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Bromeliad

#Pratchat64 – GNOME Terry Pratchett

8 February 2023 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

This month, Ben flies solo with guest Andy Matthews as they reach back into Pratchett’s earliest fiction to discuss Beatrix Potter, writing practice, The Matrix…oh, and Terry’s 1973 short story for the Bucks Free Press, “RIncemangle, the Gnome of Even Moor”!

The suspiciously familiar-sounding Gnome Rincemangle lives a sad, solitary life on the strange and mysterious (but also wet and cold) Even Moor. One day an owl tells him about the wonders of the nearby human village of Blackbury, so off he goes, accidentally hitching a ride on a lorry to department store. There he discovers he’s not the only Gnome in the world – but is the Store truly as much of a paradise as it seems?

Written on Thursday evenings for “Uncle Jim’s” children’s page when Pratchett himself was just 25 years old, this story forms the blueprint for the novel Truckers, published sixteen years later. How has Pratchett’s writing evolved over time? Is Andy right that “yearning” lies at the heart of his most successful work? Would this story amuse or frighten your children? Which of his other short stories should we give the full episode treatment? And is Pratchett the undisputed king of “fishing in his own stream” (sorry again, Ryn), or is this something all writers do, just less obviously? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat64.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_64.mp3

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https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_64.mp3

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Guest Andy Matthews is a comedian, podcaster and most recently an author. He writes and performs sketch comedy with Alasdair Trembly-Birchall, both live and on the podcast Two in the Think Tank, and the pair previously hosted the ABC radio comedy science quiz The Pop Test. Andy is also the Director of Stupid Old Studios, a podcast and video production studio in Melbourne, and the author of two volumes (so far) of Gustav & Henri, a “science fiction mystery time travel detective story” about friendship and snacks starring a dog and a pig, illustrated by Peader Thomas. You can find Andy on Twitter at @stupidoldandy, and his podcast at @twointank.

You’ll find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

For our March episode, we’re going where Pratchat has never gone before: into Pratchett’s nonfiction! Author, publisher and roleplayer Peter M. Ball joins us for a collection of Pratchett’s scribblings about genre, fandom and Neil Gaiman. The specific pieces are “Kevins”, “Wyrd Ideas”, “Let There Be Dragons” and “Notes From A Successful Fantasy Author”, plus “Neil Gaiman: Amazing Master Conjuror” and Neil’s foreword to the book in which all of these were collected, 2014’s A Slip of the Keyboard. You’ll find all of those (except the foreword) in the book’s first section, “A Scribbling Intruder”. Send us your questions about them via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, or on social media using the hashtag #Pratchat65.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Andy Matthews, Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Bucks Free Press, Nomes, Short Fiction, standalone, Younger Readers

#Pratchat20 – The Thing Beneath My Wings

8 June 2019 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

For our twentieth episode we finish our first Pratchett series! Elizabeth and Ben are joined by writer Dr Lili Wilkinson to discover the final fate of Masklin, Angalo, Gurder and the rest of the Nomes in Terry Pratchett’s 1990 conclusion to the Bromeliad: Wings! (If you need to catch up, you can find Truckers in #Pratchat9, and Diggers in #Pratchat13.)

When Masklin arrived in the Store, he learned that the Thing – an ancient artefact handed down for thousands of generations – wasn’t just a useless box, but could speak. It helped him save the Nomes from the destruction of the Store, and revealed that their people came to Earth long ago from a distant star. Masklin knows Nomes can’t run and hide from humans forever. So with the help of the Abbott Gurder and explorer Angalo, he’s going to sneak onto a Concorde and go to Florida to hijack a satellite so the Thing can talk to their starship and fly them to another planet. Not that Masklin understands what most of those words mean…

The Book of the Nomes concludes with a rollicking, fast-paced adventure with big questions about identity, religion, philosophy and taking risks to do what’s right. Oh, and some frogs. Picking up from where we left them at the start of Diggers, Wings follows Masklin, Angalo and Gurder as they travel vast distances, meet their own gods and eventually have a close encounter of the Nome kind. Did you find the ending satisfying? How does the mix of fantasy and sci-fi tropes sit with you? Do you wish there’d been more stories of the Nomes? We’d love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #Pratchat20 on social media to join the conversation.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_20.mp3

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Guest Dr Lili Wilkinson is an author based in Melbourne. She’s written a dozen books for young adults and middle grade readers, including The Boundless Sublime (about a girl who gets sucked into a cult), After the Lights Go Out (in which a girl is prepped for the apocalypse by her Dad…and then it happens), and Green Valentine, a romance featuring shopping trolleys, a lobster costume and a whole lot of gardening. Lili also started insideadog.com.au, an online community for bookish teens, and the Inky Awards, Australia’s only reader’s choice award for YA fiction. Watch out for her new picture book Clancy the Quokka in October 2019. You can find Lili online at liliwilkinson.com.au and on Twitter at @twitofalili.

