Elizabeth Flux

#Pratchat70 – Punching Up

Leave a Comment

Liz and Ben are joined by guest author Caimh “C. K.” McDonnell as they read a very early and very short chapter in the history of the Watch: Terry Pratchett’s 1993 short Discworld story, “Theatre of Cruelty”.

When the Watch discover a murdered entertainer with pockets full of change, a string of sausages round his neck, and no witnesses to the crime, the Clues are very unhelpful. But Corporal Carrot is on the case – and when it comes to solving the crime, he knows the way to do it…

Written for W H Smith’s free Bookcase magazine – a pristine copy of which now fetches a few hundred dollars – “Theatre of Cruelty” was published not long before the second Watch novel, Men at Arms. It packs more jokes into 1,000 words than most people write in a lifetime, and is also a delightful extra outing with the original officers of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. But don’t take our word for it: you can read it yourself at the L-Space web.

Is it a satisfying murder mystery? Why does Pratchett seem to have a thing for Punch and Judy? And how on Earth did we talk for nearly two hours about such a short piece of writing? Join the conversation – and send us your favourite short stories and cruel bits of theatre – using the hashtag #Pratchat70.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50:23 — 51.2MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Caimh McDonnell is a comedian, writer and author best known for two series of books. The first is the “Dublin Trilogy” comic thrillers, starring Bunny McGarry and a cast of loveable rogues, beginning with A Man With One of Those Faces in 2016 (though see the reading order on his website). The other – as C. K. McDonnell – is the comic urban fantasy series The Stranger Times, about a weird newspaper called The Stranger Times, and beginning with the novel titled…er…The Stranger Times in 2021. Aside from his books you can hear his writing on two podcasts: The Bunnycast for further crime stories, and The Stranger Times Podcast for more Stranger Times. You might also catch him live this Halloween via his Facebook or YouTube accounts! Caimh is on Twitter at @caimh, and his website is whitehairedirishman.com. The Stranger Times series has its own site at thestrangertimes.co.uk.

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

For our October episode, we’re going on one last trip to Roundworld as we read and discuss The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day with two special guests, including our old friend and Uniting Church minister, the Reverend Doctor Avril Hannah-Jones. We’re recording around the 25th of September, so don’t delay – get your questions about the book (or the Science series as a whole!) in ASAP via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, or on social media using the hashtag #Pratchat71.

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.

#Pratchat70 Notes and Errata

Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 70, “Punching Up”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s 1993 Discworld short story, “Theatre of Cruelty”, with guest Caimh McDonnell.

