Discworld

#Pratchat91 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 91, “We Can Reference It For You Wholesale”, discussing the various editions of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs’ The Discworld Companion, but especially 2021’s The Ultimate Discworld Companion.

Iconographic Evidence

The Discworld Companion(s)
The four editions of Companion in Ben’s library: the 1997 Discworld Companion (Updated!), Turtle Recall, The Ultimate Discworld Companion, and out of its slipcase, the Dunmanifestin “Expanded Edition” of The Ultimate Discworld Companion. The cover art is by, in order, Josh Kirby, Marc Simonetti, Paul Kidby, and Paul Kidby.

Stephen Briggs was kind enough to offer to answer any questions folks had, so we asked if he’d share an image of the original index cards. And he did! See the tweets below. He also mentioned that the cards are seen in the 2017 biographical documentary, Terry Pratchett: Back in Black.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title references both the Ankh-Morpork national anthem, “We Can Rule It For You Wholesale” (see #Pratchat53, “A (Very) Few Words by Hner Ner Hner”, for more on the anthem), and also Philip K Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” – adapted for the screen (twice!) as Total Recall. (See #Pratchat56, “do { Podcast(); } while (unreadPratchetts > 0);”, for more on Philip K Dick.)
  • You can find the Annotated Pratchett File (affectionately known as the APF), the FAQ, the Pratchett Quote File and many more newsgroup-era fan resources at the L-Space Web.
  • Like other newsgroups at the time, alt.tv.red-dwarf had not just one FAQ, but a whole set of documents covering different topics. You can find them scattered about the web, but none of them seem to have been updated after the year 2000, so they’re all very out of date.
  • The Terry Pratchett and Discworld Wiki is also hosted by the L-Space web, and is often referred to as “the L-Space wiki” as shorthand (and to differentiate it from the Discworld wiki at Fandom.com). You can find it at wiki.lspace.org – and please join up and help improve it if you want! There are only a few active members at the moment (and a whole lot of spambots out there…)
  • Wikipedia articles don’t all lead to “Psychology” – they lead to “Philosophy”! This phenomenon, known as “Getting to Philosophy”, is that successively clicking on the first wiki-link of a Wikipedia article leads most of the time to the article on Philosophy. This has been well-demonstrated by analysis of Wikipedia data, and Wikipedia itself has an article about it (though not in the main encyclopaedia space).
  • Ben is correct about both things he thought were mentioned in the books:
    • The Glingleglingleglingle Fairy appears to Ridcully in the bath near the end of Hogfather.
    • The idea that Anoia might do stuck zips is, indeed, in Wintersmith; she mentions it when introducing herself to Tiffany in Chapter 7.
  • Ben’s information about editions of the Companion is secondhand for those not pictured above, and some of it may not be correct. For instance, we’ve heard from listener Steve that the trade paperback edition of The New Discworld Companion is not updated to include The Wee Free Men. (It’s possible the regular paperback edition was, but we don’t know yet.) This goes to show the importance of checking primary sources where possible, which is why Ben has ordered the various editions! But here’s a quick list of the major revisions mentioned:
    • The Discworld Companion, first published in 1994; at least two editions
    • The Discworld Companion: Updated, first published in 1997; probably just one edition?
    • The New Discworld Companion, first published in 2002; at least three editions
    • Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion…So Far, first published in 2012; just two editions
    • The Ultimate Discworld Companion, first published in 2021; just one edition
    • The Ultimate Discworld Companion: Expanded Edition (aka “The Dunmanifestin Edition”), first published in 2022
  • The mystery is solved! The only male member of the Seamstresses Guild, Mr Harris of the Blue Cat Club, appears in just one place in the novels – the third-last footnote in Jingo. Mr Harris – likely a reference to the author of My Life and Loves, Frank Harris – is a member of the Guild’s committee. The club is also given a brief write-up in the “Nightlife and Clubland” section of The Compleat Ankh-Morpork. Thanks to Old Dickens of the afore-mentioned L-Space Wiki.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat91 – We Can Reference It For You Wholesale

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Liz and Ben do a little light Summer reading as they tackle one of the biggest Discworld books of all – Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs’ The Discworld Companion, in all its various editions (but mostly 2021’s The Ultimate Discworld Companion).

From the Abbott of the History Monks, to dimensionally-displaced traveller Jack Zweiblumen, the Discworld Companion is an alphabetical encyclopaedia of everything Discworld! Flip to your favourite character, location or thing from across the Disc, and rediscover what made you fall in love with this world all over again.

After Stephen Briggs started adapted the Discworld novels for the stage, he started to make notes about how the pieces of this fictional world fit together. He started by suggesting it would be possible to draw a map of Ankh-Morpork, and then advanced to trying to encompass the whole of the world in a single reference work. That was in the 1990s, at the height of Discworld’s fame and success – and before the world wide web was on everyone’s desk (or in everyone’s pocket). But there have been four major editions (and multiple other revisions) of The Discworld Companion since then, each bigger than the last – and the Dunmanifestin expanded edition of The Ultimate Discworld Companion is probably the biggest Discworld book of all time!

Do you have a copy of the Companion? Which edition is it? How do you read it, and what are your favourite entries? What would you compile an encyclopaedia about, and what would you put into the Discworld Companion if you got the chance? And do you know where Mr Harris and the Blue Cat Club come from – if they come from anywhere? Let us know your answers via social media (optionally using the hashtag #Pratchat91), send us an email, or comment on our website to join the conversation!

