Dwarf’s only survivor – David Lister, the only technician ranked lower than Rimmer – is awakened from cryogenic suspension by the ship’s computer Holly, who supplies him with company: a computer simulation based on a scan of Rimmer’s brain and projected as a hologram. Their rivalry gives Lister a reason to go on, despite the likelihood of every other human being being dead. In “Dimension Jump”, an episode of the fourth series first broadcast in 1991, the Red Dwarf crew meet “Ace” Rimmer, a version of Arnold from an alternate dimension who is a brave, sexy and successful hero; his catchphrase before embarking on a dangerous mission is “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.” Many years later they encounter him again, only this time he shares his secret: there isn’t just one Ace Rimmer, it’s a mantle passed from one alternate version of the Arnold to another, and now the hologram Arnold’s time has come. When he puts on the wig and outfit, he has to act brave, but managed to mangle the catchphrase as “Stoke me a clipper”. This happens in series seven, in the episode also titled “Stoke Me A Clipper”, first broadcast in 1997. (T-shirts featuring both versions of catchphrase were among many designs released at the height of the show’s popularity in the 1990s.)
The “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” – usually shortened to “the Outer Space Treaty” – was created in 1967 by the United Nations. All the major spacefaring countries then and now have agreed to it, and among its most important clauses is one stating that countries cannot claim sovereignty over any extra-terrestrial body. So while Frank would definitely have planted a flag, surely there’s no way he’d have tried to claim Mars for America – unless, of course, it’s been determined that the Mars of other universes doesn’t count? He’s also not acting on behalf of his country, and there’s been much debate in recent years about what the treaty means for private exploration of space. It does, however, make it clear that States are responsible for any activities conducted in space by their citizens, whether privately or otherwise, and says that outer space shall be “free for exploration and use by all States”, so we’ll have to see if that holds up.
Michael Fenton Stevens is an English actor and comedian. He started out in the Oxford Revue, where his cohort – which included Angus Deayton, Helen Atkinson-Wood and Geoffrey Perkins – followed the time-honoured British comedy pathway of doing an Edinburgh Fringe show which spawned a radio programme (Radio Active) and then became a television series (KYTV). He has since been a fixture around the 1980s guard of comedians, appearing in plenty of sitcoms and radio series, including the later instalments of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy based on the books. His most famous role, though, was probably as a voice artist for satirical puppet program Spitting Image, because he sang “The Chicken Song”. Released in 1986, this was an infamous parody of holiday disco dance pop songs like “Agadoo”, and was written by Red Dwarf scribes Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. It was #1 in the UK for three weeks and was performed live by the Spitting Image puppets on Top of the Pops. As well as reading The Long War series, he also reads the science chapters of the Science of Discworld books (as we’ll mention in #Pratchat59), and played the roles of Spider and one of the Ratcatchers in the 2004 BBC Radio 7 adaptation of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, alongside David Tennant as Dangerous Beans.
The Expanse is a series of hard sci-fi novels written by “James S. A. Corey”, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. They are set in the 24th century, imagining a future in which humans have colonised Mars and the asteroid belt, but in which “belters” who are born and live in low or zero gravity have become an exploited underclass, and Mars has declared independence from Earth, now ruled by a United Nations world government. The series begins with 2011’s Leviathan Wakes, and concludes with the ninth book, Leviathan Falls, published in 2021. Ben is mostly familiar with the popular television adaptation, also titled The Expanse, in which the characters are noticeably more argumentative. The long debates about what to do while in space are a result of the setting’s very realistic spaceflight; while the ships of its future have advanced engines capable of producing massive thrust, there’s no “artificial gravity” or “inertial dampening” technology. Changes in course while travelling involve “multiple G burns” which put enormous stress on the bodies of a ship’s crew, who have to be strapped into special chairs and have fluids injected into their bodies to protect them from injury or death.
We’ve discussed space elevators before in our episodes about The Science of Discworld (#Pratchat35) and The Science of Discworld II: The Globe (#Pratchat47), and we’ll see them again in The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch (#Pratchat59) and Strata (#Pratchat68). The origins of the concept go back to the late nineteenth century, with ideas of building towers tall enough to reach space, but the modern version – where a cable under tension is built down to Earth from a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit – was first described in the late 1950s. Despite this pedigree, they didn’t start appearing in science fiction until two decades later, with the earliest novels to feature space elevators being Arthur C Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise and Charles Sheffield’s The Web Between the Worlds, published almost simultaneously in 1979. The elevator in Clarke’s novel is eventually built on Mars, and many novels set on Mars have featured space elevators too. Notable examples include Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, and Larry Niven’s Rainbow Mars – a collection of short stories which started life as a collaboration with Terry Pratchett! (For more about Larry Niven, see our Strata episode, #Pratchat68.)
Ben and Joel are both big fans of Disney’s 2012 science fantasy film John Carter, which previously came up in #Pratchat44. The film is an adaptation of 1912’s A Princess of Mars, the first of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom series, but it incorporates elements from later books as well. The novel is a classic of early space fiction, birthing the genre of “planetary romance”. Both the book and film feature American Civil War veteran and Confederate solider John Carter, who is mysteriously transported to Mars, known to its local population as “Barsoom”. Mars’ lower gravity gives him enhanced strength, and after becoming friendly with the local “green Martians”, Carter reluctantly gets involved in the conflict between the forces of two warring city-states of the “red Martians”. It’s pretty great fun, with very watchable performances from Taylor Kitsch as John Carter and Lynn Collins (who should be in way more things) as the Princess of the book’s title, Dejah Thoris. The script is a thoughtful and modern adaptation written in part by novelist Michael Chabon. It’s clearly set up as the first in a series of films, but it was hugely expensive, and was not commercially successful. Fans of the film often credit this to Disney’s failure to adequately market the film, which ironically seems to have been fuelled by their fears it wouldn’t succeed. (Ben often refers to it affectionately as Riggs Takes His Shirt Off on Mars – a reference to Taylor’s previous leading role in the television drama Friday Night Lights as teenage footballer Tim Riggins, and the number of films in which he takes his shirt off, including the infamously bad Battleship film, aka Riggs Takes His Shirt Off at Sea.)
The “Space Jockey” is the giant humanoid pilot of the crashed spaceship encountered in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, which is where the crew of the human space truck Nostromo encounter the titular alien. The name “space jockey” was a nickname given by the crew, but it’s also the title of an unrelated 1947 science fiction story by Robert A. Heinlein, about a human space pilot dealing with the everyday humdrum problems of ferrying stuff and people between Earth and the Moon. The space jockey itself remained entirely mysterious until the more recent (and much worse) Alien films, beginning with Prometheus, which reveal it was an Engineer – the species who created both life on Earth and the aliens themselves.
The ad where Martians use photorealistic printouts to fool a Mars rover was “Mars Mission”, made for Hewlett-Packard (not Canon, as we thought), and broadcast (we think) in 1996 and/or 1997. You can watch it on YouTube here.
Twelve humans have set foot on the Moon, all of them NASA astronauts. While Eugene “Gene” Cernan was the last person to stand on the Moon, he was also the eleventh, not twelfth, person to set foot there. This apparent contradiction is because he got out of the lunar module first, but got back in last, after his Apollo 17 crewmate, Harrison Schmitt. Cernan and Schmitt also spent the longest time on the Moon: over 12 days, they spent 22 hours and 2 minutes outside the module. Cernan died in 2017 (we wonder if anyone told him about the twain in The Long Mars?), but Schmitt is still alive at the time of this episode’s release.
We previously mentioned the 1986 My Little Pony: The Movie in #Pratchat21, “Memoirs of Agatea”. The “purple slime” was the “Smooze”, created by villain Hydia (played by Cloris Leachman!) to destroy the ponies’ home. It’s defeated by a magical wind created by the flying Flutter Ponies.
In Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, American Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper becomes delusional and goes rogue. He uses a code known only to him to order a nuclear bombing run on Russia because he believes they put fluoride in the water to corrupt the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans. His aide, Colonel Mandrake (one of three roles played by Peter Sellers), eventually deduces Ripper’s code from the paranoid ramblings in his notes, which repeat “purity of essence”. The film is a classic, and was based (if loosely) on the more serious novel Red Alert.
Ben says “less babies”, and yes, as “baby” is a countable noun, it should be “fewer babies”. He’s sorry about that.
When Ben’s talking about “older Star Trek”, he really means anything made before the new batch of shows that started with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. Prior to this, the most recent Star Trek show was Enterprise, which finished in 2005. All of those older shows are set in the 22nd to 24th centuries, and yet include conventions of gender, sexuality and relationships which make them feel old-fashioned by today’s standards, making a little difficult to imagine they’re really set in the future. The exceptions often occur in alien cultures, rather than in the future humans – for example the Next Generation episode “The Outcast” tries to deal with the idea of stepping outside gender roles with a character who, like Cheery Littlebottom, comes from a culture which recognises only one gender, but who wishes to be female.
The thinking beagle in The Long War was not Snowy, but Brian – possibly named after the talking dog from American animated sitcom Family Guy. His speech about being weird for a beagle appears near the end of chapter 51.
Sam Allen appears in chapters 18 and 19 of The Long War; he’s in command of the squad who get stranded in Reboot when their gear is mistakenly delivered to the Earth next door, and none of them have brought steppers. He has a confrontation with Helen’s father, Jack Green, nearly starting a fight. Following the incident, Maggie puts him off her ship the first chance she gets.
Page counts and estimates tell us that The Long Earth is the shortest book in the series, at probably around 105,000 words, while The Long War is the longest by a fair margin (approx. 131,000 words). The Long Mars is the second shortest (approx. 110,000 words), with the final two books pretty close to the same length (each is somewhere between 116,000 and 118,000 words), with The Long Utopia the slightly shorter of the two.
Shangri-La is a Tibetan monastery nestled in a valley beneath the mountain of Karakal – both fictional locations drawn from the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by English novelist James Hilton. In the book, a party of four English and American folks crash their plane in the Kunlun mountains (which are not fictional) and find they way to Shangri-La, which is an idyllic paradise. The people living there age very slowly, living as long as 250 years, but if they leave the valley they age and die quickly. Looked at through modern eyes, the story has plenty of problems, not least of which that this supposedly Tibetan “lamasery” is revealed to have been founded by a Catholic monk, who as he is about to die, wishes one of the English visitors to take over as leader. (“Lamasery” itself is an erroneous term used in English for Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, based on the misunderstanding that “lama” means “monk”. Lama is actually a highly revered title, only given to very few Buddhists.) The book gained attention after Hilton’s next novel, Goodbye, Mr Chips (about the life of a schoolteacher) was a big hit. The concept of Shangri-La as a distant, utopian place has been a part of popular culture every since, and has inspired many stories – notably that of The Immortal Iron Fist, a white Marvel superhero who learns his supernatural martial arts after surviving a plane crash in the mountains of Tibet as a child and being brought up by the monks of the hidden mystical city of Kunlun.
Don’t Look Up is a satirical 2021 Netflix film in which a pair of astronomers (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet which will destroy all life on Earth, but struggle to get anyone to take the threat seriously. Its mix of dark humour and unsubtle climate change metaphors split audiences, many of whom thought it was clumsy. But there are plenty of things to like about it – including Mark Rylance’s role of Peter Isherwell, a tech billionaire who wants to mine the comet for rare minerals instead of destroying it.