Iconographic Evidence

Since it was available for free, there are lots of scans floating about on the internet, and it’s a shorter version than the one available for free on the L-Space web, we figure it should be okay for us to share the original two-page spread of the story from Bookcase magazine, including the original version of Josh Kirby’s illustration.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title plays on Mr Punch, the concept of “punching up” in comedy (i.e. the idea that the targets of derision in comedy should be those with more power), and the other concept of “punching up” in writing (i.e. adding more jokes and/or pace to a script to improve it).
  • We’ve mentioned Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series of urban fantasy novels before. They follow the adventures of new police officer Peter Grant as he becomes apprentice to the last wizard in England, who also works for the London police. There are now nine novels, four novellas, a short story collection, nine graphic novels (originally published as separate issue comic books) and a tabletop roleplaying game. The best place to start is probably Rivers of London, the first novel from 2011, which was originally titled Midnight Riot in the US (but is now published there under its proper title). The first comic, Body Work, is also a good place to dip in, as are most of the novellas and short stories.
  • The Fortean Times is the magazine of the Fortean Society, an organisation founded by American researcher and writer Charles Fort. He collected and wrote about “anomalous phenomena” – unusual events and experiences which had gone unexplained by science, though apparently he did it to keep scientists on their toes rather than because he believed any of the theories put forth in his writing. The Fortean Times is still published in the US, UK and other countries today, and you can find them online at forteantimes.com (though you have to subscribe in print). Fort himself is mentioned in Good Omens.
  • We can’t find a good reference for the edition of Good Omens with two Thursdays in one week, if that is a real error and not a fevered imagining of Ben’s. But there have been other notable ones: in some recent editions, Anathema is referred to as Agnes in one sentence when showing her index cards to Newt, and a persistent one in earlier editions was Famine saying his name had seven letters when cryptically referring to himself with a crossword clue. Some white editions of the book had a cover misprint in which the text and Crowley’s glass of wine appear, but the demon himself does not!
  • On Roundworld, “theatre of cruelty” is an artistic concept created by Antonin Artaud, a French poet and theatre maker (among many other things) active in the 1920s and 30s. His theatre of cruelty wasn’t literally theatre, or literally cruel, but rather a reaction against realism. He wanted performance to be something more visceral: a spectacle, incorporating music, dance, lights and everything other than text, performed by “athletes of the heart” who would surround audiences to shock them out of complacency and wake them up to the horrors and violence of real life. While not embraced widely, it’s been an influence on many theatre makers, notably director Peter Brook in his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, including a famous 1966 production of the play Marat/Sade. This YouTube video from CrashCourse is a pretty good overview.
  • Neil Gaiman’s Sherlock Holmes stories are “A Study in Emerald”, from the 2003 anthology Shadows Over Baker Street, and “The Case of Death and Honey”, from the 2011 collection A Study in Sherlock. “A Study in Emerald” won both a Hugo and Locus Award in 2004, and has been adapted into a board game by Martin Wallace, of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork and The Witches fame.
  • Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) was an American speculative fiction writer whose work encompassed novels, short stories, television (most famously the Star Trek episode “The Guardian on the Edge of Forever”), videogames and more. Angry Candy is his 1988 anthology about death, containing the award-winning short stories “Eidolons”, “Paladins of the Lost Hour” and “Soft Monkey”. Dangerous Visions was a 1967 collection of groundbreaking science fiction stories edited by Ellison and was hugely influential, not least for the way it included sex in the genre. It was followed by Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972, and he announced a third, The Last Dangerous Visions, in 1973, but it was not published in his lifetime. His failure to publish the book became a controversy in speculative fiction circles, especially after several of the authors who sold him stories died before seeing them in print; British author Christopher Priest wrote about the book for his own fanzine, eventually expanding the piece into a short book titled The Book on the Edge of Forever in 1988. Ellison’s literary estate is now managed by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, who announced in 2022 that The Last Dangerous Visions would finally be published in September 2024, preceded by new editions of the first two books.
  • Regular listeners will be familiar with Liz’s love for Diana Wynn Jones, and we’ve previously mentioned her 1988 novelette “Carol O’Neir’s Hundredth Dream”. It’s part of her Chrestomanci series of stories and books, set in a magical universe where there are a specific number of alternate worlds.
  • We’ve also previously discussed American horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965), most notably in #Pratchat58, “The Barbarian Switch”. Her famous story “The Lottery” appears in the many collections, including 1949’s The Lottery and Other Stories. Dark Tales is a more recent anthology, published by Penguin in 2016.

More notes to come soon!

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

#Pratchat68 Notes and Errata

Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 68, “Discus Ex Machina”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s third novel, 1981’s Strata, with guest EJ Mann.

Iconographic Evidence

Australian Bush Heritage’s thread of “Pedro Pascal as Australian frogs” first appeared in a Twitter thread, but we’ve embedded the Instagram version below. (Twitter is…not as stable as it once was.) Make sure you check out all of them!

Here are the first edition covers of Pratchett’s two early science fiction novels. Ben mistakenly remembered Pratchett’s cover for The Dark Side of the Sun featuring dragonflies, not bees; he may be remembering the later cover, also by original Strata artist Tim White, which depicts a robot insect which…well, it’s also not a dragonfly, but it’s more like one than Pratchett’s bees. Though the weird fungal creatures on his Strata cover do look like dragonflies – one of the many details that makes it entirely unlike the book in every way, aside from the inclusion of a lightning bolt.

Strata first edition; cover art by Tim White
Strata first edition; cover art by Tim White
The Dark Side of the Sun, first edition; cover art by Terry Pratchett
The Dark Side of the Sun, first edition; cover art by Terry Pratchett