You can find the full show notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

In July we’re visiting a distant part of the Disc and finally catching up with everyone’s* favourite inept wizard, Rincewind, as we’ll be joined by David Ryding of Melbourne City of Literature to return to the Discworld series for Interesting Times! Get your questions in via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat21.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

* Well…all right. Ben’s favourite inept wizard. Though Catweazle, Ergo the Magnificent and Meredith are all up there as well.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Angalo, Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Elizabeth Flux, Gurder, Lili Wilkinson, Masklin, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld, Wings

#Pratchat9 – Upscalator to Heaven

8 July 2018 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

For our ninth episode we leave the Discworld again as author Amie Kaufman joins us to discuss Terry Pratchett’s Truckers. One of four novels Pratchett published in 1989, it introduces the Nomes – Pratchett’s second group of tiny folk living at the edges of the human-sized world.

Masklin is the young hunter in a group of Nomes: four-inch tall fast-living people struggling to survive on rats and the scraps they can scavenge from the human world. After two Nomes are killed by a fox, Masklin convinces the group to hitch a ride on one of the humans’ enormous vehicles, and they find themselves in the Store: Arnold Bros (set 1905), a wondrous place filled with food, warmth – and more Nomes than they have ever seen. As they try to adjust to the peculiar ways of life in the Store, its electricity revives “The Thing”, an ancient Nome artefact handed down for generations. It reveals to Masklin that Nomes were stranded on Earth millennia ago, but there’s hardly time to understand what that means before The Thing warns of immediate danger: the Store will be demolished in just fourteen days… 

Truckers is a middle grade book – it has chapters and no footnotes! – which is nonetheless charming for “adults of all ages”, as Sir Terry liked to inscribe copies. In Masklin, Grimma, Granny Morkie and the other Nomes are echoes of Pratchett characters we love, and it’s perhaps surprisingly sophisticated in its satire, social commentary and love of wordplay. It forms the first part of “the Bromeliad” trilogy (a name explained by the sequels), but is also a complete and wonderful story all on its own. We’d love to hear what you thought of Truckers: use the hashtag #Pratchat9 on social media to join the conversation. But do try to use small words…

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_09.mp3

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Amie Kaufman is on social media, but if you really want to keep up with what she’s up to, we recommend hitting her web site, amiekaufman.com. Her novels include the The Illuminae Files YA sci-fi trilogy, co-authored with Jay Kristoff, and for younger readers Ice Wolves, the first in a new middle grade fantasy series.

We’ll head back to the Disc next time when we grab a bag of banged grains and take in a few clicks in Moving Pictures! We haven’t currently confirmed our guest, but we’ll be sure to tell you who they are when we can lock in a date! You can still ask questions to be answered on the podcast by sending them in via social media; use the hashtag #Pratchat10 so we can find them!

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get subscriber bonuses, like the exclusive bonus podcast Ook Club!

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Amie Kaufman, Angalo, Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Dorcas, Elizabeth Flux, Grimma, Gurder, Masklin, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld, Truckers

#Pratchat13 – Don’t Quarry Be Happy

8 November 2018 by Pratchat Imps 2 Comments

In episode thirteen, Marlee Jane Ward joins us to talk Terry Pratchett’s Diggers! Published in 1990, it picks up where Truckers left off, splitting the story of the Nomes in two. (You can catch up on Truckers in #Pratchat9, and join us for the end of the story in #Pratchat20.)

The Nomes, having fled the destruction of the Store in a stolen lorry, have spent six months – something like five years in Nome time – making a new life in an abandoned quarry. But as humans start to take an interest in their new home, Grimma must hold the quarry Nomes together – no easy task when Nisodemus, the acting Abbott, is trying to convince them all to return to the old ways of the Store. Meanwhile Dorcas, the engineer who made the Long Drive possible, has made a secret discovery in one of the old quarry sheds – a mighty beast, known only as Jekub…

With many of the main characters from Truckers exiting the novel quite early on, Diggers focuses on Grimma and Dorcas, with the books’ events happening concurrently with those in the third book, Wings. Among its many themes are Pratchetty commentaries on religion, faith, community and responsibility, as well as many new jokes about the ways in which Nomes misunderstand humans – or, perhaps, understand humans perfectly. Have you read Diggers? What did you think? Use the hashtag #Pratchat13 on social media to join the conversation. We particularly want to see your original drawings of Nomes (see the original description from Truckers in the notes below), and to hear what you think about the exciting news of the The Watch TV series being officially greenlit by BBC America! 

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_13.mp3

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Guest Marlee Jane Ward is an author and writer, best known for the YA sci-fi novella Welcome to Orphancorp, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adults in and it’s sequel Psynode, both published by Seizure. A third and final book in the series, Prisoncorop, was published in 2019. Marlee also has a podcast of her own, Catastropod, in which she discusses apocalyptic fiction with a variety of guests. You can find out more about Marlee at her web site, marleejaneward.com, or by following her on Twitter at @marleejaneward.

You can find the full show notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

November 24, 2018 marks a special Pratchett anniversary – 35 years since the publication of the very first Discworld novel! That’s right, we’re going back to the very beginning to read The Colour of Magic and find out if it really is a very good place to start, with help from fantasy writer and freelance editor, Joel Martin! We’re sure you have loads of questions, so please send them in via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat14.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Diggers, Dorcas, Elizabeth Flux, Grimma, Marlee Jane Ward, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld

#Pratchat13 Notes and Errata

8 November 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 13, “Don’t Quarry Be Happy“, featuring guest Marlee Jane Ward, discussing the second book of the Bromeliad, 1990’s Diggers.