The Pink Panther series of comedy films began with 1963’s The Pink Panther, directed by Blake Edwards, which focussed on the Phantom, a jewel thief played by David Niven. But Peter Sellers stole the show in his role as a bumbling French detective, Inspector Jacques Clouseau, so he became the main character for four increasingly oddball sequels between 1964 and 1978. A recurring gag that begins in the second film, 1964’s A Shot in the Dark, is that the Inspector has tasked his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk) to attack him by surprise, to keep him in top fighting condition. Clouseau often survives these attempts on his life only because Cato stops to answer the Inspector’s phone when it rings… While Sellers is the best-known version of the character, there have been others. Blake Edwards went on to make three more Pink Panther films after Sellers’ death with new lead characters, though none succeeded. Earlier, in 1968, the company who owned the rights made their own separate Inspector Clouseau film without any of the original creative team, starring Alan Arkin. Most recently, a reboot of the series starring Steve Martin as Clouseau lasted for two films: The Pink Panther (2006) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009). A new film was in development in 2020, but there’s been little news of it since.
Professor Charles Xavier – known as Professor X – is a Marvel comics character, a powerfully psychic mutant who founds a school, ostensibly to help young mutants master their extraordinary powers. He does do that…but also recruits his young students to reform the image of mutants in the public eye by acting as a team of superheroes, known as The X-Men. This is necessary in part because Xavier’s fellow powerful mutant, Erik Lensherr – aka Magneto, Master of Magnetism – has decided to deal with prejudice against mutants more directly. He creates The Brotherhood of Mutants, more-or-less a terrorist organisation whose aim is to either force humanity to treat mutants as equals, or bow before them as their servants. (In early comics Magneto’s group were named “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants”, just in case you were wondering if they know they’re being nasty.)
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel that imagines a future where humans are grown in artificial wombs, sorted into distinct castes based on physical and mental ability, and controlled through the use of drugs. Most castes are encouraged to be promiscuous to keep them happy, and the use of contraception is mandatory; they are also subjected to various forms of conditioning to get them to behave in the way the state approves, including encouraging children to engage in sexual play from a young age.
We mention a few classic sci-fi novels during our discussion of the Next:
The Chrysalids is John Wyndham’s 1955 post-apocalyptic novel in which a society practices eugenics to keep itself pure of mutations, and a group of children with telepathic abilities try to keep their abilities secret;
The Stepford Wives is Ira Levin’s 1972 “feminist horror” novel, in which a female photographer moves to a small town and is increasingly disturbed at the way all the women there are uniformly beautiful and subservient to their husbands;
The Midwich Cuckoos is another Wyndham novel from 1957, in which an English village suffers an unusual visitation in which all its residents are made unconscious, after which all the women of the village discover they are pregnant and later give birth to unusual and similar children;
A Clockwork Orange is Anthony Burgess’ 1967 dystopian novel, which we mentioned in #Pratchat55; it depicts a future where gangs of teens speak their own slang language and engage in random acts of “ultra-violence”, and the state tries a new form of aversion therapy on the protagonist;
The Sound of Music (which was not “the one with the children” Ben was thinking of) is the stage musical and subsequent film adaptation based on the 1949 book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta von Trapp.
When Liz says “a parasite like a Yeerk” she is referring to the alien foes of the shape-changing Animorphs, teenage protagonists of the Animorph books by K. A. Applegate published by Scholastic between 1996 and 2001. We’ve previously mentioned them in #Pratchat19, #Pratchat25, #Pratchat35 and #Pratchat43…though when we say “we”, we really mean Liz. Ben has never read an Animorph in his life.
In the various Stargate television series, the Goa’uld are a parasitic species who take humans for hosts, granting the body great strength and regenerative properties, and able to live for hundreds of years, changing hosts if necessary over time. Their true form is a snake-like aquatic creature, which wraps itself around the spinal cord of the host to gain access to their brain and motor functions. While the antagonistic Goa’uld System Lords believed they were superior to other lifeforms, using their advanced technology to pose as gods to the humans they sought to enslave, a breakaway faction called the Tok’ra lives in harmony with their hosts, and opposes the ways of the System Lords.
We mention a couple of hologram meetings from films that are similar to the one in the book. The first takes place in the 2014 film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (not The Avengers, though similar technology is later used in Avengers: Endgame), when Nick Fury meets with the World Security Council. The Star Wars one is the meeting of the Jedi Council in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002).
It was indeed Mac talking about war being fun in The Long War, in the middle of Chapter 67.
George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) was an officer for the United States in the American Civil War, though became most famously known for the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana, in which he led American army forces against Native Americans and lost, dying along with his entire regiment. This has been romanticised as “Custer’s Last Stand”, and he is sometimes held up as an example of an officer whose decisions caused the death of those under his command. Whatever it’s called it remains an act of colonial aggression, and just one of many examples of Custer’s participation in violence against the First Nations peoples of America, including many incidents we would today regard as warcrimes.
There aren’t any other Cutlers who immediately come to mind, but it is a very common name; like many English surnames, it’s based on an occupation, in this case a maker of cutlery.
When Liz says it’s “just like Lord of the Rings” in reference to Joel’s use of the phrase “just to carry a nuke there and back again”, it’s a double reference – both to the Ring as an allegory for nuclear weaponry, and its prequel The Hobbit, whose full title is The Hobbit, or There And Back Again.
Foundation is Isaac Asimov’s series depicting a future history of a spacefaring human empire. The Foundation of the title is an organisation created by genius Hari Seldon to collect and preserve human knowledge, and prevent the coming of an extended dark age. Seldon does this thanks to his invention of “psychohistory” – an accurate mathematical modelling of society able to predict its future – which allows him to leave instructions for the Foundation on how to alter history’s course. Originally written as a series of short stories, collected into three novel-length books, Asimov later added four more novels, the last of which was published after his death. Foundation covers a vast span of time – about a thousand years – and so necessarily leaves many human characters behind after they die. It was hugely influential, both on science fiction and science, and is clearly one of the influences on The Long Earth series.
A Hohmann transfer orbit can be used to transfer a spacecraft between any two orbits around the same central body, so its not just for travelling between Earth and Mars. You could use this method to travel between any two planets in the solar system, or between a low-Earth orbit and the Moon.
Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.
These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 67, “The Three-Elf Problem“, discussing Martin Wallace’s 2013 Discworld board game, The Witches, with returning guest Steve Lamattina.
Iconographic Evidence
As promised, here are some photos of the game.
The board, components and the box.Which witch is which? Get your answers here!A pile of components. The pink tokens featuring townsfolk are Crisis tokens; the yellow ones featuring a witch with crazy eyes are Cackle tokens; and the larger square ones are Black Aliss tokens. The green square tiles are Easy Problems, and the purple ones are Hard Problems.Ben’s hand during his first, four-player game of The Witches.Some of our favourite cards, as discussed in the questions section near the end.
Notes and Errata
The episode title takes inspiration from the 2008 science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The novel in turn takes it’s title from the three-body problem of physics, which refers to the difficulty of calculating the relative motion of three bodies whose masses will interact thanks to gravitational force. In the game, three elves are a problem because they cause everyone to immediately lose.
Steve last appeared on Pratchat for Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”, discussing Only You Can Save Mankind, back in February 2020 – the second-last time we recorded regularly in person.
The last in-person episode was #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land”, with Fury. We moved to remote recording from episode 30 (“Looking Widdershins”), though Ben did record in person for “The Troll’s Gambit” with Melissa Rogerson, in November 2022.
Dimity Hubbub is not actually known for being talkative, but rather being clumsy; in her first appearance she has set fire to her own hat, and steps on a piece of Annagramma’s occult jewellery. Dimity appears in A Hat Full of Sky (where she appears in two scenes), Wintersmith (in which she gets a whole two lines of dialogue) and The Shepherd’s Crown (again, only very briefly).
Lancre Gorge features fairly prominently in Wyrd Sisters, and is where Lord Felmet eventually ends up. In Lords and Ladies, its described like this: “Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River.” (A footnote admits that “Lancrastians did not consider geography to be a very original science.”)
Garth Nix, who was our guest for #Pratchat51 a bit over a year ago, is an Australian science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Old Kingdom series of young adult fantasy novels. In the books, the “Old Kingdom” is a place of sorcery and monsters, separated from its neighbour Ancelstierre by a wall which keeps the magic out. The first book is 1995’s Sabriel, while the latest is the prequel Terciel and Elinor, published in late 2021.
The Treefrog Games’ Collector’s Edition, published in an edition of 2,000 copies, featuring the pewter miniatures and a cloth bag to keep them in, an A1 poster of artwork from the game, different artwork on the box cover, a different shaped box, and a larger map. (We presume this just means physically larger, not that there are any additional locations.) While you can’t buyt the minatures separately, you did used to be able to buy a set of coloured plastic miniatures for the game from Micro Art Studio in Poland, who still produce a line of Discworld miniatures – though the young witches are no longer available.
The Mayfair Games Standard Edition, the one we played. It has wooden witch’s hat pieces for the players.
The game has also been published in several other languages: German, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech and Spanish. These all appear to use the same art, with only the text translated.
Mayfair Games was
Martin Wallace is an English game designer who now lives in Australia. After getting his start in wargames in the 1990s, he became a very well-known game designer. His games include the heavy train games Brass: Lancashire (originally just Brass) and it’s successor Brass: Birmingham; two quite different editions of A Study in Emerald, a Sherlock Holmes/H.P. Lovecraft mash-up based on the short story by Neil Gaiman; and most recently the fantasy war game Bloodstones. (Ben is mistaken, however, about Once Upon a Time and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which were designed by the entirely different (if similarly named) James Wallis. Sorry James!) Martin’s company Treefrog Games was active until 2016, when he closed it down to focus on working as a designer. Bloodstones was his first new venture in self-publishing since then, this time under the name “Wallace Designs”.
The very brief Martin Wallace interview about The Witches can be found in the BoardGameGeek forums for The Witches. Read the interview here.
When Nanny visits the Long Man in Lords and Ladies, she takes Casanunda along with her. His mind is boggled both by the Long Man, and the resemblance of the King of the Elves within to “his picture”.
The Felmets appear in Wyrd Sisters (#Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”), and they do indeed both die by the end of the book. Lord Felmet plunges to his death in Lancre Gorge, while Lady Felmet is cast into the woods, where the woodland creatures, acting as the soul of the country itself, er…take care of her.
Ben hasn’t been able to think of any other games that split a dice roll in half, though there are many that use a “push-your-luck” mechanic. This is usually achieved by allowing a player to re-roll one or more of their dice with an escalating level of risk and reward.
Melbourne’s public transport network, created by the “Octopus Act” in the late eighteenth century, has a large number of train and tram lines radiating out from the Central Business District. While there used to be two “circle lines” that connected stations on these lines to each other, nowadays to change from one to the other you generally have to travel into the city and back out again. Only buses travel in alternate directions, but they are generally less frequent and less reliable, thanks to traffic.
Agnes Nitt and Perdita X Dream appear briefly in Lords and Ladies, but are best known from Maskerade (#Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“) and Carpe Jugulum (#Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires”).
Ben’s favourite board game Pandemic was designed by Matt Leacock and first published in 2008. It’s a fully co-operative game (see below) in which players are members of the Centre for Disease Control, trying to keep four global pandemics in check while they find cures for them all. The current edition of the game is published by Z-Man Games.