Below is the earliest post we could find for the photo of the common snapping turtle with the “world” on its back. It’s from the source, the Twitter account for Task Force Turtle; see below in the notes for more on the turtle, and for an article where you can see it if Twitter becomes too unstable to supply this embedded tweet.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title plays with the well-known Latin phrase “deus ex machina”, “God from the machine”. Originally used in Ancient Greek theatre as a literal stage direction, in which actors playing the roles of gods would be brought on stage via a machine, it has come to mean an unexpected plot resolution brought about by supernatural or implausible means, especially if those means have not previously been established in the narrative. We don’t think Strata is an example of this, but the Latin for “disc from the machine” seemed too perfect not to use.
  • The last in-person Australian Discworld Convention was Nullus Anxietas 7, held in Melbourne in April 2019. We recorded a live episode there: #PratchatNA7, “A Troll New World”, discussing the short story “Troll Bridge”.
  • Bush Heritage Australia is a non-profit organisation which was started as “The Australian Bush Heritage Fund” in 1991, with the purchase of forest land in Tasmania by environmentalist and former leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown. The charity now owns millions of hectares of bushland across Australia, which it manages in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. You can find out more at bushheritage.org.au, or follow them (and their very funny social media manager) as @BushHeritageAus on Twitter or Instagram.
  • You can read what Pratchett had to say about the Disc in 1981 on Colin Smythe’s website, where you’ll also find early reviews – including one by Neil Gaiman! Of the Discworld, Pratchett said:
    “I am also working on another ‘discworld’ theme, since I don’t think I’ve exhausted all the possibilities in one book!”
  • Thanks to subscriber Craig, who shared a photo of the full blurb for the first edition of Strata, which we can also confirm was first published by Colin Smythe in hardcover. (See above for the original covers of both Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun.) Here’s the longer blurb:

A flat earth? Impossible.
Kin Arad is the 210-year-old supervisor in charge of resurfacing the newly named planet, Kingdom. When she finds Jago Jalo, a man who has a cloak of invisibility and should have died a thousand years ago, in her office, she decides he must have an unusual tale. He has. He knows where such a world is. It is like the medieval earth…almost. Leiv Eiriksson is setting off for the New World, but he will never find it. Instead he sails to the edge of the world and its eternal waterfall.
It is obvious that this ‘earth’ has been built by the Great Spindle Kings, makers of universes, inventors of the strata machine and the ultimate in claustrophobes, and Jalo lures the human Kin, the kung Marco Farfarer and the fiftv-six-syllable-named shand better known as Silver, to undertake a voyage of discovery with him: the rewards must be beyond their dreams…or nightmares.
In Strata Terry Pratchett again shows the remarkably witty, imaginative and descriptive talents that have characterised his earlier works and show him to be one of the best s.f. writers of the younger generation.