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You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month it’s back to the digital Discworld, as we play and discuss the second Discworld adventure game, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (aka Discworld II: Mortality Bytes.) Send us any questions you have via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com) or social media, optionally using the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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#Pratchat1 Notes and Errata

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Theses are the notes and errata for episode 1, “Boots Theory”, featuring guest Cal Wilson discussing the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993’s Men at Arms.

  • We did indeed have Cal back to discuss Sourcery – see #Pratchat3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind”. Cal also returned for our fiftieth episode, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat“, to discuss Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook. Tragically Cal passed away unexpectedly in 2023; but a person’s not dead while their name is still spoken. GNU Cal Wilson.
  • For more on our decision to start with Men at Arms, see #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…”, and also Liz’s post, “Let’s Start From the Very Beginning (but not actually)”.
  • Men at Arms is the fifteenth Discworld novel, and the second to feature the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Ben does now write these things down (and, indeed, has a very comprehensive spreadsheet).
  • What Ben meant about the copyright on “Discworld” is that this is the first book in which “Discworld” appears on the imprint page as a registered trademark. Intellectual property (or IP) law is a complex topic, and can differ greatly from region to region, but to cover the basics:
    • Copyright (denoted by ©) is the protection of original works from being copied or otherwise used without the creator’s permission. This mostly applies to literary, dramatic, musical or other artistic work (including visual art), often lasts for a fixed period (the creators’ life plus 70 years in Australia), and is automatically applied without a creator having to do anything. A creator can extend it to others, as Terry later did by assigning copyright to he and his wife Lyn, and then their company, Dunmanifestin Limited. Copyright doesn’t protect ideas, only the specific expression of ideas, which is where some of the complexity comes in.
    • A trademark (denoted by ™️ or ®) is a “sign” that shows a product was made by a certain person or company. The sign can be almost anything: a word, a specific colour or style of packaging, a logo, a design, even a sound. It’s an old concept, similar to the “maker’s mark” used by artisans on silverware, jewellery, ceramics and so on, as often mentioned on Antique Roadshow. Anyone can start using the ™️ symbol, which suggests a common law trademark, but the ® denotes a registered trademark which is more easily enforceable by law. These are managed by government agencies (e.g. IP Australia). Also worthy of note: if you have a trademark, you have to actively be using it – and you must defend it if someone else starts using it, or you will likely lose it.
    • It didn’t come up in this episode, but there are some complexities involved if a copyright belongs to a company and that company ceases to exist without its assets being transferred to another company or person. In the UK this can mean ownership of a work transfers half to the original creators, and half to the Crown, which has led to speculation that King Charles now owns half the rights to the Discworld videogames – though this has yet to be resolved… See our episode #Pratchat89, “An Awfully Teeny Weeny Adventure”, about the first Discworld game for more.
  • You’ve probably heard of the Thames, but the Yarra is the common name for the river Birrarung or Biarrarung Marr, which flows through the heart of Melbourne, or Narrm. It runs for nearly 250 kilometres from the Yarra Ranges in inland Victoria to the ocean in Port Phillip Bay, though its course and nature has been changed extensively since European colonisation. It was previously nicknamed “the upside down river” due to the golden-brown muddy colouring it acquires by the time it flows through Melbourne. This is also the product of colonisation, as land clearing and mining have increased the erosion of surrounding fine clay into the water.
  • The negative reviewer of Pratchett’s work to which Ben refers was Northern Irish poet and literary critic Tom Paulin, who appeared on BBC2’s Late Review television program and derided Pratchett, writing him off as a populist: “… selling thousands of copies – a complete amateur – doesn’t even write in chapters – hasn’t a clue.” This seems to have been in around 1993 or 1994; Pratchett proudly reproduced the quote in the front many of his books, with the earliest example Ben can find being in the 1995 Corgi paperback of Interesting Times.
  • Terry Pratchett’s debut novel, The Carpet People, was first published in 1971, when Pratchett was 23 years old. However an earlier version of the story was serialised as some of his very first published fiction in the Bucks’ Free Press in 1965, when he was only 17! Most of the instalments of that version appear in the second collection of his early stories, Dragons at Crumbling Castle, published shortly after Pratchett’s death in 2015.
  • While the Vimes Boots Theory is articulated in the way of Pratchett, the idea behind it is of course not new. We’d like to thank Jeanette Hall on Twitter, who shared a link to an earlier version of the Boots Theory! In 1914, Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan wrote published the semi-autobiographical novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, “Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell.” (Tressell was the pen-name used by Noonan.) Based on his life working in Hastings between 1906 and 1910, the book contains a passage about the price of stockings and coal and how they are the means by which “the working classes are robbed.” We’ve included an excerpt below, but you can read the original text at the Union History website shared by Jeanette. You can also see the original manuscript! (This feels especially poignant because Ben’s own Great Great Grandfather was a painter in Belfast until his death in 1910 prompted the McKenzies to migrate to Australia.)

Although their incomes are the lowest, they are compelled to buy the most expensive articles – that is, the lowest-priced articles. Everybody knows that good clothes, boots or furniture are really the cheapest in the end, although they cost more money at first; but the working classes can seldom or never afford to buy good things; they have to buy cheap rubbish which is dear at any price.

Six weeks previously Owen bought a pair of second-hand boots for three shillings and they were now literally falling to pieces. Nora’s shoes were in much the same condition, but, as she said, it did not matter so much about hers because there was no need for her to go out if the weather were not fine.