  • The episode title puns Bobby McFerrin’s famous 1988 a cappella hit, “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. It originally appeared on the soundtrack to the Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown film Cocktail, and the music video features Robin Williams. Despite persistent rumours that he had died by suicide – fuelled seemingly by nothing more than folks liking the supposed irony – McFerrin is not dead and continues to work as a jazz vocalist and musical genius.
  • Marlee’s story “The Walking Thing” and Liz’s story “Naming Rights” can both be found in the short story anthology Best Summer Stories published by Black Inc.
  • Neil Gaiman is an English writer who started out as a journalist, but became better known for his comic book work. His most famous series, Sandman for DC’s mature imprint Vertigo, chronicles the life of Dream, also known as Morpheus, one of the seven Endless, anthropomorphic personifications of concepts including Destiny, Despair and, yes, Death. (See the Once and For All podcast for a comparison.) Gaiman was the first journalist to interview Terry, soon after the publication of The Light Fantastic, and the two quickly became friends. Neil has since gone on to become a best-selling novelist, award-winning screenwriter and, most recently, a TV producer, in order to keep a promise to Terry that the television adaptation of Good Omens – the novel they wrote together, based on an idea of Neil’s – would be good.
  • The creepy little girl with long black hair who walks weirdly is Sadako, the vengeful spirit of a young girl murdered and thrown into a well in Ring, a 1998 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. It was remade in English as The Ring in 2002, directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts. Both versions follow the plot of the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki, which was been made into an earlier 1995 film and a television series in 1999.
  • Ten is indeed an aspirational age for outdoor nomes, but is about the expected number of years for Store nomes. The original Abbott in Truckers died at the age of fifteen, and was considered extremely long-lived.
  • “Winter is coming” are the words of House Stark, one of the noble houses struggling for control of the fantasy kingdom of Westeros in George R. R. Martin’s blockbuster series of fantasy novels, “A Song of Ice and Fire”, adapted for television as Game of Thrones. The Stark words are significant in Westeros because their Winters do not come regularly or last for a consistent amount of time.
  • John Snow is one of the main protagonists of Game of Thrones, an illegitimate son of the head of House Stark, though there’s much speculation about whether this is in fact true. His character in some ways resembles Masklin: he is a born leader who wishes he didn’t have to lead, and prefers to go off on his own to get things done.
  • The “guy in King’s Landing who makes stuff” mentioned by Liz could be a few different people, including Tobho Mott, the blacksmith, Hendry, Mott’s apprentice, or Hallyne the Pyromancer, who mostly makes wildfire, an alchemical substance which burns long and hot.
  • In Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 time travel comedy Back to the Future, high school student Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) is transported 30 years into the past and accidentally stops his parents from having the meeting that led to their relationship and marriage. In his efforts to help his father George (Crispin Glover) get together with his mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) he gives him some pointers on how to talk to her; George misreads his notes as “my density has bought me to you“.
  • In the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anya is a former vengeance demon who once granted the wishes of women who had been wronged by men. In her first appearance her source of power is destroyed and she becomes mortal, and she provides a great deal of comic relief as she struggles to adjust to normal human life. She has a fraught relationship with Xander, the regular human of the group, and the end of her story is…well. We won’t spoil it for you. (It’s not a Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast after all.)
  • The Castle is a 1997 Australian comedy film about the working class Kerrigan family, whose fight the compulsory acquisition of their Melbourne home, which is extremely close to an airport. The film is a cultural touchstone in Australia, grossing over $10m domestically, and many lines from the film are now part of the Australian vernacular.
  • Muriel’s Wedding is a 1994 Australian comedy film about socially awkward Muriel, who dreams of a white wedding and moving to Sydney to escape her unhappy life, bullying friends and domineering father. It was a breakout role for Toni Collette, and also starred Rachel Griffiths and Bill Hunter. A box office smash and classic of Australian cinema, it was adapted into a stage musical in 2017, featuring both original songs and many by ABBA, which feature heavily in the film. Liz’s comment that the film is “terrible” references the famous line from the film featured in the trailer: “You’re terrible, Muriel!”
  • Enter the Dragon is a 1973 martial arts film starring Bruce Lee. He plays “Lee”, a kung fu instructor persuaded to attend a martial arts tournament to infiltrate the criminal empire of a drug lord.
  • Although it feels like more, Australia has had six Prime Ministers (including Kevin Rudd twice) between 2007 and the time of writing in November 2018. This is in sharp contrast to the eleven-year Prime Ministership of the previous incumbent, John Howard. 
  • For more on Australian leadership spills, see Liz’s article for The Guardian, “Another nick in the wall at Melbourne cemetery’s Prime Minister’s Garden” from August 2018, and Marlee’s blog post “Two Strong Women and the Whole World Watching: The Spill & The Filibuster” from June 2013.