Strata – blurb from the first hardcover edition (1981)
  • You can find many different covers for Strata at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. While many seem to use stock sci-fi or fantasy art, most use Josh Kirby’s cover (though some use his art for The Dark Side of the Sun!). The German cover by Katarzyna Oleska is Ben’s favourite, and is the only one to show Kin as a Black woman; we also like the French one by Marc Simonetti, though he inexplicably depicts Kin as a cyborg with red skin, though accurately makes her bald. The mass market US paperback has a cover by Darrell K. Sweet which gets special mention for the very retro image of Kin in a silver spacesuit holding a raygun while on a Viking ship menaced by a dragon, but it makes her white (and ginger) and leaves out Marco and Silver entirely.
  • Magrathea is the fabled planet manufacturing planet which features prominently in the plot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As well as many luxury planets built during a boom in the galactic economy, it also built the planet Earth; the fjords were designed by planetary architect Slartibartfast, who meets Arthur Dent during the final chapters of the first radio series/book/film etc.
  • Speaking of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ben is correct: the original radio series was broadcast betweem 1978 and 1980. The first novel was published in 1979, while the original BBC television series was made in 1980, but broadcast in 1981. There have been numerous other versions, including an LP (which differs from the radio series), a videogame, a feature film, several stage plays, a comic book and, supposedly, another television series currently in production at Hulu.
  • The film Liz mentions with Olivia Wilde where remaining lifetime is a currency is indeed In Time (2011, dir. Andrew Niccol), a sci-fi action film starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake. It’s similar to the earlier film Price of Life (1987, dir. Stephen Tolkin), and also the 1965 Harlan Ellison short story “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”. Ellison briefly sued Niccol (who is best known for Gattaca) and the producers of In Time, but dropped the suit after seeing the film.
  • Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by American author Larry Niven. In the book, 29th century human Louis Gridley Wu is recruited on his 200th birthday by an alien “Puppeteer” named Nessus to go on an expedition. He is to investigate the Ringworld, a massive construct surrounding a Sun which has an immense Earth-like inner surface. He travels there with Nessus, a cat-like Tzin named Speaker-to-Animals, and another human, Teela Brown. Their ship is damaged on arrival and crashes; its hyperdrive still functions but it cannot get back into space to use it safely. The crew head towards the edge of the Ring, hoping to find technology to help them repair their ship, encountering strange technologies and the remnants of the Ring’s civilisations along the way. As Terry Pratchett put it on alt.fan.pratchett, “I intended Strata to be as much a (pisstake/homage/satire) on Ringworld as, say, Bill the Galactic Hero was of Starship Troopers. All Niven’s heroes are competent and all his technology works for millions of years…but he’s a nice guy and says he enjoyed the book.” There are four sequels: The Ringworld Engineers (1979), The Ringworld Throne (1996), Ringworld’s Children (2004) and Fate of Worlds (2012), which is also the last book in Niven’s Fleet of Worlds series. All of these books are set in Niven’s broader “Known Space” universe.
  • EFTPOS systems, which allow a transfer of funds direct from a purchaser’s bank account to a merchant, first appeared in America in 1981. The system was slow to be adopted by consumers, and credit cards and cheques remained much more popular alternatives to cash. Australian banks were pretty quick to adopt a national EFTPOS system, in part because they had already had to cooperate to set up Bankcard, a domestic credit card implemented in the 1970s before the major card companies came to Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these things, it appears one of the main reasons Australians call it EFTPOS is advertising: the major company making and selling the infrastructure equipment, and marketing it to the public during the 80s and 90s, was “eftpos Australia”. EFTPOS is also popular, and known by that term, in New Zealand and Singapore.
  • Budgie is the nickname for the budgerigar, a small species of parakeet with long tails. Like Liz, many Australians growing up in cities don’t realise they’re native birds, in part because they’re so commonly kept as pets – very unusual for native animals! In country areas they gather in huge flocks at water holes. Their popularity is largely due to their small size, colourful plumage (usually white and blue or yellow and green, but many other breeds exist), and their ability to “speak” and whistle. They’ve been exported – legally and otherwise – to many countries around the world. A common bit of Australian slang for men’s swimming costumes is “budgie smugglers”, referring to the fact that they don’t leave much to the imagination and the wearer’s genitals are often outlined, appearing around the same size as a budgie.
  • The Wayfarer series by American author Becky Chambers begins with her debut 2014 novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which she originally crowdfunded and self-published. It was nominated for several awards and republished by Hodder & Stoughton in 2015. The Wayfarer of the series title is a “tunnelling ship” – a spacecraft which builds wormholes between distant parts of space for other spaceships to use as shortcuts. The original novel follows the multi-species crew of the Wayfarer and their relationships during one long mission. It has so far been followed by three sequels: A Closed and Common Orbit (2016), Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018) and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (2021), plus a short story, “A Good Heretic” (2019), though these follow different characters and stories in the same universe. The species who can communicate via coloured patches on their cheeks are the Aeluon, otherwise plain-coloured humanoids who are one of the more powerful species in the galaxy.
  • The Lying Bastard, the spaceship constructed by the Puppeteers for the mission to the Ringworld and named by Louis Wu, was sadly not shaped like a disc. In most depictions, including the ones sanctioned by Larry Niven himself, it looks more like a fighter jet.
  • Silver actually says her name is fifty-six syllables long – considerably more than Ben’s guess of twenty-three! The “unpronounceable name” trope is a common excuse to give aliens, demons and the like simple names, even when their origins suggest they should have a language and/or culture very different to human ones. Doctor Who has several examples, including the Doctor’s own name (in the modern series a secret, but hinted to be very long in some of the books) and that of fellow Time Lord Romanadvoratrelundar, more commonly known as Romana (though when they first meet, the Doctor also offers to call her “Fred”).
  • Slashie and multi-hyphenate are both terms for those who diversify into multiple disciplines, particularly in the arts. “Multi-hyphenate” is more common in the screen industry, where one might be a writer-director-producer on the same project; “slashie” is a more general arts term, for folks who (like Ben) have several different freelance careers to ensure enough work. (Ben is an actor/writer/game designer/educator, among other things.)
  • We’re still pretty sure that the whole “you might outnumber me, but how many of you will die before you get me?” thing does appear in a Discworld book somewhere, but we haven’t been able to find it. Do you know where it is? Let us know!
  • The turtle that burrows underground and comes up looking like A’Tuin (or Torterra, if you’re a Pokémon fan) is the common snapping turtle of North America, Chelydra serpentina. They migrate to muddy holes where they bury themselves to hibernate during Winter. In 2018, a photo of one such turtle was taken in Maryland by Timothy Roth, a psychology professor working with Task Force Turtle. The photo went viral on social media and is now posted to various Discworld forums at least a few times each year, though this turtle hadn’t just woken up from hibernation… You can see the image above, and read the story of how and why it was taken, and learn more about the turtles themselves, in the LiveScience article “How Butt Gas, Drugs and Amazing Memories Led to This Weird Turtle Photo”, from December 2018. As EJ mentions, its often linked to the “turtle island” stories of several North American peoples, including the Lenape and Haudenosaunee.
  • Stephen Briggs’ unabridged audiobooks of both Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun were released by Isis Audio Books as boxed sets of CDs in the early 2000s. The same recordings were re-released around 2007 on “mp3-CD” – yes, a CD-ROM with the tracks from the original CDs as mp3 files. This format was playable by some CD players produced in the 2000s (and may still be playable by some in-car CD players now), but quickly became obsolete as solid-state media (like USB drives) became cheaper, and then the audio industry shifted to download and streaming. When the Isis unabridged recordings of the Discworld novels and other books were licensed for digital distribution via Audible, Apple Books and so on, it seems Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun were not included, but then the Isis Discworld audiobooks – including the earlier ones narrated by Nigel Planer – don’t seem available digitally any more either. (We assume they were removed to avoid confusion, now the new Penguin audiobooks are out; Tony Robinson’s ones are still available, but under the series title “Discworld (abridged)” to make the distinction clear.) You can still find the physical media versions secondhand, though, if you’re keen.