Fully cooperative games are ones in which players do not compete, but instead win or lose (and sometimes score) together. Board game examples include Pandemic, Flash Point: Fire Rescue and Spirit Island. Semi-cooperative games feature some cooperation, but the players also compete against each other in some way. In Ben’s experience, most such games feature strong player cooperation, usual through a high chance of everyone losing, but add in secret personal goals that might put them into conflict. This is a feature of “hidden traitor” and social deduction games like Battlestar Galactica and Dead of Winter, though these might also be considered team games. The Witches is different in that the competitive side of the game dominates; the cooperative element is relatively light, with the threat of losing fairly slight.
The Discworld Emporium is the most famous officially licensed producer of Discworld merchandise which grew out of Clarecraft, a fantasy figurine business run by Isobel and Bernard Pearson, who started doing Discworld miniatures in the early 1990s. We most recently talked about them in #Pratchat53, “A (Very) Few Words by Hner Ner Hner”. They are credited as the author of many of the more recent spin-off books, like The Compleat Ankh-Morpork and The Nac Mac Feegle Big Wee Alphabet Book, so you’ll no doubt here some more about them before we’re done.
The fans whose likenesses were used for the box art witches were Kate Oldroyd (Tiffany Aching), Victoria Lear (Petulia Gristle) and Pam Gower (Granny Weatherwax). As we mentioned, Pam sadly passed away in January 2023. She wasn’t just the inspiration for this box art, but also Paul Kidby’s bust of Granny Weatherwax. You can read Bernard Pearson’s thoughts about Pam in his Cunning Artificer blog in 2015, including an anecdote about her meeting with Terry which also appears in the biography.
Rowlf the Dog was one of the original muppet characters, originally performed by Jim Henson. He notably achieved solo fame in the early 1960s as a regular on the Jimmy Dean Show, before becoming the piano player in The Muppet Show and subsequent movies. His big number in The Muppet Movie is a duet with Kermit, “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along”.
Wilfred is the title character of a short film and two television series, all created by Australian comic actors Adam Zwar and Jason Gann, and starring Gann (in a costume) as “Wilfred”, an anthropomorphic dog, who is suspicious and jealous of his owner’s new partner. The original short won awards at Tropfest, Australia’s biggest short film festival, in 2007, and became a series on SBS which ran for two seasons in 2010. It was then adapted for the US market, starring Gann as Wilfred and Elijah Wood as Ryan, a depressed man who befriends Wilfred when his neighbour asks him to look after the dog. In this version the question of whether Wilfred can truly speak, or even really exists, is much more present. The American Wilfred ran for four seasons on FX between 2011 and 2014. There was also a Russian adaptation, retitled Charlie.
Theses are the show notes and errata for our special questions-only thirtieth episode, “Looking Widdershins”.
Iconographic Evidence
The licensing agreement for the fan production Troll Bridge imposed fairly tight restrictions on how and where it can be sold or screened, so it seemed at the time of recording there was no way left to see it if you hadn’t already got on board. But that’s no longer the case! You can watch Troll Bridge on YouTube.
Notes and Errata
Widdershins is an old English word (not, to be clear, an Old English word) which means anti-clockwise, or to move around something by keeping it on your left. On the Discworld, it is one of the four cardinal directions, along with hubwards (towards the centre or hub of the Disc), rimwards (towards the edge or rim) and turnwise (in the direction of the Disc’s spin; the opposite direction to widdershins). Knowing this in year twelve really impressed Ben’s English teacher, who had never read any Pratchett.
We’ve listed a few solid options here for Discworld books to start with:
Wyrd Sisters – Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick, three witches from the country kingdom of Lancre, are forced to meddle in politics when their king is murdered by a Duke who cares nothing for the kingdom. If you like the idea of the Witches, this is probably the best book to start with. We discussed it in #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”. As discussed, Equal Rites precedes it, but only features Granny. We covered Equal Rites in #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes”.
Mort – the anthropomorphic personification of Death takes a gormless country lad as his apprentice. This is the first book to feature Death as a protagonist, though he’s more or less the B plot to Mort himself. Introduces many ideas, places and themes of the Discworld, and is arguably the first to have the familiar Discworld tone. We discussed it in #Pratchat2, “Murdering a Curry”.
Men at Arms – the Ankh-Morpork City Watch has its work cut out for it as racial tensions simmer between dwarfs and trolls, at the same time as a mysterious series of murders takes place. The second of the Watch books, we (and our future listeners) thought it a great enough introduction to the Discworld to pick it as the first one we discussed in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory” (and we later return to it, sort of, in a special live recorded show, #PratchatNALC, “Twice as Alive”). The Watch books start with Guards! Guards! It’s not essential to read it first, but it is a great read, even if the characters themselves are still finding their feet a little. We read it for #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”.
The Colour of Magic – failed “wizzard” Rincewind is forced to look after the Discworld’s first tourist, Twoflower, on a series of misadventures across the Disc. Still brilliantly funny, but much more a parody of sword and sorcery and high fantasy than establishing itself as its own thing, and with a definite different tone. Ends on a cliffhanger, making the second book, The Light Fantastic, the only direct sequel in the series. We discussed it for its 35th anniversary in #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-wide Vacation”.
Going Postal – con-man Moist von Lipwig is forced to revive the flagging fortunes of the Ankh-Morpork post office. A particular favourite of Liz’s, and a great intro as Moist is a new protagonist and not originally from Ankh-Morpork. It happens much later in the overall series than the other suggestions, but Moist returns in two later books, Making Money and Raising Steam. We will discuss it in #Pratchat38, “Moisten to Steal”.
The three live-action Discworld telemovies, all very faithful to the books, were produced by The Mob, a UK production company previously best known for their advertising work. Each was originally broadcast on Sky1 in the UK in two parts, and are usually available in two parts wherever you can find them. At the time of this episode, they’re currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Terry Pratchett appears in a cameo role in all three productions, and many cast members appear in at least two of the films, though rarely in the same role.
Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (2006) – Death has taken the place of the Discworld equivalent of Father Christmas; his granddaughter Susan tries to get to the bottom of it. Starring Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey), Marc Warren (Hustle) and Ian Richardson (House of Cards) as the voice of Death, plus a great supporting cast including David Jason, Nigel Planer and David Warner. It was first broadcast a week or so before Christmas, and is very faithful to the novel. We discussed the book in #Pratchat26, “The Long Dark Mr Teatime of the Soul”.
Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic (2008) – adapts both The Colour of Magic (see above) and its sequel The Light Fantastic, though it streamlines the plot and takes a few liberties. First broadcast over Easter, it stars David Jason as Rincewind, despite the fact that he’s a great deal older than the character of the books. Twoflower is played by Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings). The supporting cast includes David Bradley (Harry Potter,Doctor Who), Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death.
Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal (2010) – an adaptation of the first Moist von Lipwig novel. Stars Richard Foyle (Coupling, Sabrina) as Moist, with David Suchet (Poirot) and Clare Foy (The Crown), plus a supporting cast including Charles Dance and Tamsin Grieg.
Cosgrove Hall actually made three animated Discworld adaptations, if you include the short Welcome to the Discworld, starring Christopher Lee as Death – a part he plays in all three animations – in a sequence based on the novel Reaper Man. They’re quite hard to find now, though we hear that if you search a certain popular video platform you might find them… They were sort of one series, originally broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 as 23-minute episodes and titled Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, with a subtitle for each series specifying the book being adapted.
Soul Music (1994, 7 episodes) – young bard Imp wants to be the greatest musician the Disc has ever known, but he should be careful what he wishes for… As “Music With Rocks In” sweeps the world, Death feels moved to intervene, and his granddaughter Susan is drawn in as well. As Ben mentions, the soundtrack is something special, especially fans of the Beatles or the history of rock and roll; it’s not on Spotify, but it is still available on Apple Music. We covered the book in #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got Rocks In”.
Wyrd Sisters (1997, 6 episodes) is a faithful adaptation of the novel (see above) over six episodes, with the witches played wonderfully by Annette Crosbie (One Foot in the Grave), June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks (the latter two both probably best known to modern audiences from their supporting roles in Absolutely Fabulous). One of Ben’s comedy heroes, Eleanor Bron, plays the Duchess, and there’s some other great cast too.
There are definitely other Pratchett adaptations; the most notable would be Cosgrove Hall’s stop-motion adaptation of Truckers, Amazon Prime’s BBC co-production of Good Omens, and the upcoming BBC America series The Watch, though that seems more a loose interpretation than a direct adaptation. There have also been low-budget TV versions of Johnny and the Dead (for ITV) and Johnny and the Bomb (for the BBC). An animated feature of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is in production in Europe, though whether it will retain its Discworld setting is unknown. (It was released in December 2022, though as of this update in April 2023, we’ve not seen it yet.) An adaptation of Discworld novel The Wee Free Men has been in pre-production with the Jim Henson Workshop, though there’s been little news of it since it was announced in 2016.
As Ben mentions in the footnote, Troll Bridge is an epic short film based on the short story about ageing Discworld hero Cohen the Barbarian. (We discussed the short story it’s based on in our first live episode, “A Troll New World”.) See the Iconographic Evidence section above if you want to watch it!
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The Discworld Collector’s Library editions were first published from 2014 to 2016 by Gollancz, Terry’s first publisher, who only had rights to the books up to Jingo, which explains why initially only the first 21 books were available in this format. Penguin Random House have since continued the imprint for the later books, and now all of them are available except for the younger readers books – The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and all the Tiffany Aching books, though the latter have had their own series of fancy new editions (which include dust jackets, much to Liz’s dismay). They retail for about £13 in the UK, and $27 AUD in Australia. The early ones weren’t available in the US or Canada for licensing reasons; we’re not sure what the situation is now. We could list an affiliate link, but instead we’d like to recommend you contact your local independent bookshop – they can order in anything you want, and they could really use your business right now. If you’re in Melbourne, this Broadsheet article lists some bookshops which were providing free local delivery (though it wouldn’t hurt to double-check if that’s still the case).
The Folio Society have been publishing deluxe, illustrated editions of books since 1947, including some extra special limited editions. Ben and Liz remembered correctly that they have published editions of both Mort and Small Gods, and they also have an edition of Good Omens.
Howl’s Moving Castle is a 1986 fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones. It tells the story of Sophie, the oldest of three sisters in a magical kingdom, who expects her life will be boring as it is always the youngest sister who has romantic adventures. Instead she ends up cursed by a Witch and working for the Wizard Howl, hoping to free his fire demon Calcifer so he will break her curse. The book was brilliantly (if fairly loosely) adapted into a film by Hayao Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli in 2004. Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s famous 1932 dystopian novel which depicts a future society genetically engineered into castes and kept compliant and docile with drugs and sex.
The year of five books was 1990, during which Pratchett published Eric, Moving Pictures, Good Omens, Diggers and Wings. He was no slouch in 1989 either, publishing four books: Pyramids, Guards! Guards!, Truckers and The Unadulterated Cat. We’ve covered all nine of those books on Pratchat.
We’d like to apologise to listener Neil Webber (@RugbySkeptic on Twitter), who was actually the asker of the question about which books we thought were most politically on point! This was entirely an error at our end when collating questions from the various social media platforms.