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell, 1914
  • Also of note: the Vimes Boots Theory influenced the work of UK equality and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who in January 2022 created the Vimes Boots Poverty Index. The Index was intended to be a record of the prices of staple foods and other essentials over time, to demonstrate the disproportionate impact of rising prices on the poor. It was also specifically meant to show that government reports which only take inflation into account are inadequate, since they are not an accurate indicator of the way goods prices change. The Pratchett Estate – particularly Rhianna Pratchett – wholeheartedly endorsed this use of Vimes’ name. In the end, media and social media attention for the idea (using the hashtag #VimesBootsIndex) was enough to persuade the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) to change how they calculated cost of living expenses, largely making the compilation of the Index unnecessary. You can read more about it on the L-Space wiki.
  • Scooby-Doo is a children’s adventure show which began in 1969 with the Hanna-Barbera animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! It centres on a group of mystery-solving teenagers: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and Shaggy’s dog, a Great Dane named Scooby-Doo. Sometimes calling themselves “Mystery Inc.”, the group travel America in a mini-van called the Mystery Machine investigating supposedly supernatural occurrences. Famously most of their adventures end by revealing that the ghost, monster or other weirdness was a hoax all along, perpetrated by an old man in a costume. The show was hugely influential – not least because it helped fill the gap left after more violent superhero cartoons of the 60s like Space Ghost and The Herculoids were cancelled following protests from parent groups. There have been numerous animated series and films, and even live-action films, since 1969, and more are still being made. The characters are not usually explicitly romantically linked; Cal references a reboot that had genius Velma and dorky hippie Shaggy dating, and this has happened at least a couple of times. They are shown to try dating in both the 2010 animated series Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated and the 2011 live-action film Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster (a sequel to the 2009 reboot of the previous live-action films from 2002 and 2004). For the record, in both versions they quickly realise they don’t have a spark and remain “just friends”.
  • It is a 1986 horror novel by Stephen King in which a group of teenagers face a nameless evil creature, the titular “It”, which changes shape to evoke fear in its victims. It primarily appears in the shape of a clown named “Pennywise the Dancing Clown”. In a memorable sequence from early in the novel – replicated in both the 1990 TV mini-series adaptation and the first of the two-part film adaptations in 2017 – the Clown appears in the town sewer. In both versions Pennywise has primarily white-face makeup, not dissimilar to Paul Kidby’s version of Dr Whiteface. (“It” was portrayed by Tim Curry in 1990, and Bill Skarsgård in 2017.)
  • Clowns in our world can and do copyright their face makeup, and the egg gallery is based on the “Clown and Character Registry”, where many clowns actually did register to have their makeup painted on a goose egg and displayed. In the UK, the tradition can be traced back to Stan Built in the 1930s, though most of his original eggs were damaged or destroyed. In 1988 (or 1984 according to some sources), Clown Bluey, Chairman of Clowns International at the time, resurrected the tradition. This mini documentary from 2017 features Debbie Smith, the Clown Egg Gallery artist from 2010 to 2023. Clowns International still seems to run the egg gallery, with their website including a form to order a pair of eggs (one for the gallery and one for you), now painted by current artist Julie Proctor. So we’re sorry again, clowns. (Thanks to Maia in Michigan, who put us onto some sources via Twitter which helped us update this entry!)
  • Ben uses commedia dell’arte more-or-less correctly.
  • 99% Invisible is a podcast all about design, hosted by Roman Mars. The episode about the invention of cellulose mentioned by Ben while discussing the Alchemist’s Guild is “The Post-Billiards Age” from May 2015. (This episode will get mentioned again in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick”.)
  • There are indeed ghosts on the Discworld, appearing in several of the novels. We’ll be meeting some of them fairly soon, as one plays a major role in Wyrd Sisters. (See #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”.)
  • The final Discworld book is actually The Shepherd’s Crown; I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth-last, and the second-last to feature young witch Tiffany Aching. (We try to keep our spreadsheet handy in future episodes to avoid such basic mistakes.)
  • “Shoot” is used for arrows, as the term predates guns by many centuries.
  • CMOT Dibbler is pervasive once he arrives, but is not in The Colour of Magic. (See #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”.) In fact he first shows up when the Watch does, in Guards! Guards! (See #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”.)
  • Not only are Lord Vetinari’s plans for the future unknown, but it has also never been revealed how he ascended to the position of Patrician in the first place. We do get a little of his backstory in Night Watch; see #Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”.
  • We are aware that despite being asked “which Guild would you join”, we decided we would be wizards, witches or members of the Watch, none of which have an official guild – at least at the time of Men at Arms. See #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, for the creation of at least a temporary guild of Watchmen in The Fifth Elephant.

#PratchatNALC Notes and Errata

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These are the notes and errata for our bonus live episode “Twice as Alive”, revisiting #Pratchat1 and the 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms.