More notes to come soon!

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

#Pratchat49 – Once More, With Future

1 Comment

Arts journalist, critic and broadcaster Richard Watts joins Liz and Ben on a trip sideways in time with reluctant wizard Mervin (with a V) in Terry Pratchett’s 1995 short story “Once and Future”, originally published in the Arthurian collection Camelot.

As he stands on the beach waiting for the right hopeful king to come along, professional time traveler Mervin recounts his story of how he became stranded in a sideways version of medieval Britain. Here the stories of Arthurian myth are more or less real – though one notable figure is missing… With his knowledge of modern technology, a stash of emergency supplies and help from sharp local girl Nimue, he has a plan to fill the gaps in this other history…

Pratchett explores a new angle on the Matter of Britain, mixing sci-fi and engineering into a story about stories and “a world that’s not exactly memory and not exactly story”. Published in between Interesting Times and Maskerade, but stewing in his head for a decade before that, it features some of Pratchett’s most developed ideas about time travel, and was something he was proud and fond of. He even thought of turning his more extensive writings for it into a novel!

Did you enjoy Pratchett’s take on the practicalities of time travel? Would you have the skills to make it as a time traveler? Does it have the beginnings of a full-length novel? And what’s the best thing you’ve ever found in a charity shop? …we’re not sure where that one fits in either, but you asked so we answered! (Thanks Ryn.) Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat49 on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:45:22 — 48.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Richard Watts (he/him) is indeed a titan of the Melbourne arts community. He’s best known as a journalist for ArtsHub, where he is the National Performing Arts Editor, and as the host of SmartArts, 3RRR’s long-running weekly arts programme. As well as being named a living legend of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2019, Richard’s contributions to the arts were further recognised in 2021 when he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards’ Facilitator’s Prize and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards. He’s also written for roleplaying games including Call of Cthulhu, Elric!, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Wraith: The Oblivion. You can find Richard on Twitter as @richardthewatts.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode is our fiftieth – and to celebrate, we’re cracking open Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook! This is Pratchett’s 1999 collaboration with Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan, the latter of whom is responsible for the actual recipes inside – some of which we’ll be trying out with our very special returning guest, comedian and author Cal Wilson! We’re also hoping to cook up something a little extra to send your way around Hogswatch as well… For now though, send us your questions – about the book, the recipes, Nanny’s etiquette advice or even just doing a Pratchett podcast for over four years. Use the hashtag #Pratchat50, or send us an email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

#Pratchat48 – Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang

3 Comments

Freelance writer and journalist Ben Riley joins Liz and Ben for a magical history tour as Susan Sto Helit teams up with a couple of monks to stop time…er…stopping in Terry Pratchett’s twenty-sixth Discworld novel: 2001’s Thief of Time.

In Ankh-Morpork, a mystery woman tasks the odd but talented Jeremy Clockson to build a clock so accurate it can measure the tick of the Universe. In mountain monastery of Oi Dong, Lu-Tze, sweeper of the History Monks, gains a new apprentice: the unmotivated but gifted Newgate “Lobsang” Ludd. And in his domain, Death senses that the Auditors of Reality, grey entities who count every atom, are once again seeking to curb the chaos of life. He recruits his granddaughter Susan to help find the son of Time. If they can’t, he’ll have to get the old band back together and ride out for the end of the world – at precisely one o’clock, this Wednesday…