Agnes Nitt does indeed appear again in Carpe Jugulum, as well as another later book, but we won’t say which because of slight spoiler possibilities. (You can find out by listening to our episode about it, #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires”.)
We discussed Dodger way back in #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh”, with guest David Astle.
Rhianna Pratchett was given official permission by her father to continue writing for the Discworld, but announced back in June 2015: “I don’t intend on writing more Discworld novels, or giving anyone else permission to do so”, and neither would Terry’s assistant Rob Wilkins. She also ruled out the possibility of publishing any of his unfinished works; they were later destroyed by crushing Pratchett’s hard drives under a steam roller, as per the stipulations of his will.
And Another Thing… is a sixth book in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”, written by Eoin Colfer with permission from Adams’ widow, Jane Belson. It was published in 2009 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the first novel, and met with mixed reviews. It was adapted for radio as The Hexagonal Phase, incorporating some of Adams’ unused material.
The Rivers of London series of novels by Ben Aaronovitch follow the adventures of Constable Peter Grant, a police officer whose dreams of making detective are complicated when he meets a ghost and becomes apprenticed to Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale – the last official wizard in England. The series encompasses eight novels, two novellas and at least seven volumes of comics. Most of the novels contain at least one Pratchett reference, so Aaronovitch is clearly a fan.
Since there’s no significant Discworld character named Vincent, we are pretty sure that when Liz says “Vincent and Moist” she meant Leonard of Quirm and Moist.
The Dysk Theatre features in Wyrd Sisters, and rates a mention in Lords and Ladies and Thief of Time. The chief characters there are Olwyn Vitoller, proprietor; his adopted son Tomjon, a gifted actor; and the genius and constantly writing dwarf playwright Hwel.
Johnny Maxwell is the protagonist of three of Pratchett’s books for middle grade readers. An ordinary thirteen year old boy with no wish for supernatural adventure, he nevertheless becomes the Chosen One destined to save a fleet of computer game aliens, speaks to the dead, and travels back in time. We’re covering these books this year, starting with Only You Can Save Mankind in episode 28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”.
The Watch, as mentioned briefly above, is a new BBC America series currently in production in South Africa and expected to be released later this year. It is loosely based on the Discworld books about the City Watch, and stars Richard Armitage as Commander Sam Vimes. The wider casting, and the initial on-set photos so far released, suggest a very different interpretation of the characters and stories, with a more modern (though still fantastical) setting. We’re keen to see how it all works out. (You’ll find out what we think when we later discuss The Watch in both #Pratchat52, “A Near-Watch Experience”, and Eeek Club 2022.)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a Netflix original series very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Douglas Adams. It takes the core concept of a “holistic detective” devoted to the idea of the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things” and then runs in a very different direction. Despite this, Ben rather loved it for being its own thing. It ran for two seasons, each telling a different long story, with some plot elements carrying over between the two.
The Borrowers is a 1952 children’s fantasy novel written by English author Mary Norton, about a family of tiny people who secretively live in a house of normal-sized humans, “borrowing” what they need to survive. It was followed by four sequels between 1955 and 1982, and adapted into several television series and films.
Land of the Giants was a 1960s science fiction series produced by Irwin Allen (of Lost in Space fame), in which the passengers and crew of the sub-orbital commercial spacecraft Spindrift are sucked through a dimensional tear and crash on a planet of human-like aliens who are twelve times larger than humans.
You can find Nanny Ogg’s hand washing songin this video from the Australian Discworld Convention. It’s not her most offensive song, but probably strays into NSFW territory.
There have been several officially licensed Discworld board games (links are to entries on BoardGameGeek.com, aka BGG):
Thud (2002) was the first official Discworld boardgame, and is based on the game Thud played by dwarfs and trolls in the novel, er…Thud. It plays like a modernised version of the Viking game Hnefnatafl: it uses a Chess-like symmetrical board (though this one is octagonal) and asymmetrical player pieces – one player controls 32 dwarfs, and the other eight trolls. Thud was designed by Trevor Truan with “liner notes” by Pratchett and pieces designed by “the Cunning Artificer” Bernard Pearson (now proprietor of the Discworld Emporium). After an initial limited release it had two big box editions, both now out of print. A third major edition, first released in 2009, comes in a cloth bag with a cloth board, and is available from the Discworld Emporium.
Watch Out: Discworld Board Game (2004) was designed by Trevor Truan with pieces again by the Cunning Artificer, but was never published. Like Thud, it was an asymmetrical game with chess-like pieces, but the board was made of square cards representing Ankh-Morpork locations, and one player controlled eight thieves while the other controlled eight Watchmen.
Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (2011) has the players secretly take on the roles of various Ankh-Morpork characters as factions vy for control of the city in the wake of Lord Vetinari’s disappearance. Designed by Martin Wallace for his company Treefrog Games, it’s the highest rated of the Discworld games on BGG. It’s now out of print, but Wallace’s 2019 game Nanty Narking is a new and slightly improved version of the same game with a new theme of Victorian London, replacing the famous Discworld characters with characters from the works of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and more.
Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame (2011) was designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw for BackSpindle Games. Players are new recruits in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, sent to infiltrate one of the city’s guilds to retrieve the Eight Great Spells of the Octavo, which have been stolen from Unseen University.
In The Witches: A Discworld Game (2013), also by Martin Wallace, players are trainee witches in Lancre dealing with the more everyday problems of the local folk. Notably it had rules for solo and cooperative play, as well as the competitive version. (Ben found multiple references suggesting Martin Wallace designed a third Discworld game, but it seems it was never finished, or at least never published. We’ve heard on the grapevine that it would have involved the gods of the Discworld.)
Clacks: A Discworld Boardgame (2015) is also from Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw for BackSpindle Games. Players are Clacks operators for the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, trying to win the race against Moist von Lipwig’s newly revitalised postal service. Includes rules for competitive and cooperative play. Still in print, so it might be available via your local game store (who needs your support right now); otherwise it’s also at the Discworld Emporium.
Though no version has ever been commercially released, BGG does list Cripple Mr Onion in its database – specifically the 1993 rules devised by Andrew Millard and Terry Tao, and originally posted online at alt.fan.pratchett. These rules are reproduced in later editions of The Discworld Companion, including the one titled Turtle Recall, and suggest players combine a deck of regular playing cards with a deck of Spanish cards (which use Tarot suits) to get the eight suits required. An alternative is “The Fat Pack” deck of cards from The Fat Pack Playing Card Company, designed in part to support play of Cripple Mr Onion. Its eight suits are Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Roses, Axes, Tridents and Doves. The company still has a web site, so we’re ordering some cards and will let you know how we go.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – one of Ben’s favourite books – is the Hugo Award winning 2004 debut novel from English author Susannah Clarke. Set in an 1800s England with a lost history of wizardry, it tells the story of two modern magicians destined to revive English magic: the bookish recluse Mr Norrell, and the idle gentleman Jonathan Strange. It was adapted by the BBC into a largely faithful seven part mini-series in 2015. A collection of short stories set in the same world, The Ladies of Grace-Adieu and Other Stories, was published in 2006.
You can find the famous Discworld reading guide diagram in high resolution on imgur here; the makers also have a Facebook page. HarperCollins also released a very similar official one on their Epic Reads blog. These don’t really tell you where to start, but they represent the various sub-series in clear visual style.
We talked about Interesting Times in our previous episode, “Great Rimward Land”.
The Victorian Discworld Klatch is the local Discworld fan group, who hold occasional meetings in Melbourne, Australia. You can find out more at their Facebook group. If you’re looking for fan groups in other parts of Australia, you can find a list on the Australian Discworld Convention site.
Stargates are the ancient technology in the film and various television series of the same name, which form stable wormholes between planets allowing for instantaneous travel. Jump by Sean Williams is the first in a trilogy of novels imagining a future Earth where an unlimited energy source has enabled a worldwide network of matter transporters, which has transformed human culture.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard’s first officer Will Riker discovers that when he was transported to safety from a dangerous situation eight years earlier, the transporter beam split and two Rikers were created – him on the rescue ship, and another one back on the planet. The philosophical implications of this are covered in Richard Hanley’s book The Metaphysics of Star Trek. The one trapped on the planet is rescued, and after a brief time spent with his transporter twin, decides to go by his middle name, Thomas, and start a new life. It…doesn’t end well.
The lemming-like animal Ben is thinking of is the vermine, which appears in footnotes and asides in several of the earlier Discworld novels.
The Casanova TV series starring David Tennant was written by Russell T Davies of Queer as Folk and Doctor Who fame, and produced for the BBC in 2005. Several actors from it also later appeared in Doctor Who.
Hail and Well Met is a podcast production team based in Perth, Western Australia, who make several audio drama shows.
The “Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness” can be summarised in this sentence from Men at Arms: “A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
These are the episode notes and errata for episode 48, “Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang”, featuring guest Benjamin Riley, discussing the 26th Discworld novel: 2001’s Thief of Time.
(To avoid any confusion, in these notes we’ve referred to our guest this episode as “Guest Ben”, and our co-host as “our Ben”, which has the delightful side effect of making it sound like he’s part of the Ogg clan.)
The episode title is a riff on the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, featured on their 1967 concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. While long rumoured to be about hallucinations brought on by the use of psychotropic drugs – in large part because the title coincidentally includes the acronym LSD – it was actually inspired by an illustration made by John’s young son, Julian Lennon, which he described using the phrase.
Guest Ben and Liz used to have “Time Travel Wednesdays” when they worked together, but our Ben’s brain immediately time travels to Tuesdays, presumably for the sake of alliteration. We apologise for any confusion caused.
Craig Hildebrand-Burke was indeed our guest when we discussed Jingo back in #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés“. (This is one we’d like to revisit with a bit more sensitivity to some things in our blindspot last time.)
Guest Ben’s favourite Discworld period (which he points out is the same as previous guest Craig’s) runs from Jingo (the twenty-first Discworld novel, published in November 1997; see #Pratchat27) to Thud (the thirty-fourth, published in September 2005; probably coming in 2022). This period also includes the first three Science of Discworld books, the first three younger readers books (The Amazing Maurice and the first two Tiffany Aching books), and the introduction of Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal. It’s also notable that Pratchett didn’t publish any non-Discworld books during this period. (Our Ben feels that thematically and tonally this run begins slightly earlier, with either Maskerade or Feet of Clay, meaning it also includes Hogfather.)
Cigars are most associated with His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch and Duke of Ankh, though in Guards! Guards!, when he was still just the low-paid Captain of the disregarded Night Watch, he rolls his own cigarettes. By Men at Arms he has moved on to “cheap” cigars, and in Feet of Clay “thin” ones which he carries in a case (or at least he did until Nobby stole the case). He sometimes lights them using swamp dragons, a habit which annoys Sybil. He’s not the only cigar smoker; Nobby is plied with cigars in Feet of Clay, and Nanny Ogg also indulges, though this is only seen briefly in Wyrd Sisters when she’s also drinking in the pub.
“That X-Men movie that fixes that crap X-Men movie” is X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014; dir. Bryan Singer), a film adaptation of the epic comic book time travel story which turned the intended reboot film X-Men: First Class (2011; dir. Matthew Vaughn) into a prequel of the original X-Men movie trilogy. The film opens in a future in which mutants have been hunted nearly to extinction, so Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is psychically sent back in time to prevent the murder which sent history down that leg of the trousers of time. He is successful, and when he returns to the present, the timeline resembles that of the original trilogy – except that the events of the near-universally hated X-Men: The Last Stand (2006, dir. Brett Ratner) haven’t happened, as quickly established by the inclusion of characters either only appearing or killed off in that film.