  • The episode title is a reference to the teaser at the start of #Pratchat1, in which both guest Cal Wilson and Liz declared that they didn’t think of werewolves as undead, but rather “twice as alive”.
  • The Lost Con was intended “as an 8 hour taster for the non-virtual convention in Sydney next year” – the Australian Discworld convention, Nullus Anxietas 7a (NA7a). The Lost Con was free to all members of the 2022 convention, whether full or supporting, and ran from 4 PM to midnight on Saturday, July 3rd – the original weekend planned for NA7a, which was last year postponed from 2021 to 2022. The move was prudent – Sydney was at the time of publication experiencing a serious outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 and had been in lockdown since 26 June, with several stages of local restrictions imposed before that. This is the first major lockdown experienced by Sydney since the nation-wide lockdown in early 2020. From your hosts in Melbourne – we really hope you can get out of it faster than we did last year. Our thoughts are with you all.
  • The theme of Nullus Anxietas 7a was intended to be “Ankh-Morpork: Citie of One Thousand Surprises”. (The theme of NA7 was “Going Postal”.) Unfortunately, due to further concerns as part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the convention was eventually cancelled. The next Australian convention would be in Adelaide in 2024 (with the theme “Come ALIVE in Überwald!”), but Sydney will host the one after that, to be held in April 2026, and themed around celebrating the witches of Discworld. We’ll be there!
  • We discussed the vote for the first book preview episode in #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and in Liz’s blog post “Let’s Start From The Very Beginning (but not actually)“.
  • #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“, was released on the 7Ath of November, 2017 – three years and eight months ago in real time, or 237 years ago in COVID time, at release of this podcast.
  • Members of The Lost Con Zoom chat were split over whose pronunciations they preferred. The folks from Discworld Monthly informed us that according to Stephen Briggs, there were definitely disagreements over pronunciation for the audiobooks. You can find his guides for some pronunciation in the front of some of his play adaptations; for example in Jingo he specifies that Angua’s name should be pronounced with a hard “g”, but either “Angwa” or “Ang-you-ah” is listed as acceptable.
  • One of the perils of not actually having time to re-read the book (or even re-listen to the entire previous episode) is that we forget little details. Like the fact that Carrot does indeed pick up the gonne, and after a brief look smashes it against a wall, destroying it. As he says when Vimes warns him not to touch it: “Why not? It’s only a device.” Of note: he leaves the broken bits in the clocktower of the Assassin’s Guild.
  • The western roleplaying videogame with the spittoons that Ben mentions is West of Loathing, a spin-off from the online game Kingdom of Loathing.
  • You can read more about the Yarra river in the episode notes for #Pratchat1.
  • Liz’s Detritus pun, which Ben didn’t pick up on at the time, was “inflammation of the d’être”, as in raison d’être, a French term meaning “reason to be”. It’s commonly used by English speakers as an alternate way of referring to something so important if gives them a reason to be alive. Note that in French it’s not really pronounced in such a way that makes the pun work, but English speakers often say it that way.
  • Detritus’ brain-cooling helmet makes later appearances in Jingo (#Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”), where it breaks down trying to keep his brain cool in the desert, and The Truth (#Pratchat42, “Truth, the Printing Press, and Every -ing”), where he switches it on in order to deal with William de Worde.
  • The two-player roleplaying game Ben is discussing is Tin Star Games’ Partners, released in digital form in 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
  • We discussed Feet of Clay in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays”, released in October 2019.
  • We discussed Jingo in #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”, released in January 2020.
  • Hitchcock and Scully are the two rusted-on detectives who serve in the 99th precinct of the New York Police Department on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, portrayed by Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller respectively. They are notoriously incompetent, unhealthy and lazy, concerned primarily with snacks and other food. Originally supporting characters, they became a staple of the show and feature in the opening credits as of season six, the second episode of which (titled “Hitchcock & Scully”) explored their backstory as hotshot detectives in the 1980s.
  • The Ankh-Morpork Archives, Vol. 2 was published on the 29th of October, 2020, collecting material from the Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999, the Discworld Fools’ Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001, the Discworld (Reformed) Vampyres’ Diary 2003 and Lu-Tze’s Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008. Ben is right that the City Watch diary, published in September 1998, came out after Jingo (November 1997) and before The Fifth Elephant (November 1999).
  • We discussed The Fifth Elephant in #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, released in February 2021.
  • Asimov is one of Liz’s cats, who along with her other cat Huxley and Ben’s cat Kaos are collectively known as the “Pratcats”. Huxley and Kaos are relative newcomers, but Asimov has been around since the beginning; as well as hearing his bell jingling in the background of many episodes, he was featured as a guest on #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat”.
  • The cult in Guards! Guards! are the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night (not to be mistaken for the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee). We discussed their similarity with incels and other “alt-right” groups in #Pratchat7A (see the next point).
  • We discussed Guards! Guards! in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”, released in June 2018 and The Truth in #Pratchat42, “The Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing”, released in April 2021. The other book in which there’s a plot to dispose Vetinari is Feet of Clay, which as mentioned above was discussed in #Pratchat24.
  • As per the excerpt from #Pratchat1, our original suggestion was that Vetinari become a vampire, but we have previously discussed the idea of a zombie Vetinari…though we’re not entirely sure when! Possibly it was in #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins”, which is also where we first discussed the possibility of Moist Von Lipwig being groomed as the next Patrician (as suggested by listener Luke Jimenez).
  • The “critical Black Mass” joke in The Light Fantastic, as discussed in #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup”, refers to a collection of “books that leak magic”.
  • Ben and Liz both discuss their Pratchett origin stories in #Pratchat9, “And the Winner is…”. Liz realised her first was not in fact The Fifth Elephant just after recording #Pratchat7A, as discussed near the start of #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven”.
  • We discussed the Johnny Maxwell books in 2020: Only You Can Save Mankind in #Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”, released in February; Johnny and the Dead in Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind”, released in August; and Johnny and the Bomb in Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem”, released in November.
  • Early versions of ”Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” go back to as early as 1913, in press releases in various American magazines from a lobby group aligned with gun manufacturer Colt. These were designed to counter growing public concern about the availability of cheap mass-produced firearms, especially pistols, and the resulting escalation in deaths by shooting, which even back then were leading to calls for more regulation and control of guns. While earlier versions included things like “it’s not the gun, it’s the man behind the gun”, the current version is the most recognisable, and seems to have first arisen in the 1950s or 1960s. It’s nonsense, of course; no-one ever suggested that a gun could kill someone on its own. The point of the phrase is to make guns themselves seem neutral, neither good nor evil, but also to paint the perpetrators of gun deaths as obsessed murderers: killers who will use any means necessary, whether they have a gun or not. This ignores the fact that guns are deadlier than other weapons, and indeed the fact that guns even are weapons, i.e. devices designed only to harm living creatures. If you want to know more, the phrase is also the title of a very useful 2016 book on the subject: “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” and Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control, by Dennis A. Henigan.
  • The gonne influences Vimes by telling him that All that you hate, all that is wrong, I can put right, and Vimes finds it difficult to resist. He also remembers it pulling its trigger by itself, dragging his finger along with it, and only ends up putting it down and not shooting the villain because Carrot orders him to attention.