Pratchett brings back a string of old favourites for this action-packed romp through…well, not quite through time, but it’s certainly “about” time. It’s the last book to properly star Susan Sto Helit, and for that matter Death; it brings back Lu-Tze, the sweeper who nudged Brutha in the right direction back in Small Gods; and Nanny Ogg is here too, in her first major appearance since the last Witches book, Carpe Jugulum. Oh, and there’s a main character named Lobsang, and we know all about that name…

Is this what you were hoping for in a third outing for Susan? How do you feel about the fate(s) of Lobsang and Jeremy? Where do you land on having an in-universe excuse for continuity errors in Discworld? And are the monkish wisdom jokes okay because they’re based more on kung fu movie tropes than actual Tibetan culture, or is it still a bit on the nose? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat48 on social media!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:27:34 — 68.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Benjamin Riley (he/him) – not to be confused with Spider-Man clone Ben Reilly – is an award-winning freelance writer and journalist. He’s written for Junkee, SBS Online, PopMatters, Overland, the Star Observer and many other publications. Ben also works in AIDS research and in HIV and sexual health policy, organises queer community events, and co-hosted and produced the queer political podcast Queers with Simon Copland from 2015 to 2019. (You can still find old episodes in most podcast directories and via the Queers acast page.) For more on what Ben’s up to, follow him at @bencriley on Twitter or hit up his website at benjaminriley.com.au.

In other Ben news, the videogame Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown, written by Ben McKenzie (yes, this one), is now available on Steam!

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode we take another little breather – it’s been a long lockdown here in Melbourne, folks – to read a Pratchett short story: his take on Arthurian myth, “Once and Future”! It was originally published in 1995 in the collection Camelot, but like most of his short fiction you can find it in A Blink of the Screen. Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat49, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

And yes, we are planning something a little different and special for our fiftieth episode in December – watch our website and social media for news on that soon!

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.

#Pratchat47 – A Finite Number of Shakespeares

Leave a Comment

Science comedian and public health nerd Alanta Colley joins Liz and Ben on their second trip through Discworld into Roundworld. It’s Terry Pratchett’s second collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen: 2002’s The Science of Discworld II: The Globe.

While on a team-building exercise in the woods near Unseen University, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully and his faculty are accidentally swept along when something makes its way through the Discworld into Roundworld. That something turns out to be elves – nasty, parasitic lifeforms who feast on the imagination and emotions of others. Roundworld – the universe in a bottle created by the wizards’ experiments, which somehow runs without any magic – has been altered by their presence. Now the wizards – including Rincewind, the long-suffering Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography – have to find a way to get rid of them without dooming the local human population in the process…

Having entirely missed humankind in The Science of Discworld, the wizards are back for another go! And so are science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen – but this time, they don’t want to explain cosmology, basic physics and the history of the Earth, but instead sell you on the idea that storytelling is the essential ingredient that makes humans…human.

Are we really Pans narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee, rather than Homo sapiens, the “wise man”? Is it wise to write a popular science book with an author who will guarantee the book will be read again twenty years later – and to include some “cutting edge” science, no less? What do a debunked psychological experiment, the term “overcommitment”, and filthy explanations of fairytales have to do with it? And who’s this shrewd and world-wise street wizard named Rincewind, and can we have some more of his adventures please? Let us know what you think using the hashtag #Pratchat47 on social media, and join in the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11:42 — 60.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Alanta Colley (she/her) is a comedian, science communicator and storyteller whose solo shows include Parasites Lost (about parasites), Days of Our Hives (about beekeeping) and The Origin of Faeces (you can probably work that one out yourself). She also wrote and performed the “comedy experiment” You Chose Poorly with our own Ben McKenzie. Since 2017 Alanta has also been the host and producer of Sci Fight, a series of comedy science debates; both Ben and Liz have been guest speakers, along with previous Pratchat guests Anna Ahveninen (#Pratchat35) and Nicholas J Johnson (#Pratchat38). You can hear Ben and Anna’s last appearance on Sci Fight in this episode of the Climactic podcast, or see the first online debate for Melbourne Science Gallery on YouTube here. Visit scifight.com.au to sign up to the mailing list, and you can find Alanta as @lannyopolis on Twitter and Instagram, via Facebook or at alantacolley.com.

You can find out more about what Liz has been writing by following her as @ElizabethFlux on Twitter or Instagram.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode we read one of the few precious Discworld novels left to us, though luckily we got a little preview this time around; yes, we’re joining up with Susan, Death and the history monks for the very timely Thief of Time, which we’ll be discussing with journalist Ben Riley! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat48, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

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.