  • You can read about the “Friends for Stability” WhatsApp group, which played a crucial role in the most recent (as of November 2018) leadership spill, in this ABC News article from August 2018.
  • The “Geneva Conventions” are several treaties and protocols that established international legal standards for the treatment of combatants, prisoners and civilians in war. You can read more about them with commentary at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Pratchett references the conventions – or the idea of them – in several books, including the first Johnny Maxwell novel, Only You Can Save Mankind, where one of the ScreeWee aliens mocks the idea of having rules in war.
  • “Millennials are destroying X” became such a pervasive mainstream media discussion topic by mid 2018 that it was subject to widespread deconstruction via a Twitter hashtag and several response articles. “Here is a list of things that millennials are killing” at The Comeback is a good place to start if you want to read about it.
  • The “O-Bahn Busway” is a sort of weird fusion between bus lane and railway in which busses travel without stopping along a guided track between major interchanges. Brisbane’s busways are similar and longer, but do not have guiding tracks like the O-Bahn. In both cases parts of the busway are underground.
  • Pixar’s Cars series of films have generated much discussion because the living, personified cars seem to exist in a world with no humans, and yet they still have doors, and drive on roads amongst human buildings. If you want to wander down the hellish road this has led some to pave, just google “Pixar Cars theories”; you’ll find versions where the cars are AI vehicles who have taken on the personalities of their last driver, where they are highly evolved insects, and where they are a weird fusion of human and technology. All of them are disturbing.
  • There are lots of explanations for why we traditionally say “bless you!” when someone sneezes, but none can be definitively proven to be the one true source. Myth-debunking web site Snopes has a list of many of them.
  • Local authorities ignoring the hero’s warnings of a murderer, monster or other source of mayhem aren’t restricted to 80s films; the TV Tropes web site has a whole list of films, TV shows and other media in which the hero cries “You have to believe me!” to no avail.
  • The original description of Masklin from chapter one of Truckers says he is “a small, stumpy figure”, then goes on: “It was not entirely human. There were definitely the right number of arms and legs, and the additional bits like eyes and so on were in the usual places, but the figure that was now creeping across the darkened floor in its mouseskins looked like a brick wall on legs. Nomes are so stocky that a Japanese Sumo wrestler would look half-starved by comparison, and the way this one moved suggested that it was considerably tougher than old boots.”
  • On the subject of punching sharks in the nose, shark researcher Ryan Johnson in this BBC article from 2017 suggests that if you are being attacked already, you might as well just go at the shark as hard as you can, preferably with an inanimate object if you have one handy. Shark expert Dr David Shiffman, interviewed by The Smithsonian in 2013, reckons you should try poking the shark in the eye, since punching anything in the water is very difficult. Both articles remind us all that we are very, very unlikely to be attacked by a shark. Even in Australia.
  • In his 1955 lecture “English and Welsh”, J. R. R. Tolkien described the phrase “cellar door” as among the most beautiful in the English language, though he was speaking only of the sounds of the words, not their meaning.
  • Douglas Adams fans do not usually describe themselves as anything except “Douglas Adams fans”, but many do celebrate Towel Day each year on the 25th of May – coincidentally the date of The People’s Revolution of the Glorious 25th of May, as previously discussed in episode 7A.
  • The Emperor’s New Groove is a 2000 Disney animated film about Kuzco (David Spade), a teenage Incan emperor who is magically transformed into a llama by evil sorceress Yzma (Eartha Kitt) when he fires her as his advisor. He teams up with a humble farmer, Pacha (John Goodman) to take back the throne, while Yzma and her sidekick Kronk (Patrick Warburton) try to find Kuzco. The film was a modest box office success – if a disappointment compared to most of Disney’s 90s films – but has found a devoted audience since its release. Its development was so protracted and troubled – including not only the Sting incident mentioned by Liz, but multiple major changes in personnel and direction – that there’s a documentary about its production titled The Sweatbox.
  • “JCB” is a single from the album Half of These Songs Are About You by the English alternative folk duo Nizlopi, who are sadly no longer performing together. The super cute music video is on YouTube, and includes a hand-drawn JCB which the song also describes as a “digger”. (It seems to be the same kind of digger as Jekub.)
  • The “how dinosaurs are drawn” episode of 99% Invisible is “Welcome to Jurassic Art“. Liz would be proud.
  • Caramello Koala is a koala-shaped chocolate filled with gooey caramel, made by Cadbury. Along with Freddo Frog and (for older folks) Bertie Beetle, he’s a staple of the kids range of Cadbury chocolates, often sold individually wrapped as part of charity drives.
  • Tiny Teddy biscuits are…well, tiny, teddy bear-shaped sweet biscuits made by Arnott’s. They come in a variety of flavours and one of their big selling points to parents is that they contain no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives.
Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Diggers, Dorcas, Elizabeth Flux, Grimma, Marlee Jane Ward, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld

#Pratchat9 Notes and Errata

8 July 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode nine, “Upscalator to Heaven“, featuring guest Amie Kaufman, discussing the 1989 book Truckers – the first of the Bromeliad trilogy.

  • Ents are the tree-people of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. They are the oldest living things in Middle-Earth, and live long slow lives, considering a three-day deliberation over a question to be “hasty”.
  • The stop-motion animated television series of Truckers was made for ITV in 1992 by Cosgrove Hall, a UK animation studio whose huge canon of work includes Danger Mouse, Wind in the Willows and – five years after Truckers – two traditionally animated Discworld adaptations: Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music. Truckers was split into thirteen 10-minute episodes, and mixed stop-motion with live-action footage of the humans with whom the Nomes interacted. The cast includes many well-known voices: 
    • Edward Kelsey as The Thing (who is also the narrator). Kelsey was a long-time star of radio serial The Archers, and played the Danger Mouse characters Baron Silas Greenback and Colonel K.
    • Joe McGann as Masklin. As well as starring in 90s TV comedy The Upper Hand, Joe is also the brother of Eighth Doctor Paul McGann.
    • Debra J Gillett as Grimma. Gillett later played Susan Sto Helit in Cosgrove Hall’s Soul Music.
    • Rosalie Williams as Granny Morkie. Williams’ best-known role was as Mrs Hudson in the long-running The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes television series starring Jeremy Brett.
    • Brian Trueman as Dorcas Del Icatessan. Trueman is a long-time Cosgrove Hall writer who adapted Truckers for television; his most notable acting roles on other animated shows include Stilletto in Danger Mouse and Nanny in Count Duckula.
    • Sir Michael Hordern as the Abbott. Amongst his long and distinguished career, Hordern is beloved by children for playing the gruff Badger in Cosgrove Hall’s The Wind in the Willows.
    • Jimmy Hibbert as Vinto Pimmie (amongst others). Another regular Cosgrove Hall writer and actor, Hibbert later played the late King Verence I in Wyrd Sisters.
  • Amie’s nerdy joke references “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs“, a psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow in a 1943 and his 1953 book Motivation and Personality. The hierarchy presents human needs as a pyramid, with the most fundamental at the bottom; a person needs the lowest needs met before they can consider the higher ones, progressing up the pyramid. In order from bottom to top, the categories of needs are Physiological (basic physical survival), Safety (a feeling of security), Belonging (social connections), Esteem (respect and status), Self-actualisation (fulfilling one’s potential) and – as a later addition – Self-transcendence (altruism and spirituality). While it has become popular as part of broader culture, the theory has been frequently criticised by psychologists, in particular for presenting what many see as a very Western set of values as universal.
  • For our international (and non-drinking) listeners, Bintang is an Indonesian beer produced by the Heineken company, availably comparatively cheaply in Australia. To “smash” a beer in Australian slang is to drink it quickly.
  • Amie refers to The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, a 2017 Amazon period comedy set in 1958. The title character turns to stand-up comedy after her husband leaves her, and gets a day job in a B. Altman department store as a cosmetic sales clerk.
  • Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies’ Paradise or The Ladies’ Delight) is an 1883 novel by Émile Zola, the eleventh in his “Rougon-Macquart” series about the lives of two related families living in the Second French Empire during the latter half of the 19th century. The store in the book is modelled after the 1852 version of Le Bon Marché (“The Good Deal”), often regarded as the first modern department store. (It originally opened with four departments in 1838.)
  • Are You Being Served? was a British sit-com about the staff in the clothing department of fictional department store Grace Brothers. It originally ran from 1972 to 1985, and was famous for it’s high-camp, innuendo-laden style, not dissimilar to the Carry On films. It had a large cast, but the five characters who lasted the entire ten season run were exceedingly camp menswear salesman Mr Humphries (John Inman), officious floorwalker (supervisor) and supposedly ex-military man “Captain” Peacock (Frank Thornton), head of department Cuthbert Rumbold (Nicholas Smith), Womenswear assistant Shirley Brahms (Wendy Richard) and head of Womenswear Mrs Slocombe (Mollie Sugden), who frequently told stories about her “pussy”. (We’re not making this up.) The show was so popular it spawned a stage play, a film, a 1990s sequel – Grace & Favour, in which the five main characters run an inn – and a reunion special in 2016. There were also three remakes for other countries: the US one didn’t get past a pilot, the Singaporean version dropped the filthy jokes, and the Australian one featured Mr Humphries moving to Australian store Bone Brothers. The store’s name was changed because there’s a real Australian store named Grace Bros, which is probably why Ben couldn’t remember the name…
  • The Smurfs are small (“three apples high”) magical blue-skinned creatures who live in a secret village of toadstool houses in a medieval wood, invented by Belgian artist Peyo in 1958 for a comic strip. They have expanded in worldwide popularity with cartoons, toys and most recently a CGI/live-action film franchise. Each smurf has a name describing their personality or profession: Handy Smurf is a builder and handyman, Brainy Smurf an arrogant know-it-all, Hefty Smurf a strong gym junkie and so on. The Smurfs are led by Papa Smurf, a wise older smurf with a beard, and there were originally 99 male smurfs and just one female smurf, Smurfette. She was created by Gargamel, the smurfs main enemy; he is an evil but incompetent wizard who needs a smurf as the final ingredient in an alchemical formula to transform lead into gold. Over the years many other smurfs have been added, notably Baby Smurf, Nanny Smurf, Grandpa Smurf and the “smurflings”, a group of teenage smurfs.
  • Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat is a stage musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, based loosely on the story of Joseph and his “coat of many colours” from the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Joseph is a dreamer and the favourite of his father’s dozen sons; his jealous brothers sell him into slavery and tell their father he is dead, but eventually his skill at interpreting dreams sees him triumph and reunite with his family.
  • Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was a famous and successful commander of British naval forces during the American War of Independence and the subsequent Wars of the First, Second and Third Coalition with France. During the last of these, his ship Victory was engaged with three French vessels at the Battle of Trafalgar when a sniper in the rigging of the French ship Redoubtable spotted him and shot him through the shoulder, fatally wounding him. It’s said his officers asked him to change his dress, or at least cover up the numerous stars and other honours which were sewn into his coat, to make him less identifiable to the enemy. His coat is displayed in the National Maritime Museum in London, and this blog discusses it in detail.
  • “The Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers” features in Homer the Great, the twelfth episode of the sixth season of The Simpsons. Homer joins the secretive Stonecutters (a parody of the Freemasons), but annoys the other members when he first destroys a sacred relic, then is made their leader when it’s discovered during his punishment that he bears a prophesied birthmark. His efforts to help the community at Lisa’s request are the final straw, and the other members all quit and form the “No Homers” club, leaving Homer to go back to his family.
  • Some of the Departments in Arnold Bros have old-fashioned names:
    • Delicatessen – traditionally sells imported or unusual prepared foods, typically meats, cheeses and foreign fruits and vegetables. Still used in supermarkets, though usually abbreviated to “Deli”.
    • Haberdashery – small items used in sewing, like needles, thread, buttons, ribbons and zippers.
    • Ironmongery – originally meant any items made of iron, but expanded to mean similar objects (e.g. utensils, pots, doorknobs etc.) made of other metals and also plastic.
  • See the note in our previous episode about Liz and Ben’s differing feelings about Lord of the Flies, but for quick reference: in William Golding’s novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island, protagonists Piggy and Ralph find a large conch shell on the beach and blow it like a horn to summon the other boys for a meeting. From then on when they meet, someone must be holding the conch to be allowed to speak.
  • Catweazle was a London Weekend Television children’s series about a ragged 11th century wizard, the titular Catweazle played wonderfully by Geoffrey Bayldon, who accidentally travels forward in time, initially to the year 1969, then again in the second season to the 1970s. He interprets all modern technology as magic, most famously describing electricity as “elec-trickery” and a telephone as “the telling bone”. In the first season, the young boy who befriends and hides Catweazle on his farm is nicknamed Carrot!
  • The first working escalator was built in 1896 on Coney Island, though patents for various designs go back as far as 1859! The first one built in Europe was for the Harrods department store in Knightsbridge in 1898 – so it’s possible, if unlikely, that the escalators were installed when Arnold Bros (est 1905) was first constructed. (The television series shows a clearly more modern escalator, though a sign next to it also clearly says it goes up to the second floor, rather than the fourth or fifth floor described in the book.)
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a 1966 absurdist play, probably the best known work by Tom Stoppard. It follows two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, giving their perspective of events in the original story, as they are first tasked to discover why their old school friend Hamlet has apparently gone mad, and then to accompany him to England, bearing a letter for the English King commanding Hamlet’s death. Hamlet alters it and they are killed instead. The pair have many interactions with the Tragedians from Hamlet who present the play-within-a-play The Murder of Gonzago, and there are many musings about fate, language and existence. Stoppard adapted and directed a film version in 1990 which features a stellar cast.
  • The plan to build windowless aeroplanes that display video of the outside view on screens was announced by the airline Emirates in early June 2018. Their newest planes have already removed windows in their first class suites.
  • Rick and Morty is an animated sci-fi comedy series created by Justin Roiland (who also voices both title characters) and Dan Harmon. It began life as a parody of the Back to the Future characters Doc and Marty, and follows Rick, an alcoholic, amoral genius scientist who drags his grandson Morty into dangerous adventures across time, space and multiple alternate realities. The episode Liz refers to is The Ricks Must Be Crazy from the second season, in which it is revealed Rick’s flying car is powered by an entire mini universe contained within its battery – and a scientist there has built his own mini universe.
  • The scene in which our universe is shown to exist within a locker in an alien train station occurs at the end of Men In Black II, and parallels the ending of the first Men in Black film in which the Milky Way is contained inside a marble (though it’s not actually the same “galaxy” jewel being sought during the rest of the film).