#Pratchat90 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 90, “Mind the Ginnungagap”, discussing the 40th Discworld novel, 2013’s Raising Steam, with returning guest Craig Hildebrand-Burke.

Iconographic Evidence

The cover of the first edition US hardcover, the first of Pratchett’s books to be published by Doubleday in the US. The cover art is by Justin Gerard, his only cover for a Discworld novel, though he did do the US covers for The Science of Discworld books, The Folklore of Discworld, A Blink of the Screen and A Slip of the Keyboard.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title makes the obvious gag that Pratchett himself didn’t, combining ginnungagap – the primordial “yawning void” of Norse (and Discworld dwarfish) mythology, from which the world (or one of them, at least) was created – and “mind the gap”, the famous advice on posters and announcements in the London Underground, warning passengers of the gap between the train and the platform.
  • As mentioned, Craig was previously a guest on one of our last pre-pandemic episodes: #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”, discussing Jingo.
  • “Gunzel” is uniquely Australian slang for a train or tram spotter – or by analogy, anyone with a specific nerdy interest (though that usage is uncommon). While it has an uncertain etymology, the term is at least several decades old; one account traces it specifically back to employees of the Sydney Tramway Museum in the 1960s, who supposedly picked it up from The Maltese Falcon (as they enjoyed using exaggerated American slang from old films and magazines). Originally used as a insult akin to British terms like “gricer” and “anorak”.
  • Melbourne’s City Loop is a central underground railway system passing in a circle through five stations in Melbourne’s central business district (CBD). Until 2025, all major train lines in Melbourne entered the loop on one of four tracks, passing through all of these stations before exiting again. In order to relieve congestion – there are eleven different train lines, but only four tracks in the loop – a new Metro Tunnel project was commenced in 2015 to dig a new tunnel across the CBD, linking the southeast directly to the northwest and creating five new underground stations (some of which are connected directly to the existing ones) in Melbourne and its inner suburbs. Those stations and the new tunnel opened in November 2025, and eventually some of the train lines will stop running around the loop and only run through the tunnel. (While not a true gunzel, Ben is very keen on public transport, so unlike Liz he’s very much looking forward to travelling on the new train route and seeing the new stations.)
  • Rob Wilkins gives an account of the writing of Raising Steam in the final chapter of the official Pratchett biography, A Life with Footnotes. He described the process as quite different from the usual, with Pratchett producing many, many scenes, but never getting to the stage of finding the “unifying, crystallising vision that would have turned these scenes into a novel”. He credits Pratchett’s UK editor, Philippa Dickson, with finding the pattern and the gaps in those scenes, and giving Wilkins advice on where to guide Pratchett in order to turn them into a book. Notably not involved was Pratchett’s previous and just as talented and beloved US editor, Jennifer Brehl, as he had only recently switched US publishers from HarperCollins to Knopf Doubleday. (This explains the new cover artist, as seen on Ben’s edition.)
  • Train-based fantasy, sci-fi and other fiction that we mention include:
    • Perdido Street Station and its sequels The Scar and The Iron Council, weird fiction novels by China Miéville which combine elements of fantasy and steampunk. The Iron Council features trains most prominently of the three.
    • Iron Dragon, perhaps the first “crayon rails” style train board game set in a fantasy world.
    • Westworld, the television series (based on the 1973 film) about fantasy theme parks staffed by “Hosts”, artificially intelligent robots indistinguishable from humans. The titular “Westworld”, a wild west town, was serviced by a replica steam train, which later plays an important part in the plot.
    • Points and Lines, aka Tokyo Express in the newer 2022 English translation, a 1958 Japanese crime novel by Seichō Matsumoto involving trains and timetables.
    • The Dark Tower series of novels, specifically The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, by Stephen King. These books feature Blaine, an insane artificial intelligence which controls a monorail train. The children’s book which references Blaine is Charlie the Choo-Choo.
    • Deadlands is a roleplaying game originally designed by Shane Lacy Hensley. The supernatural ore that powers some of its steampunk technology is called “ghost rock”. The current version is a setting for the Savage Worlds roleplaying game, rather than a game in its own right. Note that like many “weird west” games and stories of the twentieth century, the original 1990s edition contained plenty of appropriation (and misrepresenation) of the cultures of Native and Black Americans; we’re not sure what the later versions are like.
    • Spire: The City Must Fall and Heart: The City Beneath, a pair of related tabletop roleplaying games designed by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor. The class Ben mentions is the “Vermissian Knight”, though Ben got their ability twisted a bit; one of their “zenith abilities” (that are generally a character’s final act) turns them into a living train, who steams off into the Heart (the weird, living dungeon beneath the city of Spire, from which the abandoned Vermissian train system drew its power). The remaining members of their party get a special “Deus Ex Machina” abiltity that they can cash in once to have the train-thing return, smashing into an enemy who is defeating them and dealing massive damage before going on their way again.
    • The Peter Grant novels, particularly Whispers Underground, by Ben Aaronovitch. Aaronovitch is a big Pratchett fan, and references the Discworld in most of his novels; he also coincidientally reviewed Raising Steam for The Guardian when it was first published.
    • Snowpiercer, a film and subsequent television series, both based on the French graphic novel by Jacques Lob.
    • Abiotic Factor, a survival videogame by New Zealand developers Deep Field Games. The Train, also known as “the Steam Engine” or IS-0138 (a designation usually given to creatures or objects, rather than worlds), is noted as “highly dangerous” with the note “IT MUST NEVER STOP”.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat90 – Mind the Ginnungagap