#Pratchat46 – The Helen Green Preservation Society

Leave a Comment

Writer and editor Deanne Sheldon-Collins joins Liz and Ben as they return to the infinite worlds of the Long Earth to discuss Terry Pratchett’s second collaboration with Stephen Baxter: 2013’s The Long War.

In the ten years since anti-stepping extremists nuked his home town of Madison on the original “Datum” Earth, natural stepper and explorer Joshua Valienté has settled down. He’s husband to pioneer Helen Green and mayor of Hell-Knows-Where, a thriving town established more than a million steps West of the Datum. But Sally Linsay, fellow far stepper, soon arrives to ask Joshua for help. Trouble is brewing in the Long Earth: settlers are abusing the intelligent humanoids known as “trolls”. Tensions are rising between the American government and the far-flung colonies in its “footprint” on other worlds. And on another distant Earth, other species make plans to push the humans back where they came from…

The multi-threaded cosy travelogue continues in (probably) Pratchett’s second-longest novel. More Earths, more characters, more non-humans! A sense of potential disaster looms in every other chapter, while the characters and narrative ponder humanity’s relationship with Earth, and the ways in which society might respond to twenty-five years of unlimited resources and living room.

Does this still feel like Pratchett to you? What did you think of the women in the novel – especially Joshua’s “young wife” Helen? Did you enjoy the various side treks to weird worlds with strange creatures, or did they just leave you wanting more time with the trolls, kobolds, elves and even weirder Long Earth creatures? And, perhaps most importantly: will you stick with the series and see where it’s going next? Use the hashtag #Pratchat46 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:29:23 — 68.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Deanne Sheldon-Collins (she/her) is an editor and writer who’s been an active part of Australia’s speculative fiction scene for a decade or so. Deanne has worked for Aurealis magazine, Writer’s Victoria, the National Young Writer’s Festival and Speculate, the Victorian Speculative Fiction Writers Festival, where she was co-director with previous guest Joel Martin. (Speculate has since closed down, but you can find old news about the festival on its Twitter account, @SpecFicVic.)

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode it’s time to restart the experiment as we shake up the globe that is the wizards of Unseen University’s Roundworld experiment! Prepare to mix science and magic in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, which we’ll be discussing with science comedian, Alanta Colley! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat47, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

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.

#PratchatNALC – Twice as Alive

Leave a Comment

With the ei- the twice-fourth Australian Discworld Convention postponed until next year, Liz and Ben fired up their crystal balls to project themselves live for the one-day online event, Nullus Anxietas: The Lost Con! In this special one-hour mini-episode, we revisit the very first Terry Pratchett book discussed on the podcast: the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993’s Men at Arms!

You can of course listen to #Pratchat1 again if you like, though we’ve included a few important excerpts in this revisit episode. As well as discussing the book in the light of everything we’ve read (and everything that’s happened) since, we reminisce about figuring out how the podcast would work, and answer some questions posed by the live online audience. Has your opinion of Carrot/Angua changed over time? Is Cuddy’s death still too upsetting to think about? What other names and Discworld-specific words are we pronouncing wrong? We’d love to know! (Except maybe that last one.) Use the hashtag #PratchatNALC on social media to join the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:13 — 26.1MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Intrigued by the idea of a Discworld fan convention? You should be! Old-school fan conventions are few and far between, and we’d love you to support one of the few left in Australia. Find out more about Nullus Anxietas, the Australian Discworld Convention, and get a convention membership (attending or supporting) at ausdwcon.org. You can also follow Nullus Anxietas on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

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

Huge thanks to everyone who attended the convention, those who listened to us live and asked questions, and to the other panelists – there were some amazing discussions and great fun to be had by all! Especially big thanks once again to the massive team of hard-working volunteers and committee members at Nullus Anxietas, especially “the Man with the Vote”, Steve Lewis, and question wrangler Danny Sag. While Nullus Anxietas 7A was sadly cancelled in the end, the Australian Discworld Convention returns to life in 2024 with Nullus Anxietas IX: Come ALIVE in Überwald! in Adelaide. We hope to see you there.

This is the closest thing we’ve done to a live show since our appearance at the last Nullus Anxietas convention, but the online format seemed to work pretty well. We’ll look into the possibility of doing our more online live events in future – let us know if that’s something you’d like to see!

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.