The idea of the white face and the red nose – named after two styles of clown makeup, and expounded upon in Eric Idle’s sci-fi novel The Road to Mars – is a characterisation of comedic duos in which one, the “white face”, is serious and has (or assumes) a higher level or importance than the other, the buffoon or “red nose”. As well as the obvious surface level, comedy is often derived from the red nose puncturing the white face’s pompous attitude. Colon and Nobby are in some ways the archetypal Discworld example, but there are many others. In theatre terms, the white face is said to be a “high status” character, while the red nose is “low status”.
There are two kinds of big wheel that circus performers roll around in, but the one our Ben is thinking of is a German wheel: two big metal hoops connected by metal struts with stirrups and handholds. They were invented for – and are still used in – gymnastics. (The other kind of circus wheel is a single metal hoop called a Cyr wheel.)
Wallace and Gromit are the stop-motion animated stars several short and feature films, created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. Wallace (voiced primarily by Peter Sallis) is a well-meaning, eccentric and talented inventor with a passion for cheese, while Gromit is his supremely competent and loyal dog. The success of their first film, 1989’s A Grand Day Out, led to several sequels and spin-offs, including the television and film series Shaun the Sheep.
We’re afraid you’ll have to get used to the term “timey-wimey” during this episode, since it just feels so apt for a book with little in the way of actual time travel, but much in the way of time-related weirdness. Its origin is Doctor Who, specifically the Tenth Doctor’s explanation of causality in the third season episode “Blink”. We gave the full quote in our notes for #Pratchat35, but here we’ll add that in the fiftieth anniversary special The Day of the Doctor, when the Eleventh Doctor uses the phrase and the War Doctor (an earlier, grumpier incarnation) finds it preposterous, the Tenth Doctor pretends he’s never heard it.
Jeremy Clarkson started out as a journalist, but is best known now as a television personality. He was one of many hosts of the original version of Top Gear, the BBC Two motoring show which ran from 1977 to 2001, and after it was cancelled devised a new format for the show which debuted in 2002 – the year after Thief of Time was published, so he was considerably less famous then (though still pretty well-known in the UK). He was one of the new version’s original hosts, alongside Richard Hammond; they were joined by James May from the second series and remained the main hosting team for over a decade. Even before the new Top Gear, Clarkson attracted criticism for making bigoted remarks, but these only increased in frequency as he grew more famous, with a series of controversies over comments on- and off-air that ran the gamut of anti-environmentalism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and racism. (There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to controversies on Top Gear, most of them involving Clarkson.) Clarkson generally dismisses these criticisms, but also seems to court controversy deliberately to increase his fame, stating on multiple occasions that he may not believe all the things he says. By 2014, however, he was on a “final warning” from the BBC, and in 2015, after he verbally abused and then physically assaulted one of the show’s producers while on location (ostensibly because he wasn’t served the meal he wanted), the BBC cut the show’s season short and declined to renew Clarkson’s contract, despite a petition from fans with a million signatures. Hammond and May left the show with him, which continued with various new presenters, including Friends and Episodes star Matt leBlanc. Clarkson’s new show with Hammond and May, The Grand Tour, was basically Top Gear in all but name, and began on Amazon Prime in 2016, where he now also hosts Clarkson’s Farm, a show about the farm he owns in the Cotswolds, not far from Pratchett’s home in Wiltshire. He’s still very famous in the UK, where he has hosted their version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? since 2018 and makes various other television appearances – though not on the BBC.
Lobsang is a favourite name of Pratchett’s, used most prominently here and as the name of a major character in The Long Earth books, though it crops up many times in the novels. The earliest Lobsang is the Abbott Mort deals with on his first solo round as Death in Mort, though his name is only mentioned once – the rest of the time he’s just “the Abbott” – so don’t feel bad if you missed it. Another early appearance is near the end of Guards! Guards! (See also the note below about knowledge coming from a long way away.) The name is a fairly specific reference to “Dr Tuesday Lobsang Rampa”, author of several books about the spiritual and paranormal, most famously The Third Eye in 1956. He was later revealed to be Cyril Henry Hoskin, a plumber from Devon. For more on his weird story, listen to our discussion of The Long Earth in #Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the West“, or look him up yourself; you’ll be amazed.
The tick of the Universe more or less exists in the real world in the concept of Planck time, the “briefest physically meaningful span of time”, which is about 5.39×10−44 seconds. According to an article from 2020, the briefest time so far measured is 247 zeptoseconds (or 10-21 seconds), so even the most accurate atomic clocks can’t duplicate Jeremy’s feat. (Assuming the same length of tick in Discworld space is dubious, but if true, the glass clock is approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more accurate than the best atomic clock.)
Susan Sto-Helit is the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Sto-Helit – Death’s one-time apprentice Mort and adopted daughter Ysabell. Their story is told in the fourth Discworld novel, Mort (see #Pratchat2), while Susan first appeared as a teenager in Soul Music (#Pratchat19) before returning at more-or-less the same age she is here in Hogfather (#Pratchat26). In the animated Soul Music she was voiced by Debra J Gillet (who also provided the voice of Grimma in the stop-motion version of Truckers), and in the live-action adaptation of Hogfather, she was played by Michelle Dockery (now best known for her starring role as Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey).
Montessori and Steiner schools are two different alternative models for educating children and young people.
Montessori education, developed by Italian doctor and educator Maria Montessori (1870-1952) around the turn of the twentieth century, focuses on self-directed learning based on natural human development. Its basis is that children naturally want to learn, but formal education prevents them from doing so in the way that’s best for them; Montessori schools are usually primary schools and allow students to pursue the activities and subjects they find most interesting, usually through playful means. Many aspects of Montessori’s work have been adopted into mainstream teaching as well.
Steiner education, also known as Waldorf education, is based on the work of Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian philosopher (among many other things). Steiner’s “anthroposophy” teaches that humans can better understand the spiritual world through personal development, though the spiritual aspects of the philosophy are not always emphasised in Steiner education. Its main focus is holistic teaching, believing that students will do best if they develop their intellectual skills alongside artistic and practical ones. Steiner schools use a developmental model that runs from infancy through to secondary education, and have become increasingly popular; they are now the largest independent educational movement in the world, and have forty-five schools across Australia.
Professor Valerie Felicity Frizzle, PhD, originally known as Ms Frizzle or “the Frizz”, is the teacher in The Magic School Bus books by Joanna Cole, later developed into television series and videogames. The titular bus could travel safely to just about anywhere in time and space, allowing Ms Frizzle to teach her students about various scientific concepts. Cole died in 2020, the year a Netflix continuation, The Magic School Bus Rides Again, debuted. In the sequel, the original Ms Frizzle gets her doctorate and passes the school bus on to her younger sister, Miss Fiona Felicity Frizzle. In both the television and Netflix series, Valerie Frizzle is played by Lily Tomlin; Fiona was played by Kate McKinnon (of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters fame).
Lu-Tze and the History Monks first appear in 1992’s Small Gods (discussed in #Pratchat16, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Vorbis“). They are described as the caretakers of history, keepers of the “the books from which history is derived”. Lu-Tze is sent by the 493rd Abbot – the same one recently reincarnated in this book – to Omnia, where “things must be…carefully observed“. Lu-Tze mentions in Small Gods that he hasn’t been to Omnia in seven hundred years, which almost agrees with his age of eight hundred in this book, set about a century later. By the end of that book he has “patched up” history such that Brutha does not die, avoiding a century of terrible warfare; Brutha instead lives for most of the intervening century and reforms Omnianism. This suggests Lu-Tze’s mission to Omnia was one of the things that needed fixing as a result of the first glass clock; Igors are long-lived enough that this Igor’s grandfather could certainly have built the previous clock a century earlier, though it also seems that the History Monks are able to leave their valley at just about any point in history they choose. Lu-Tze will return in Night Watch.
Lu-Tze’s name is derived from Loazi (老子), author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, who lived in the 6th century BCE. Loazi – also romanised as Lao Tze or Loa Tzu – is actually an honorific title meaning “venerable master”, and there is some debate about who he was, or even if such a single person truly existed, or was just a pen name for multiple authors of the Tao Te Ching. Listener Felix let us known that Lu-Tze might be an intentional bilingual pun, as Lǔ is a Mandarin word meaning “foolish” or “crude”, making Lu-Tze a “Foolish/Crude Master”.
While we may not have been able to spot many references to specific kung fu movies, there’s at least one clear reference to the 1972 American TV series Kung Fu. When Lu-Tze takes on Lobsang as an apprentice, he tells him: ‘Word One is, you don’t call me “master” and I don’t name you after some damn insect.’ In Kung Fu, the main character Caine – played by white American actor David Carradine, who was cast over a host of potential Asian American actors, including Bruce Lee – is a Shaolin monk wandering the Old West looking for his brother. In flashbacks to his training, he refers to he teacher as “Master”, who calls Caine “Grasshopper”.
We previously talked about The Karate Kid (1984, dir. John G Avildsen) in #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes“. Mr Miyagi is the elderly Japanese neighbour of Danny LaRusso, who asks him to teach him karate so he can protect himself from the bullies at his new school. Miyagi sets Danny chores which are revealed to have taught him some basic movements essential to karate.
We’ve not yet nailed down which kung fu movie with the famous moving shot Liz is thinking about; suffice to say it’s not called The Tenth Dojo. If you know the one, please get in touch!
Speaking of kung fu cinema, one of the many things that inspired George Lucas’ Star Wars was the Master-Apprentice relationship in such films. Thus Jedi ideally begin training at a young age, and when they reach the rank of “Padawan” they are apprenticed to a Jedi Master, travelling with them and learning from them until the Jedi Council deems them worthy of the rank of Jedi Knight, at which point they have finished their apprenticeship.
The previous joke about people thinking wisdom has to come from far away appears in Witches Abroad (see #Pratchat12), where Magrat is reading The Path of the Scorpion, a book of which she is suspicious partly because the author – “Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler” – has an address in Ankh-Morpork. (The author is clearly CMOT Dibbler, leading us to wonder why the name “Lobsang” is apparently well-known on the Disc – and why Newgate Ludd ends up with it…) The full quote of the joke appears below (though see also the following note):
It’s a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.*
Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad (1991)
Mrs Marietta Cosmopolite appears in Moving Pictures, where she is a “little old lady” seamstress in Ankh-Morpork who becomes a costume designer in Holy Wood for Century of the Fruitbat Moving Pictures. She is also mentioned in the footnote to the quote above from Witches Abroad, which contains the first appearance of The Way of Mrs Cosmopolite, in which monks travel from the Hub mountains to hear her wisdom, though they can’t understand her. It would seem Lu-Tze was the first of these monks, since by the time others come to visit her she is hitting them with a broom and telling them to push off, rather than taking them in as lodgers. Her address is consistently given in all the books as 3 Quirm Street, an unusually specific bit of continuity that leads us to wonder if she is an obscure reference of some sort? (Despite that attention to detail, her surname is spelt “Cosmopolite” in all the books except Thief of Time, where its spelt “Cosmopilite”; the reasons for this are a mystery.)