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Psychologist Craig Hildebrand-Burke rejoins Liz and Ben as we don our flat caps and anoraks, as we make sense of Terry Pratchett’s penultimate Discworld novel, 2013’s Raising Steam.

Dick Simnel has created Iron Girder, the Disc’s first steam engine – and he’s brought it to Ankh-Morpork seeking an investor. He finds one in Sir Harry King, who is keen to be known as the King of something other than what brought him his wealth. As excitement and interest in the “steam engines” starts to build, Lord Vetinari sees its potential – but only if someone oversees this new enterprise on behalf of the city. That someone is, of course, Moist von Lipwig, who is in need of a new way to live dangerously. And dangerous it will be, since the conservative dwarf grags are once again moving against their progressive King. They’re attacking anything too new to be traditionally dwarfish – which means modern dwarfs, clacks towers, goblins with jobs…and the steam train…

Terry Pratchett clearly had a love of steam engines – he particularly requested a steam roller be the thing to destroy his unfinished works after his death. This at least partly explains why – instead of the announced Raising Taxes – the next Moist von Lipwig book would see him helping to bring the Discworld into the age of steam. Written in 2012 and 2013, as Pratchett’s illness started to worsen, it had a troubled journey into existence, with Rob Wilkins writing in the official biography that ‘the real triumph of Raising Steam was that it existed at all.’ But while it might lack the sharpness of plot and theme and structure that mark Pratchett’s best work, there are still plenty of great jokes, characters, observations and ideas in Raising Steam – especially for the Discworld fan who’s also a bit of a gunzel (that’s Fourecksian for “train spotter”).

Have you read Raising Steam? How do you rate it, compared to the previous novels in the series? How many words did you have to look up? What were your favourite allusions to the history of steam, and to railway fiction, that we didn’t mention? Get aboard the comment train by using the hashtag #Pratchat90 on social media, or comment on our website, to join the conversation!

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Guest Craig Hildebrand-Burke (he/him) is an educational and development psychologist who last joined us way back in January 2020 for #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”, to talk about Jingo. He specialises in working with neurodivergent children and young people and their families, as well as d/Deaf and hard of hearing children and families. We can’t advertise his actual practice, but you can find him on Instagram as @craighbpsychologist. (There are only a few posts in the grid, but he shares a lot of great stuff as reels!)

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Now we’re nearly at the end of the Discworld, it’s time to make sense of it all – so next month, we’ll be sifting through the A-Z of the series, The Discworld Companion! (We’ll be using The Ultimate Discworld Companion as the default, but any version you have should do!) Send us any questions you have about this encyclopaedia-like tome via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or send a clacks over your social network of choice using the hashtag #Pratchat91.

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.

#Pratchat89 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 89, “An Awfully Teeny Weeny Adventure”, discussing the 1995 computer game Discworld, with guest Jody Macgregor.

Iconographic Evidence

We’ll add a few choice screenshots here! Watch this space.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is obviously a reference to one of the companies who made Discworld, Teeny Weeny Games, and the fact that it’s a graphic adventure game. But it’s also a riff on “an awfully big adventure”, which is how Peter Pan describes death in the original play by J M Barrie. An Awfully Big Adventure is also the title of a film – coincidentally released in 1995, the same year as Discworld – about a teenage girl drawn into the drama and trauma behind the scenes of a post-war production of Peter Pan. It was directed by Mike Newell, and starred Georgina Cates, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. (Note that the film comes with a few content warnings.)
  • You can read a PDF of the 1993 interview with Terry from PC Gamer #1 via the PC Gamer website. It was originally made available for ‘A tribute to Terry Pratchett’, an article by Christopher Livingston published on 13 March 2015, soon after his death.
  • We mention two articles which discuss who holds the rights to the game:
  • Unsurprisingly we mention a lot of videogames in this episode, especially adventure games. Here’s a quick list of the adventure games; we’ll add more games, and some details, soon.
    • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990)
    • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991)
    • Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (Sierra On-Line 1991) – Ben was wrong about the prequel that was skipped; he’s confusing the time travel in this game (in which space janitor Roger Wilco visits several sequel games that don’t yet exist) with the missing fourth game in Sierra’s Leisure Suit Larry series. (Similar “Search for the Sequel” jokes have been proposed for films, but none filmed as far as we can find.)
    • Day of the Tentacle (LucasArts 1993)
    • Sam & Max Hit the Road (LucasArts 1993)
    • Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds (Humongous Entertainment 1994) – designed by Ron Gilbert, who also made The Secret of Monkey Island and most of the other adventure games mentioned by Ben this episode!
    • Full Throttle (LucasArts 1995)
    • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997)
    • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998)
    • Duck Quest? (Waffle Friday Studios 2013)
    • The Cave (Doublefine Productions 2013)
    • Thimbleweed Park (Terrible Toybox 2017)
    • Return to Monkey Island (Terrible Toybox 2022)

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat89 – An Awfully Teeny Weeny Adventure

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Games journalist and PC Gamer editor Jody Macgregor joins Liz and Ben to take control of an oddly Pythonesque Rincewind and discuss the 1995 graphic adventure game Discworld from Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions.