  • While it’s not technically true that you can’t fold paper more than seven times, it does become increasingly harder to fold as the strength of the paper increases with it’s thickness – which increases exponentially with each fold. Most people can’t fold an average-sized piece of paper more than five or six times. In 2002, Californian Britney Gallivan folded a 1.2km long piece of toilet paper in half twelve times, and derived an equation which could determine how long a piece would need to be to allow a given number of folds. So what about Masklin? Being much smaller than the piece of paper might make it easier for him to get leverage, and even if he only managed to fold the A4 letter six times, it’d end up about 1.5 x 2 inches – large, but cartable for a Nome.
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a “Star Wars Anthology” film, set immediately before the events of the original Star Wars (aka Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). It tells the previously untold story of the group of rebels who steal the plans revealing the fatal flaw in the Death Star – plans that are handed to Princess Leia at the end of the movie, and are the ones she passes on to R2-D2 at the beginning of Star Wars.
  • Angels & Demons is the novel by (in)famous Catholic mystery thriller author Dan Brown which focuses on the election of a new pope. It also introduces Robert Langdon, a university professor who specialises in religious iconography and “symbology” and is an “expert on the Illuminati”. Langdon goes on to appear in four more of Brown’s novels, including the international bestseller The Da Vinci Code, and is played by Tom Hanks in the film adaptations. (Incidentally, Tony Robinson – who we also mentioned in this episode – produced The Real Da Vinci Code for Channel 4 in 2005, in which he debunked many of the supposed historical facts mentioned in the book.)
  • The 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels was conceived by Jonathan Swift as a biting, broad satire on many aspects of Irish and British society. The first part is the most famous: English sailor Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island Lilliput, home to six-inch-tall people (the same size as Nomes!), and becomes embroiled in their quasi-religious war with nearby Blefuscu over egg etiquette. In the other three parts he visits many other lands, encountering giants, scientists, sorcerers, brutish deformed humans and intelligent (if ethically questionable) horses. Generally only the first and sometimes second (giant) parts are included in the many children’s retellings.
  • Lieutenant commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott was the head engineer and second officer aboard the starship Enterprise in the original 1966 Star Trek television series. Often described as a “miracle worker”, he was often able to effect emergency repairs or modifications in short time, though when he later appeared in sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation he admitted to overestimating the amount of time required to complete a given task.
  • For non-Australian listeners: “smoko” is common Australian slang for a break from work to smoke a cigarette. It was recently immortalised in the song “Smoko” by Queensland band The Chats.
  • You can watch Mr Bean (played by Rowan Atkinson) jury-rig a driving mechanism for his car out of a mop, a broom, a bucket of paint and some ropes at the start of this compilation of some of his finest travelling moments. The sequence Ben remembered involves him running late for a dentist appointment and getting changed during the drive.
  • Enid Blyton (1897-1968) was a beloved children’s author who wrote both fantasy – including Noddy, The Magic Faraway Tree and Adventures of the Wishing Chair – and adventure books, most famously the Famous Five and Secret Seven books. Criticism of the books isn’t new; they have been critiqued since the 1950s. You can can still read Liz’s 2012 article “Is it okay: To read Enid Blyton books?” at Lip Magazine.
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is the original 1971 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Charlie Bucket and four other children win the chance to tour reclusive sweet maker Willy Wonka’s fantastic factory. At the beginning of the film, Charlie’s four grandparents have been “bedridden for twenty years”, but Grandpa Joe is able to get up to accompany Charlie to the factory without too much trouble as soon as he finds his golden ticket…
  • A Current Affair (ACA) is a long-running Australian current affairs television program. It is generally regarded as “sensationalist journalism”, and a stereotypical story exposes “dole cheats” (people fraudulently claiming social benefit payments). The format and content of ACA and similar programs like Today Tonight were thoroughly satirised in the 1990s by the ABC sit-com Frontline.
  • “Potted shrimp” is a traditional English delicacy in which small shrimp are boiled, shelled and then mixed into spiced clarified butter.
  • Graham crackers are a semi-sweet American biscuit made from “graham flour”, a type of coarse-ground, unsifted whole wheat flour. The flour is named after Sylvester Graham, an 19th century Presbyterian minister who criticised the changes in the American diet resulting from the industrial revolution. There’s no real equivalent in Australia, though English-style digestive biscuits can be used in baking. “S’mores” are traditional American treats made while camping by sandwiching a roasted marshmallow and some chocolate between two graham crackers.
  • Animal crackers are another kind of sweet biscuit, originally from England but still popular in the United States. In the two-part second season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “What’s My Line?”, Oz and Willow flirt while discussing animal crackers, in particular the fact that usually the monkey is the only animal depicted wearing pants. The line “I mock you with my monkey pants”, delivered in a French accent by Oz, was supposedly taken from a dream experienced by Willow actor Alyson Hannigan.
  • We found a version of Kristy Kruger’s story about believing unicorns were real in Act 1 of Episode 293: A Little Bit of Knowledge of long-running NPR podcast This American Life, along with other folk with weird bits of childhood belief that survived into adulthood.
Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Amie Kaufman, Angalo, Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Dorcas, Elizabeth Flux, Grimma, Gurder, Masklin, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld, Truckers