Slaughterhouse-Five is Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 anti-war novel, in which protagonist Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time”, and thus experiences his life somewhat out of order. We previously discussed it in #Pratchat26. A film adaptation was made in 1972; Vonnegut was very happy with it.
Monstrous Regiment is the thirty-first Discworld novel, published in 2003. We’ll cover it in a future episode, but listener Steavie urged Guest Ben (and the rest of us) to listen to Pratchett’s interview for the Wheeler Centre in 2014 (now available only YouTube), which we previously linked to in #Pratchat26 when the interviewer, Michael Williams, was our guest. Pratchett talks (from around the 31:30 mark) about researching the history of women fighting and living as men at “a nice little place in London run by ladies who like other ladies very much indeed”. (In The Magic of Terry Pratchett, Marc Burrows identifies this research as taking place in “queer-focussed bookshops”, though no specific ones are named.) This seems a pretty good indication that he knew what he was writing, at least on some level.
The gay character in Unseen Academicals, Pepe the dwarf fashion designer, was quite definitely intended by Pratchett to be gay; in the same 2014 interview linked above, Pratchett describes Pepe being “as gay as a tree full of monkeys”. (The question and answer where he says this starts at around 16m30s.)
Of course there’s no way for us to know if Pratchett had many out gay friends, but he certainly met a great number of queer and trans fans, many of whom have shared stories via social media that show him to have been kind and empathetic towards them.
Many of the stories from the note above were reported in response to the “gender critical” incident, which we won’t give too much oxygen. (If you need some background on what “trans” means, guest Fury gives a little 101 in #Pratchat29.) The short version is that a couple of vocal anti-trans commentators, angry that Maragret Atwood had identified herself as a trans ally, got fed up with Neil Gaiman also being clearly pro-trans. So they suggested on Twitter that Terry Pratchett was more “acquainted with reality” than Gaiman and that the Witches books showed Pratchett knew “what female is and means in the world”. Twitter’s considerable number of Terry fans – including his daughter Rhianna – of course found this absurd, given the way he writes about gender roles in books like Equal Rites, Feet of Clay, The Fifth Elephant and Monstrous Regiment. That didn’t stop commentators claiming that we “couldn’t know” what he thinks as he wasn’t around to ask…though we reckon his closest friends and family might have a pretty good idea?
The idea of consensual reality is that the universe conforms to people’s beliefs. Wikiality is sort of the opposite idea – that people have a common idea of what’s true that might not align with objective reality. The word was coined by Stephen Colbert on the July 6, 2006 episode of his satirical show The Colbert Report; his right-wing persona, in his “The Wørd” segment, praised Wikipedia for being editable, meaning that it could be changed to reflect “truthiness”, Colbert’s parody of terms used by conservative politicians to deny facts they found inconvenient. He defined the word “wikiality” to mean “truth by consensus”, and encouraged his viewers to edit Wikipedia to change “facts”, making people believe things that weren’t true. This resulted in a whole thing where people edited multiple articles on Wikipedia to suggest the world’s elephant population had tripled…
We’ve previously mentioned alt.fan.pratchett, the newsgroup from the 1990s where Pratchett occasionally answered fan questions; see the notes for #Pratchat42 for more information.
Listener Vlad pointed out to us that there is indeed an aviator on the Discworld – Hamish, of the Nac Mac Feegle, is referred to as “Hamish the aviator” by Tiffany in Chapter 7 of The Wee Free Men (see #Pratchat32). While Tiffany presumably learned the word from her cover-to-cover read of the dictionary, in our Ben’s defence, it’s a bit weird that it’s in the dictionary if it’s a term invented by or for the Feegles – though as it comes from the same root word as “Avian”, it certainly makes sense for Hamish to use it, since he does his flying on birds! (We’ve since realised that this also applies to Corporal Buggy Swires, gnome recruit in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, who rides a heron in Night Watch.) All that said, in the same chapter Tiffany tells Hamish about a paratrooper toy she had as a younger child, so perhaps we just have to accept that things which were singular oddities before powered flight on Roundworld have somehow gained enough notice to become talked of frequently and affect language on the Disc…
Despite it being generally believed that he did, Terry did not cover nuclear reactors as a journalist; a case of wikiality in action! As Marc Burrows clarifies in his biography The Magic of Terry Pratchett, Terry quit journalism in 1979 (before he sold his first big novel) and took a job – mostly for the money – in public relations, specifically for the South-West office of the Central Electricity Generating Board (or CEGB). The job wasn’t meant to revolve around nuclear power, but the infamous partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US – causing the evacuation of 140,000 people – happened three weeks before he started, and the region covered by his office of the CEGB included three of Britain’s nuclear power plants. So of course he spent most of his time responding to public and media fears of meltdowns.
Lifetimers, mentioned only in passing in this book, are the hourglass-like devices which Death uses to determine when people on the Disc will die. Everyone has one, even the gods and – in Reaper Man at least – Death himself. While Death doesn’t always seem to need one – they’re not often referred to in his cameos to collect souls – Mort is taught to take with him the lifetimers of those he needs to visit in Mort, so our speculation that they’re required might be correct. (Death clearly has somewhere in his robe where he can hide them…)
Q – with the help of his department, Q Branch – is the boffin responsible for James Bond’s famous gadgets, like the car that could turn into a submarine, various watches with electromagnets, lasers and knockout gas, and a tiny rocket launcher disguised as a cigarette (no really) – plus of course dozens of different things that could explode. The character’s codename is short for “Quartermaster”, a military term which in the army refers to a senior soldier in charge of equipment and supplies. Q is mentioned but never appears in the original novels; the closest equivalent is Major Boothroyd, an armourer who appears in Dr. No, the sixth novel. Desmond Llewellyn appeared as Boothroyd in the film version of Dr. No, and the producers decided to keep him on as Q in subsequent films, merging the two characters together (or at least making audiences think they’re the same person). Llewellyn’s Q appears in seventeen of the Bond films, in scenes where he would show off gadgets to Bond and often have to remark “Oh do pay attention, 007”. He announced his plans to retire in 1999’s The World is Not Enough, which also introduced his assistant “R”, played by John Cleese, who took over as Q in the following film, 2002’s Die Another Day. The Daniel Craig Bond films feature a new younger Q, played by Ben Wishaw, who appears in Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die.
Desmond Llewellyn died in a car accident in December 1999, a few weeks after the release of The World is Not Enough, while on his way to a book signing. Thief of Time was published about eighteen months later, in May 2001, so Pratchett may have started writing it while Llewellyn was still alive. Terry’s quote on the matter from the Annotated Pratchett File is: “As I wrote it I could [hear Llewellyn’s voice], too. Qu will be back — unlike, alas, Desmond Llewellyn.” (Qu did come back, in Night Watch.)
The boffin with the exploding gadgets in Night Terrace – the time travel radio comedy co-produced, co-written and co-starring Ben – is Horatio Gray (played by The Chaser’s Andrew Hansen). He appears primarily in the second season episode “The Retirement of Horatio Gray”, and is the creation of Night Terrace co-creator Lee Zachariah. (You can find out more about the show at nightterrace.com.)
Guest Ben’s summary of the theory of relativity is pretty much spot on: special relativity was Einstein’s explanation for the speed of light, which had been observed in experiments to always be the same, even under conditions where you’d expect it to be different. The theory tells us that time and distance are not fixed, but are relative, in the same way we already though of motion as being relative. “History” – in this case, our personal perception of time – has to “give” to keep the speed of light constant in those circumstances. (General relativity, which came later, explained how special relativity interacted with gravity by combining space and time into a single set of dimensions we now know as “spacetime”. It describes gravity as a curving of spacetime near massive objects.) Of note is that the idea of time and distance being relative had already been worked out mathematically by Hendrik Lorentz, a Dutch physicist, ten years before Einstein, but he thought this was an abstract mathematical model, not a description of the way the physical universe worked. (This is why the equations involved in translating time and location information between frames of reference – between you on the surface of the Earth and a satellite in orbit, for example – are called Lorentz transformations.)
We’ve previously talked about Pratchett’s love of videogames in #Pratchat28 (about Only You Can Save Mankind) and #Pratchat36 (about Carpe Jugulum, which includes a pretty blatant reference to Tomb Raider). Of note: he was a big fan of roleplaying games too; his special favourite for a long time was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, largely because of the modding community of fans who create “mods” (modifications) that add in extra stuff, like being able to make a living from crafting, more realistic weather, even rainbows. You can read an out-take from a radio interview where he talked about this stuff on The Author Hour in 2009.
“Man not of woman born” is a reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which Lord Macbeth is given a prophecy by three witches that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth”. It later turns out that Macduff was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” – i.e. born via Caesarean section – which apparently doesn’t count as being “of woman born”. Bit of a long bow, if you ask us. Probably a closer analogue to what we were talking about was the prophecy in The Lord of the Rings, in which it is said of the mighty Witch-king, the Lord of the Nazgūl (the Ring-wraiths who serve Sauron), that “not by the hand of man shall he fall”. He ends up being killed instead by Merry (a hobbit) and Éowyn (a woman) at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. (This is the big fight between orcs and men at the city of Minas Tirith; it appears in the third book and film, The Return of the King.)
Reservoir Dogs (1992) was the first feature film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. In the film, six men participating in a bank heist refer to each other only by the pseudonyms Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange and Mr. Pink. In the scene where they get their aliases, they argue about the allocation of names, which are given out by the organiser. (Content warning for the clip: it’s not gentle language, and the crims are casually homophobic.)
Guest Ben talks about Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who, likening the incarnated Auditors to monsters from his era (perhaps the Whispermen from The Name of the Doctor), and the time in the museum to the the end of Matt Smith’s first season – The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.
Was Pratchett a Doctor Who fan? Not really…though he did enjoy the show. Writing for SFX magazine in 2010, he complained that it “breaks most of the laws of narrative”, and he derided the modern show as being powered by “makeitupasyougoalongeum”, a sentiment he repeated when writing the introduction to Behind the Sofa, a 2012 collection of celebrity reminiscences about the program published to raise money for Alzheimers research. (It was updated and expanded in 2013.) He did confess, in the SFX article, that despite his misgivings he continued to watch: “After all, when you’ve had your moan you have to admit that it is very, very entertaining, with its heart in the right place, even if its head is often in orbit around Jupiter.” (You can find some excerpts from the SFX article in this piece at The Guardian; Behind the Sofa is still available as an eBook.)
Both Death and the Doctor having a granddaughter named Susan is likely a deliberate decision on Pratchett’s part, given that in the introduction to Behind the Sofa (see above) he starts by saying “I was there in the beginning,” and refers to “that strange grandchild and rare teachers who took everything in their stride”. This is Susan, and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, the first humans to travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS.
The Horsemen of Good Omens are much more closely based on the Biblical account, inasmuch as that’s possible – Revelations doesn’t actually have that much to say about them, beyond the signature items that identify each of them, and the colours of their horses. Notably in these global pandemic times, the Pestilence of Good Omens quit the position in 1936, “muttering about penicillin”, though in the same paragraph his successor Pollution seems to think that was premature: “If only the old boy had known what opportunities the future had held…” (For more on all this, see #Pratchat15.)