A nefarious secret society has summoned a dragon in Ankh-Morpork! It’s a suspiciously familiar plot, and of course the only one who can save the city is…Rincewind? This wizard might not know any spells, but he’s decidedly snarky and cunning – and accompanied by an inventory window on legs. Together, they’ll use petty theft, time travel and logic that would put Rube Goldberg to shame to rid the city of this scaly threat forever…twice!

Terry Pratchett was famously an early adopter of computers, and a devoted video game player, so its no surprise that there were other Discworld videogames before…er…Discworld. But this 1995 point-and-click graphic adventure game is by far the most well known and beloved of the lot – despite also being infamous for its difficulty, in a genre known for obscure puzzles with illogical solutions! The player controls a version of Rincewind voiced by Eric Idle, who must travel back and forth all over Ankh-Morpork (and to the edge of the Disc) to collect a variety of random objects to save the city. The plot is loosely based on Guards! Guards!, with some flavour from Moving Pictures and a cast drawn from the early wizards novels. It was followed by two more games from the same team: Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…?!, and Discworld Noir, each with quite different visual styles, and the latter with a brand new protagonist. Sadly, all three are “abandonware” – not only unavailable, but languishing in copyright limbo, with no-one sure enough who currently has the rights to get them published again.

Have you had a chance to play Discworld? What do you think of this version of Rincewind, Ankh-Morpork and the Disc? Would you like to hear us do episodes about the two other adventure games? And what other adventure games would you recommend for folks looking for a similar vibe? What other kinds of Discworld videogame would you like to see? Click on Pratchat and choose the question mark icon to join our online conversation, using the hashtag #Pratchat89.

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Guest Jody Macgregor (he/him) is a journalist who started out writing about music, but now writes mostly about videogames. He’s been writing for PC Gamer for about a decade, and is currently the magazine’s weekend and Australian editor. You can find out more about him, and read his most recent reviews and articles, by looking up his profile at pcgamer.com.

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re catching a train – the Ankh-Morpork Scenic Railway, that is – as we read Terry Pratchett’s penultimate Discworld novel, Raising Steam! Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or get on board via your local social media platform using the hashtag #Pratchat90.

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.

#Pratchat88 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 88, “They’re All Good Dragons, Bront”, discussing Paul Kidby’s 2024 art book, Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, with guest Brendan Barnett.