#Pratchat20 Notes and Errata

8 June 2019 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 20, “The Thing Beneath My Wings” featuring guest Dr Lili Wilkinson, discussing the third and final book of the Bromeliad, Wings.

  • The episode title puns the song “Wind Beneath My Wings”, best known from the Bette Midler version released in 1988 for the soundtrack to her film Beaches. It was written by American songwriters Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley in 1982 and recorded many times. Australian singer Kamahl was the first to record it in 1982, but didn’t release it as he felt it wasn’t right for the country and western album he recorded it for!
  • The supersonic passenger aircraft Concorde was a joint project of the United Kingdom and France, and operated between 1976 and 2003 by Air France and British Airways. With a top speed of over twice the speed of sound, it could cross the Atlantic in half the time of other airlines, and boasted luxury service for its passengers. But it was loud, environmentally unsound, and very expensive, so it was never adopted by other airlines, and the planes were eventually decommissioned. The thing about the gap in the plane was mostly true: due to the heat generated by the extreme speeds, the fuselage would expand by as much as 30 centimetres at top speeds. The design accommodated this, manifesting in a gap in the inner wall between segments of the cockpit. One pilot left his hat in the gap deliberately during the final flight of one of the aircraft.
  • The Concorde did indeed have a very safe operational record for most of its history, with only one fatal accident in the year 2000. In May of that year, an Air France Concorde hit debris on the runway during takeoff; its fuel tank was punctured and the aircraft crashed into a hotel not far from the airport, killing more than 100 people, including everyone on board. The entire Concorde fleet was grounded for over a year following the crash, though they weren’t the only aircraft found at fault: the debris had fallen off a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had been shoddily repaired, and the airline ended up paying a large portion of the compensation.
  • Lindsay Lohan stars in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap, a remake of the 1961 original, in turn based on the novel Das doppelte Lottchen by German author Erich Kästner. Lohan plays a pair of identical twins separated soon after birth, who discover each other when coincidentally sent to the same camp. They decide their parents are still in love with each other and plot to get them back together. The Concorde is an important plot device near the end of the film.
  • Time-Flight was a story in Peter Davison’s first season as the Doctor, and immediately followed Earthshock, the story in which a major character died. While it was reasonably popular at the time, with record viewing figures for its first episode, it has become loathed among fans, often featuring in the bottom five in poll rankings of every Doctor Who story. No doubt it’ll feature on Lucas Testro’s podcast Doctor Who and the Episodes of Death any day now…
  • Concorde had 17 separate fuel tanks, only four of which were in the fuselage; most were in the wings, with a few more at the front and back. It was unique in that it pumped fuel between the tanks during flight to shift the aircraft’s centre of gravity during supersonic flight. The engines were created by Bristol Siddeley Engines and French aerospace company Snecma; Bristol Siddeley was acquired by Rolls Royce during the development of Concorde.
  • The UK didn’t ban smoking on international flights until 1997, so for most of Concorde’s operational life smoking would have been allowed on board. Australia was in fact the first country to ban smoking on all domestic flights, in 1987; smoking on international flights to and from Australia was banned in 1990, a year after the US banned smoking on domestic flights. (They banned smoking on international flights in 2000.) Major pressure for the ban came from the flight attendants unions, who first campaigned for it in the 1960s.
  • The dessert Ben is trying to think of is junket, also known as curds and whey, which is made with milk and rennet. A powdered form, coloured and flavoured, used to be available; you just had to add milk.
  • It’s actually Angalo who was getting into The Spy With No Trousers; we hope he sees our Twitter version, which we hope to release soon under the hashtag #thespywithnotrousers. (We’ll compile it and post it on the web site, too.)
  • You can find out more about the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s in the first episode of Let’s Talk About Sects, Lili’s YouTube series about cults and new religious movements.
  • Scott Westefield is an author, most famously of the YA series Uglies and Leviathan.
  • As previously mentioned in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar the alien Na’vi have a tendril-like organ which allows them to to “plug in” to various animals on their planet, including the pterodactyl-like ikran, and…er…control them? It’s weird and gross, and not the sort of things Nomes – or Pratchett – would be into.
  • Vatican II, more formally known as the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, is the most recent ecumenical council – a convening of senior church officials to discuss church doctrine and practice. It actually occurred much earlier than the 1980s, from 1962 to 1965, and resulted in many changes meant to help the church fit in with the modern world.
  • In 2006 – well after the publication of Wings in 1990 – then Senator for Alaska, Republican Ted Stevens, was arguing against the idea of net neutrality. He was trying to explain his position that some commercial network traffic should have reserved bandwidth on the Internet, but didn’t do the best job. He said: “the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material…” He was widely mocked for this clumsy (if not entirely inaccurate) analogy, and “a series of tubes” became a popular meme.
  • The West Wing Weekly, part of the Radiotopia podcast network, is an episode-by-episode discussion of the political drama The West Wing. It’s hosted by Joshua Malina (who played Will Bailey in the show) and Hrishikesh Hirway (host of the Song Exploder music podcast), and has featured many actors and crew from the series, including creator Aaron Sorkin. As of recording, they were approaching the end of the show’s penultimate sixth season.
  • The Quentin Blake-esque covers of the current edition of the Bromeliad books are by Mark Beech, who also did the internal art for the hardback illustrated edition of Truckers (this is the one Ben likes a lot). Beech also did covers for the most recent editions of The Carpet People and the Johnny Maxwell books, and covers and internal illustrations for the collections of Pratchett’s early short stories for children: Dragons at Crumbling Castle, The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner, Father Christmas’s Fake Beard and (released in 2020) The Time-Travelling Caveman.
  • The Care Bears started out as characters on greeting cards, and became a hugely successful line of plush toys and animated characters in television (originally from 1985 to 1988) and film (beginning with The Care Bears Movie in 1985). They are magical beings who personify various emotions, with each bearing (sorry) a symbol on their belly representing their feeling. They live in “the Kingdom of Caring”, hidden amongst the clouds, which contains their home, Care-a-lot, and the Forest of Feelings, home to the Care Bear Cousins (similar characters who aren’t bears). The Care Bears and Cousins try to guide children to be their best and deal with challenging emotions, while also defeating villains like Professor Coldheart who seek to eliminate caring from the world. Their main magical power is the “Care Bear Stare”, which manifests as coloured beams of light from their belly symbols that infuse their target with warm feelings.
  • The animated film Ben was remembering was GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords, aka Machine Men Movie: Battle of the Rock Lords. (The toys on which the film is based, originally Machine Robo (マシンロボ) in Japan, were known as “Machine Men” in Australia; in the US, they were incorporated into the broader GoBots line of toys from Tonka.) While its voice cast wasn’t quite up to the standard of Transformers: The Movie – which featured Leonard Nimoy and Orson Wells – it did star Roddy McDowall, Telly Savalas and Margot Kidder! Both films were released in 1986, though only to very limited cinemas in Australia, so Ben was lucky to see it.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Angalo, Ben McKenzie, Bromeliad, Elizabeth Flux, Gurder, Lili Wilkinson, Masklin, Middle Grade, Nomes, non-Discworld, Wings

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