#Pratchat45 – Hogswatch in Grune

Leave a Comment

Surprise! In the great Australian tradition of Christmas in July, Liz and Ben are joined by writer and literary horror fan Penelope Love to discuss Terry Pratchett’s short story “Twenty Pence, With Envelope and Seasonal Greeting”, first published on the 16th of December, 1987.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1843, and the driver of a missing Mail Coach is discovered lying in the snow in Wiltshire. A local doctor determines he is scared out of his wits, but nonetheless records the coachman’s horrifying tale of passing through a weird rectangular portal. He and his passengers strayed from the world we know into others filled with nightmares: strangely glittering snow, terrifyingly flat London streets, monstrous giant animals and nonsensical language…

Written in the style of Victorian horror fiction from authors like M R James, H P Lovecraft and A C Doyle*, with a side order of Dickens, this story was inspired when Pratchett glanced at his shelf full of Christmas cards. Despite the ridiculous premise, he plays it totally straight, with phrases that could have come straight from The Call of Cthulhu and other works of the era he’s emulating.

But in 1987, people still sent Christmas cards. Does the story still work now, when we have to think a bit harder to recall the kinds of things printed on those ineffable pieces of cardboard? Can we be spooked and made to laugh at the same time? And does the old-school “horrors humankind was not meant to know” genre still make our blood run cold in this age of smartphones, satellite imagery and Google? Use the hashtag #Pratchat45 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:46 — 36.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Penelope Love is a writer best known for her short fiction, and her work on roleplaying games, most notably Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, based on the works of H P Lovecraft. Penny is also part of the team at Campaign Coins, who make gorgeous metal coins and counters for use with roleplaying and other tabletop games. You can find Penny’s collections of comic fantasy stories about “The Three Dungeoneers” via the Campaign Coins website, and also look up Penny’s author page on Amazon to find many of Penny’s other works. Penny is on Twitter as @PennyLoveWrites, or you can follow @CampaignCoins for more on their projects.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode, as previously advertised, we’re going West and/or East again as we head back into the Long Earth with The Long War – this time joined by writer and editor, Deanne Sheldon-Collins! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat46, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

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.

* With apologies to Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle.

#Pratchat44 – Cosmic Turtle Soup

Leave a Comment

We’ve waited two-and-a-half years for its 35th anniversary, but finally Joel Martin rejoins Liz and Ben to resolve the Disc’s first (and most literal) cliffhanger in The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett’s second Discworld novel, first published on the 2nd of June, 1986.

When we last saw them, failed wizard Rincewind, Twoflower the tourist and Twoflower’s magical Luggage – a living chest on legs – had fallen over the Rim of the Discworld. But instead of being lost in space, they mysteriously land back on the Disc in the Forest of Skund, surrounded by talking trees, gnomes and gingerbread cottages. The senior wizards of Unseen University – including Chancellor Galder Weatherwax, and scheming second-in-command Ymper Trymon – soon discover what’s happened: the Octavo, the Creator’s book of spells, wants to keep Rincewind alive. One of its spells is inside his head, and it’s needed to avert an impending apocalypse heralded by an ominous red star…

While the usual story is that Pratchett only returned to the Discworld because The Colour of Magic proved popular, he did set himself up for a sequel by dropping his protagonists off “THE EDGE”. Unlike its predecessor, The Light Fantastic has a pretty straightforward plot about averting the end of the world – but that doesn’t stop Pratchett from parodying everything from fairytales to druidic sacrifices and the conventions of fantasy writing. Plus this book introduces some concepts, and especially characters, who will come back later, including a now ex-human Librarian, Death’s adopted daughter Ysabell, and octogenarian barbarian Genghiz Cohen. (The rest of the supporting cast are less fortunate…)

Does this feel like a “real” Discworld book yet? How do we reconcile these versions of Death and Ysabell with the ones we come to love later? Is it really a bad idea to start with the early books – or is it fun to begin with the early versions of ideas Pratchett would later develop more fully? And what on the Disc happens to Rincewind between this book and Sourcery? Use the hashtag #Pratchat44 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:18:37 — 63.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Guest Joel Martin (he/him) is a podcaster and writer who has joined us twice before: way back in #Pratchat14 to discuss The Colour of Magic, and then again in #Pratchat31 for The Long Earth. He’ll be back for The Long Mars (#Pratchat57) and The Long Cosmos (in 2024). His speculative fiction writers festival, Speculate, wrapped up in 2022, and his podcast The Morning Bell is on hiatus, though you can find links to episodes where Liz and Ben appear at the bottom of our Episodes page. Find Joel online at thepenofjoel.com or on Twitter at @thepenofjoel.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode we go back to another second book of a series, as we take a little break from the Discworld. Yes, it’s book two of Pratchett’s five novel collaboration with Stephen Baxter, The Long War! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat45, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

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.