The Horsemen of the Apocralypse previously rode out – or at least tried to – in Sourcery, when the magic unleashed by Coin, the Disc’s first sourcerer in millennia, released the ice giants from their prison and they rode towards Dunmanifestin to end the world, in a cataclysm more inspired by Norse mythology than the Bible. On that occasion, a certain amateur hairdresser, her barbarian sidekick, and the Seriph of Al Khali stole War, Pestilence and Famine’s horses, rather putting the kibosh on the whole thing. (See #Pratchat3 for more on Sourcery.)
There are still many thousands of deaths in hospitals caused by lack of hand washing. As recently as 2018 the World Health Organisation put the figure at up to 30,000 women and 400,000 babies every year from preventable infections, such as puerperal sepsis, though those numbers also include deaths due to lack of sanitation or clean water. It’s easy to forget that in the majority world (i.e. most of it outside the relatively affluent nations in places like North America, Western Europe and Oceania), those things aren’t guaranteed even in hospital facilities, and even health workers without consistent access to clean water and soap need to work at getting into the habit. Cleanliness in general was championed by many before the germ model of disease was accepted, including Florence Nightingale, though she apparently fudged her stats to push her case. The generally accepted pioneer of hand-washing in particular, though, was Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis, who in 1846 briefly convinced doctors working with pregnant women to wash their hands after conducting autopsies. It didn’t last…and his story has a sad ending. But you can learn more about the history of hand washing via this episode of NPR’s Short Wave podcast.
When our Ben mentions Dirk Gently, he is referring to the protagonist of Douglas Adams’ novels Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Dirk claims to solve mysteries via the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things”, one manifestation of which is that when he doesn’t know where to go, he follows someone who looks like they know where they’re going. Through this method he claims that, while he might not end up where he wanted to go, he frequently ended up somewhere he needed to be.
100 Story Building is a creative writing centre for young people based in Footscray in Melbourne. Ben has been one of their workshop facilitators since 2016. They primarily work with schools; you can find out more at 100storybuilding.org.au.
The Matrix: Resurrections is the upcoming 2021 sequel to the original Matrix trilogy, written and directed by half of the original Matrix creative duo, Lana Wachowski, with Lily’s blessing. In the first teaser trailer, there’s a shot of Keanu Reeves in the bath with a rubber duck on his head – and dedicated listener A’Tuin Sneezed beat our Ben to the punch with this tweet:
When Liz says “For Star Wars reasons we’re sending you to different places”, she’s referring to the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, in which twins Luke and Leia are sent into “hiding” from their father, Darth Vader. We used scare quotes there because they send Luke to Tattooine (his father’s home planet) to be cared for by his Uncle and Aunt through marriage (on his mother’s side), and Leia to Alderaan, where she’s adopted by Bail Organa, a galactic Senator (and secret Rebellion leader) well-known to Vader’s master, the Emperor. I mean…where else would you send them? Somewhere with no connection to the people trying to protect them, or their actual parents?
There are several “fifth Beatles”, but the best known is drummer Pete Best. He was indeed the fifth member of the band then called “The Silver Beatles” (though there had been others in John’s previous band, The Quarrymen). Pete joined John, Paul, George and Stuart (Sutcliffe), four guitarists in need of a drummer, in 1960. After Sutcliffe left, Best remained with the group until he was fired and replaced by Ringo Starr (whom, we’d like to point out, is never referred to as “the sixth Beatle”, which seems a little unfair). We previously talked about Pete in #Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind”. Ronnie Soak, having left under his own steam over “creative differences”, seems to have had the better treatment.
The fifth horseman doesn’t appear in a previous footnote, but there are a number of other groups of “four horsemen” of lesser disasters listed in Interesting Times, and Good Omens features “the Other Horsemen” – a bunch of bikies who ride out with the real four, arguing with each other over what their names should be.
There are many angels in the book of Revelations of the Christian Bible, though the one most resembling the angel mentioned in Thief of Time is probably the one from chapter 10, in an interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets. This angel appears to John of Patmos carrying “a little scroll”, and cries out with a lion’s roar; in response, seven thunders utter mysteries to John which he is not allowed to write down (and given what he is allowed to write down, must be pretty wild). The angel then gives the scroll to John and has him eat it, leading to a further vision in chapter 11 before the final trumpet sounds. Note that this is well after the four horsemen, who are introduced upon the opening of the first four of the seven seals, which is before the first trumpet. Revelations is a lot.
We’ve previously talked about the cosmic battle of Law versus Chaos in the work of Michael Moorcock in #Pratchat14, #Pratchat29, #Pratchat44 and #Pratchat45. While we don’t know if Pratchett ever corresponded with Moorcock, Moorcock was the editor who published Pratchett’s first professionally published story. See the notes for #Pratchat45 for more info.
In the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, alignment is a declaration of where a character stands in the opposition of the forces of good and evil, and law and chaos. It was much more significant and restrictive in older editions, where it was expected to dictate (or at least match) your character’s behaviour, and where magic could detect what your alignment was: Paladins – holy warriors who had to be on the side of lawful good to be granted their powers – could cast detect evil and determine straight up if someone was evil or not. In modern editions, it’s been described more as a guideline for actions, and the ability to detect alignments has been removed from the game; for example the equivalent spell is now detect evil and good, and it detects only beings that are intrinsically linked to forces of positive and negative energy, like angels, demons and the undead.
The Thunderdome – clear inspiration for the Iron Dome dojo in Oi Dong – is the gladiatorial arena featured in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985, dir. George Miller). It is used in the post-apocalyptic settlement of Bartertown to settle disagreements via a battle to the death – “two men enter, one man leaves”, as the crowd chants.
Albert is Death’s manservant, a major character in Mort and Hogfather, and a supporting character in Reaper Man and Soul Music, but who is mentioned exactly once in this book. Following the events of Soul Music, Albert has very little real life left to him, so while it’s not surprising he doesn’t take part in Thief of Time, it’s weird not to at least see him briefly in the opening scenes set in Death’s Domain.
Ysabell is Susan’s mother, a sixteen-year-old girl rescued and adopted by Death for reasons that are never fully explained. She appears in Mort, and briefly – during scenes set in the past – Soul Music.
The other characters we mention towards the end of the podcast are:
Angua von Überwald, werewolf member of the watch introduced in Men at Arms (#Pratchat1) and a major supporting character in most subsequent Watch books, especially The Fifth Elephant (#Pratchat40);
Agnes Nitt, a younger witch who first appears in Lords and Ladies (#Pratchat17) but is a major character in Maskerade (#Pratchat23) and Carpe Jugulum (#Pratchat36); and
Adorabelle Dearheart, who runs the Golem Trust in Ankh-Morpork, a major character in the Moist von Lipwig books starting with Going Postal (#Pratchat38).
The concept of “substition” also appears in Jingo (see #Pratchat27). Pratchett writes of 71-Hour Ahmed: “He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless were untrue. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed.” Rather appropriately for Thief of Time, among the examples of substitions he gives in Jingo is “It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it”.
The Doctor’s “pull the trigger, end my life” speech to the sniper occurs in part 2 of the 1988 story The Happiness Patrol. You can find the scene on YouTube.
In The Matrix films, “the machines” have enslaved humanity in a simulated reality – a 1999 megacity which forms the titular Matrix. Agents are the machines’ troubleshooting programs which hunt down humans who are resisting the Matrix program; they look like men in black and are stronger and faster than humans. Agent Smith is the main antagonist of the first film; during the sequels he becomes a virus-like entity who threatens to destroy the Matrix itself, something neither machines or humans want. The films also feature other “rogue programs”, intelligent bits of software who escape the machines’ mainframe and live in the Matrix, where they take on the forms of humans or human-like creatures.
You can find out more about the OverLondon Project (not to be confused with London Above, London Below or Fallen London) at overlondon.net.
The software toy Mountain was developed by Irish artist David OReilly and published by Double Fine Productions, the games company founded by Tim Schafer of LucasArts and Monkey Island fame. Originally released in 2014, it received a major 2.0 update in 2018 (at no additional cost). It’s still available on Steam (for Windows and Mac) and for smartphones and tablets. (This discussion has prompted our Ben to reinstall it and have another play with it; while working on these notes, a brain and a bomb embedded themselves in the side of his mountain! Let us know if you check it out too.) The 2017 follow up was Everything, which simulates an entire universe – a bit like Roundworld Project!
The main staff of The Ankh-Morpork Times are William de Word, Sacharissa Cripslock and Otto von Schriek, all introduced in The Truth (#Pratchat42). Sacharissa and Otto especially appear in cameo roles in several later books.
Pteppic is the protagonist of Pyramids (see #Pratchat5).
The 2019 TV show Pennyworth tells the story of how ex-British special forces officer Alfred Pennyworth ends up working for the wealthy Wayne family in America, and is set in an alternate universe in which the Nazis won World War II. (Sigh…there are other alternate universes, right?) Two seasons have been made for the US cable channel ePix, and there’s talk of a third, perhaps for HBO Max. Reports are that it’s…okay, actually?
The fates of Greek mythology are the Moirai, last mentioned in #Pratchat36. The version in which they number three is best known; those three are Clotho (spinner in ancient Greek), who spins new threads; Lachesis (alotter), who measures the threads; and Atropos (inevitable), who cuts the threads. Our Ben’s idea of a recycler might be named Nostos, which is Ancient Greek for “returner”.
While the cat doesn’t appear in the Chinese “zodiac”, it does appear as the fourth sign in the Vietnamese equivalent, replacing the Chinese rabbit. There are multiple versions of the story Liz mentions; several involve Cat being tricked by Rat, or even Rat just not waking Cat up as requested, explaining their modern day relationship.
These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 66, “Ol’ No Eyes Is Back“, discussing the 2010 Discworld novel, I Shall Wear Midnight, with returning guest Amie Kaufman.
Iconographic Evidence
We refer a few times to Pratchett’s 2010 Richard Dimbleby lecture, “Shaking Hands With Death”. It was published in 2012, and then collected in A Slip of the Keyboard in 2014, and we’ll have an episode on it in due course. You can watch the whole thing below, as the lecture is televised on BBC One, though the YouTube clip is not an official upload. Pratchett was unable to read it himself on the night, and gave the gig to Tony Robinson.
Notes and Errata
The episode title riffs on the classic 1973 Frank Sinatra album Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. It’s also, because we’re big nerds, a reference to Ol’ Yellow Eyes Is Back, the 1991 album by Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Brent Spiner, whose android character Data has golden eyes. Ben was delighted to discover another riff on the title while looking up these details: Old Brown Ears Is Back, a 1993 album by noted muppet pianist and singer, Rowlf the Dog!
Guest Amie Kaufman was last on way back in July 2018 for #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven”, discussing Truckers. Her most recent books at the time were Ice Wolves, the first in the Elementals trilogy, and Obsidio, the final book in the Illuminae Files trilogy with Jay Kristoff. Since then she’s published the two other Elementals books, Scorch Dragons and Battle Born; another YA sci-fi trilogy with Kristoff, the Aurora Cycle; the Illuminae Files novella Memento (a hard to get publisher exclusive); two duologies with Meagan Spooner, The Other Side of the Sky and Beyond the End of the World, and Unearthed and Undying; and two books with Ryan Graudin, The World Between Blinks and Rebellion of the Lost. So by our count, that’s actually eleven novels and one novella!