Iconographic Evidence

We can’t show you photos of the book, but you can find a lot of the art on Paul Kidby’s official website.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title refers to a famous tweet from the social media account WeRateDogs. This account shared photos of dogs submitted by their owners on Twitter, and rated them with outrageously positive comments, giving all of them scores of at least 10 out of 10. In 2016, another Twitter user named Brant complained about their rating system. WeRateDogs asked “Bront” (a deliberate misspelling of his name) why he was so mad, and he replied that “you give every dog 11s and 12s, it doesn’t make any sense”. Their now famous reply: “They’re good dogs Bront”. (We based our title on the misquote “They’re all good dogs, Bront”.) WeRateDogs is still going, and still a delight; you can find their social links at weratedogs.com.
  • The book Brendan describes from his youth with Death keeping bees is almost certainly the original large-format edition of Eric, lavishly illustrated by Josh Kirby. See #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies”.
  • The desktop calendar Brendan mentions might have been a Discworld Day-to-Day Calendar, available in 1999 and/or 2000. It’s one of those types with a plastic stand holding a pad of small square sheets, one for each day of the year. Ben thinks he might also have had one of these back then.
  • George Rex is an Adelaide-based illustrator and cartoonist, and friend of the podcast. She appeared as a guest in #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies” and #Pratchat55, “Mr Doodle, the Man on the Moon”.
  • For the record, the book does a great job of crediting all the art by other artists or from other publishers in an appendix. Ben just wishes the Kidby pieces were given years and sources as well!
  • Colin Morgan is an Irish actor most famous for playing the titular young wizard in the BBC fantasy adventure TV series Merlin from 2008 to 2012. His other credits include the sci-fi series Humans, Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast, and the podcast drama Passenger List. He was the narrator for the first full sub-series of new Discworld audiobooks from Penguin, the Wizards books. That includes The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times, The Last Continent, and Unseen Academicals. (The Last Hero is not published by Penguin, and did not get an audiobook.)
  • Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch is a 2023 book written by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, compiling Tiffany’s in-character thoughts on witchcraft with commentary by many of her mentors (amongst other characters). It’s published in a very similar format to Designing Discworld, and is also lavishly illustrated by Paul Kidby. We originally planned to discuss both this book and Tiffany Aching’s Guide in the same episode as this one, but we’ve got other plans for it now – watch out for a discussion of it next year. We interviewed Rhianna and Gabrielle when it came out in #Pratchat74, “Hogswitch”.
  • On closer inspection, Ben thinks the “handwritten” footnotes might be done using a handwriting font rather than actually being written by Paul. He’s not sure, but either way, it’s a fun visual choice!
  • The painting Ben describes is actually The Discworld Massive Massif, a larger and much expanded version of Kidby’s earlier Discworld Massif. The new was painted to commemorate Paul’s thirty years of illustrating Discworld in 2023. It features 140 characters, which we assume isn’t a deliberate reference to the old days of Twitter. You can buy one of a limited collector’s edition print of it from Paul Kidby’s website, or get it in jigsaw puzzle form from the Discworld Emporium.
  • There’ll be more notes on art and artists to come, but for now, here’s a list of UK first edition cover artists of Terry Pratchett’s major works. (The American covers are a whole other thing.)
    • Terry did his own covers for his first two novels, The Carpet People and The Dark Side of the Sun (#Pratchat18, “Sundog Gazillionaire”). His third, Strata (#Pratchat68, “Discus Ex Machina”), had a piece by Tim White which bears little connection to the novel itself.
    • The original cover for The Colour of Magic (#Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”) was by Alan Smith.
    • Josh Kirby was brought in when the Discworld novels moved to Gollancz and Corgi, and he did them all – as well as various spin-offs – until his death in 2001, his last being Thief of Time (#Pratchat48, “Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang”). Kirby also did the original covers for Truckers (#Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven”), Diggers (#Pratchat13, “Don’t Quarry Be Happy”) and Wings (#Pratchat20, “The Thing Beneath my Wings”), plus new covers for Terry’s older novels when they were re-published by Corgi. He also did art for most German editions of Pratchett’s other books, including anthologies of short stories in which work by Pratchett appeared.
    • Cartoonist Gray Joliffe collaborated with Pratchett on The Unadulterated Cat (#Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat”), including the original cover art. (The most recent edition was The Unadulterated Maurice, which replaced the cover and all interior illustrations with images of Maurice from The Amazing Maurice film.)
    • The original cover for Good Omens (#Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It, But We Feel Nice and Accurate”) was designed by Chris Moore, though the most famous early cover was for the paperback edition, which features art by Graham Ward.
    • The Johnny Maxwell books didn’t originally have unified cover designs, with each one done by a different artist: David Scutt for Only You Can Save Mankind (#Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”), John Avon for Johnny and the Dead (episode currently unavailable), and an uncredited designer for Johnny and the Bomb (#Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem”).
    • In between Kirby and Kidby, presumably because it was the first Discworld book for younger readers, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (#Pratchat33, “Cat, Rats and Two Meddling Kids”) originally had cover art by David Wyatt.
    • Paul Kidby’s first Discworld covers weren’t for novels, but for other books – diaries, maps, the New Discworld Companion, and The Science of Discworld (#Pratchat35, “Great Balls of Physics“). After collaborating on The Last Hero (#Pratchat55, “Mr Doodle, the Man on the Moon”), he took over the main Discworld covers beginning with Night Watch (#Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”), including the Tiffany Aching books. He did the original cover for Dodger (#Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh”), and later new covers for the Johnny books, and a deluxe illustrated edition of Good Omens.
    • The spin-off picture book Where’s My Cow? (#Pratchat62, “There’s a Cow in There”) had cover and interior art by Melvyn Grant.
    • The original UK cover of Nation (#Pratchat41, “The Adventures of Crab Boy and Trouser Girl”) is by Johnny Duddle, who also did the interior artwork.
    • The Long Earth (#Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the West”) and all four of its sequels have covers designed by Rich Shailer, who also did all the exploded diagrams that appear on the inside.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat88 – They’re All Good Dragons, Bront

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Illustrator, game designer and educator Brendan Barnett joins Ben to discuss art, ideas, inspiration, creative process, dragons, wizards and goblins (oh my!) as we leaf through Paul Kidby’s 2024 gorgeous coffee table book, Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Paul Kidby started bringing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to life when, on the third attempt, he showed off his skill to the author by drawing his own versions of Discworld characters who had so captured his imagination. After several successful collaborations on art books, diaries, maps and the epic The Last Hero, he took over as the cover artist for the series after the death of Josh Kirby in 2001. His illustrations of the characters have become iconic, and Pratchett himself referred to him as his ‘artist of choice’. In this book, Paul discusses his pre-Discworld career, his long collaboration with Terry, and even shows us a glimpse of what might have been by sketching drafts of covers for the books that never were.

Do you have a favourite illustration from the book? What was most interesting to you about Paul’s process as an artist – and what’s it like to read if you don’t consider yourself one? How many of originals that Kidby parodies or does an homage to did you know? And who are your other favourite artists? Illustrate your point by sending us your answers (or questions) via a comment, or on the back of a social media post using the hashtag #Pratchat88.

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Guest Brendan Barnett (he/him) has spend around 15 years working with young people to foster their creativity, including for most of the last decade with Ben at their previous workplace, the creative writing centre 100 Story Building. Trained as an animator and an actor, he is also a keen lover of fantasy roleplaying, and has designed some very well-received adventures for Dungeons & Dragons and similar games. You can find out more about his work at brendanbarnett.com, and find his latest adventure, Grotto of the Golden Gargoyle, on itch.io – as well as his recent collaboration with Ben, the one-page adventure Flee the Flying Saucer!

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re surfing the wave of Melbourne International Games Week (which happened just as this episode was being edited) to discuss the 1995 graphic adventure videogame Discworld! A slightly odd adaptation of the plot of Guards! Guards!, Discworld stars Eric Idle as the voice of Rincewind, alongside a small but equally impressive cast of UK comedy talent. It’s not currently commercially available, but you can find play-through videos of it on YouTube. Get your questions in via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, or send them via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat89.

Then, for December, #Pratchat90 will return us to the Discworld novels for nearly the final time, as we read the final Moist von Lipwig book, Raising Steam! We’ll remind you about it next month, but if you want to get your questions in early, the hashtag for that episode is #Pratchat90. And don’t worry – we have plans to discuss Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch in the new year. Watch this space!

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.