The blurb Amie reads seems to be from an American edition of the book, but we’re not sure which one. If you know, please tell us! A new edition is on the way in June, with a new cover matching the other recent paperback editions, and it uses a blurb very similar to, though shorter than, the one Amie reads. The old blurb was: A man with no eyes. No eyes at all. Two tunnels in his head… It’s not easy being a witch, and it’s certainly not all whizzing about on broomsticks, but Tiffany Aching – teen witch – is doing her best. Until something evil wakes up, something that stirs up all the old stories about nasty old witches, so that just wearing a pointy hat suddenly seems a very bad idea. Worse still, this evil ghost from the past is hunting down one witch in particular. He’s hunting for Tiffany. And he’s found her…
Pratchett doesn’t say in his Richard Dimbleby Lecture that he gives the death he describes for his father to the Baron, but the Guardian piece mentioned above draws the same conclusion.
On the subject of Boffo, Wintersmith pretty directly tells us it isn’t a common practice for witches to buy stuff from there, at least not in the Ramtops. In chapter 3, “The Secret of Boffo”, Tiffany asks Miss Treason directly:
‘Do all witches buy from Boffo?’ said TIffany. ‘Only me, at least around here. Oh, and I believe Old Mistress Breathless over in Two Falls used to buy warts from there.’
Granny previously visited Ankh-Morpork in Equal Rites (see #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes”), and again with Nanny Ogg in Maskerade (#Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt”).
In Equal Rites there’s exactly one mention of city witches: they’ve left “witch marks” on the outside of the rear doors of Unseen University, advising any witches who visit that they are welcome and that the housekeeper Mrs Whitlow is “gullible and foolish”; Granny notes that “city witches didn’t seem that bright themselves”, though she doesn’t meet any or mention that any live in Ankh-Morpork. After spending some time with Mrs Whitlow, who at the time considered herself a psychic medium and put on posh airs, Granny wonders if she isn’t a “born witch who somehow missed her training”. She also does some witchery for folks while staying in the city, including brewing potions with the excitingly cheap glassware available.
In Maskerade, when she arranges lodgings in the Shades, Granny describes Mrs Palm as “an old friend. Practic’ly a witch.” But there’s no mention of any actual city witches.
More notes coming soon!
Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.
These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 65, “Let There Be Gaimans“, discussing several pieces from the “Scribbling Intruder” section of Pratchett’s 2014 nonfiction anthology, A Slip of the Keyboard, with special guest Peter M Ball.
Iconographic Evidence
We’ve mentioned it before a few times, but here again is Michael Williams’ interview with Terry Pratchett from 2013, during his tour to promote Snuff, titled “Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.” (It used to be available as an audio recording, but now it’s only available via YouTube.)
Notes and Errata
The episode title is probably not Ben’s best work, but it was there…
GenreCon is a writing conference in Meanjin (aka Brisbane) specifically for genre writers that tries to cover as many genres as possible: science fiction, romance, crime, fantasy, horror, and more. It just ran its eighth conference from 17-19 February 2023, with this year’s guests including friends of this podcast Garth Nix (#Pratchat51, “Boffoing the Winter Slayer“) and Will Kostakis (#Pratchat18, “Sundog Gazillionaire” and #Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem“).
The Queensland Writers Centre is a not-for-profit membership organisation supporting local writers of all kinds. It was established in January 1990, and as well as GenreCon runs workshops and other events, and provides various services including consulting, mentorship and manuscript assessment and editing.
The Author is the quarterly journal of The Society of Authors, established in 1884, and is the UK’s union for writers, illustrators and literary translators – not just for authors any more! Terry was Chair of their Management Committee from 1994 to 1995, helping to shape their policy and strategy. His time in those meetings inspired the short story “A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices”, which we discussed in #Pratchat63. He was also elected as a member of the Society’s Council. Philip Pullman was President of the Society from 2013 until early 2022, when he resigned following some controversy around a memoir. The current Chair is Joanne Harris, best known for her novel Chocolat. Notably both Harris and Pullman were some of the more level-headed voices speaking up about the Roald Dahl rewrite controversy (see below), with Harris in favour of the changes, and Pullman advocating letting Dahl’s books fade away without being republished.
Ben is wrong about one thing in his FAQ footnote: the Pratchett newsgroups (see below) did have an FAQ! You can still find it at lspace.org here. We think this was the last version, updated in 2005; like the Annotated Pratchett File (also see below), it was maintained by Leo Breebaart, who also created the L-Space web.
We’ve previously talked about newsgroups in #Pratchat10 and #Pratchat42, but for context: the Usenet system was created in 1980 as an Internet-based alternative to local Bulletin Board Systems. Setting standards that would later be used by web-based internet forums, they organised posts by users into conversation-like “threads” of messages, which were themselves organised into “newsgroups” under hierarchical categories, similar to (but distinct from) domain names. There were three newsgroups of primary interest to Pratchett fans: alt.books.pratchett for discussion of the books themselves; alt.fan.pratchett (the big one) for general fan chit-chat (though this often included the books); and alt.fan.pratchett.announce, a moderated group for announcements of signings and other events of interest to fans. Pratchett was active on the first two.
Peter says Pratchett started publishing Discworld in about ’88, but we suspect he meant that the Discworld really took off around then, with the publication of the fourth and fifth books, Sourcery and his first really big hit, Wyrd Sisters. The Colour of Magic was first published in November 1983.
Pratchett’s fifth and tenth books (including the three pre-Discworld ones) were The Light Fantastic in 1985, and Pyramids in 1989. The gap in between contained the first big growth spurts of the Internet, but to put them in perspective, Tim Berners Lee only created the first version of the World Wide Web in 1989, and the first widely available web browser, Mosaic, didn’t launch until 1993 – by which time Pratchett was onto his twenty-fourth book, Johnny and the Dead! If you wanted to chat to people on the internet, newsgroups and mailing lists were the go in the 1990s…
In Benjamin Partridge’s monthly comedy podcast, The Beef and Dairy Network Podcast, Partridge plays the unnamed host of the fictional industry body’s podcast. Through mostly unscripted interviews with characters played by various guest actors and comedians, Partridge slowly builds up a bizarre alternate reality over many years. One of the recurring characters is disgraced “Bovine Poet Laureate” Michael Banyan (played by comedian Henry Paker), author of a book of cow poetry titled Crab of the Land, who often tells outrageous stories about partying with Jonathan Franzen.
ChatGPT is an “AI chatbot” created by the company OpenAI and publicly launched in a prototype state in November 2022. It’s capable of producing sophisticated text responses to prompts using the GPT 3 large language model previously created by OpenAI, and as a result has become hugely popular and controversial. It’s not actually intelligent; rather it uses statistical models based on a huge corpus of text (i.e. large parts of the internet up to 2021) to assemble sentences, poems or lines of code which are drawn from that corpus. We’ll probably talk about it some more in the next episode of our subscriber-only bonus podcast, Ook Club.
Pratchett told alt.fan.pratchett he was leaving for the reasons outlined in “this piece”Wyrd Ideas” on the 3rd February 1999, after a user speculated about Sam and Sybil having children (he was writing The Fifth Elephant at the time). This was despite other users in the group (and possibly the version of the FAQ available at the time) asking people not to do this sort of thing. You can see his post here – and thanks to Jo and Francine of The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, who saved Ben the trouble of searching for this by linking to it from their own episode notes! Pratchett didn’t leave newsgroups altogether; he continues to “lurk” (i.e. read without posting much) on alt.books.pratchett and other newsgroups (mostly about videogames) until around 2008.
We mention several famous writers who published their works in serial form, usually in magazines. But we could have mentioned many more! As well as French authors Jules Verne, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, there’s also Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson and many, many more.
Speaking of Alexandre Dumas, his surname is pronounced “Doo-ma”. He was indeed paid by the line by some of the newspapers who published his stories, though others paid him by episode, leading to very long books rather than very short dialogue. According to some accounts, his publishers eventually caught on to his writing style, and insisted that a line had to fill half a newspaper column to count, supposedly forcing him to kill off a monosyllabic character he’d invented to extend his dialogue. Charles Dickens, by contrast, is said to have written verbosely as he was paid by the word, but in fact he was paid for instalments which had a very specific page count (32 pages in some accounts). Like a first year arts student, he may have used more words to fill the pages faster…a style emulated by Pratchett in Dodger (discussed in #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh“).
Watch this space for a brief history of fanfic, but in the meantime you can check out Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) for yourself – and yes, there’s an extensive Discworld collection there!
The Nanny (not Nanny Ogg) was a hugely popular American sitcom which ran from 1993 to 1999 – coincidentally the period between “Kevins” and “Wyrd Ideas” – on the CBS network. It starred co-creator Fran Drescher as Fran Fine, a down on her luck Jewish woman from Queens who tries selling makeup door-to-door. She’s hired by high class English Broadway producer and widower Maxwell Sheffield to be the new nanny to his three children, and the two have a will-they or won’t-they relationship aided by Sheffield’s butler Niles and opposed by Sheffield’s business partner C.C. Babcock.
The Neil Gaiman Masterclass on “The Art of Storytelling” is offered as part of the Masterclass streaming video service, which features hundreds of tutorials from famous leaders in their fields covering everything from acting to philosphy, personal style and astronomy. The BBC has a similar series of videos, BBC Maestro, with a class on Storytelling hosted by Alan Moore.
Pratchett used the term “figgin” for the kind of joke Peter describes because he used the word for exactly that kind of joke in Guards! Guards! In that novel, figgin is used by the Supreme Grand Master of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night in one of the order’s oaths, secure in the knowledge that none of his flock knows what it means. (In this instance Pratchett doesn’t make us wait until the very end to discover the truth for ourselves; it’s defined in a footnote. In fact he only uses the word eight times in the novel, and three of those are callbacks made after the footnote.)
To avoid confusion, Ben would like to explain that the “sherbert lemon” kind of joke is not an example of shelving, which is when a comedian mentions a concept seemingly in passing so that they can come back to it later in a new context once the audience has forgotten about it and helping the comedy work through surprising recognition. (There’s a reason explaining how comedy works is described as “dissecting the frog”.)
Pratchett is on record (in the APF, of course) that there’s no pun in Twoflower: “[…] there’s no joke in Twoflower. I just wanted a coherent way of making up ‘foreign’ names and I think I pinched the Mayan construction (Nine Turning Mirrors, Three Rabbits, etc.).”
Andrew Harman is the English author of eleven pun-filled comic fantasy novels, published between 1993 and 2000. Most of them are set in the medieval fantasy kingdom of Rhyngill and surrounds, and five, beginning with The Sorcerer’s Appendix and ending with One Hundred and One Damnations, form a loose series following the adventures of the peasant Firkin and his friends. Harman went on to find more creative success as a game designer, founding his own publisher, YAY Games, which specialises in “gateway games” – ones that work well for introducing new people to hobby boardgames.
Fawlty Towers, John Cleese’s classic sitcom farce about long-suffering but obnoxious hotel manager Basil Fawlty, ran for two series in 1975 and 1979 on BBC Two. It is often cited amongst the greatest sitcoms ever made, though its characters and many of the episodes’ premises rely heavily on ethnic and gender stereotypes. The titular hotel is located in the resort town of Torquay in the coastal “English Rivieria” region of Devon. Cleese was inspired to create the setting and main character for the show after an experience with the manager of a real Torquay hotel where the Monty Python crew stayed while filming on location in 1971.
For some perspective on the Roald Dahl rewrite controversy, you could do worse than these pieces from The Conversation:
