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#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find them scattered about the web, but none of them seem to have been updated after the year 2000, so they’re all very out of date.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.

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 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.

#Pratchat54 – The Land Before Vimes

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The Trousers of Time end up in a knot as writer Nadia Bailey rejoins Liz and Ben and we go back to the Glorious Past in the twenty-ninth Discworld novel, 2002’s Night Watch.

While pursuing dangerous killer Carcer across the rooftop of Unseen University, a magical bolt of lightning (or something) sends Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch and Duke of Ankh, thirty years into the past – along with his quarry. Carcer kills Vimes’ old mentor, Sergeant John Keel, and Vimes steps into Keel’s thinly-soled shoes; he’ll have to show himself the ropes to keep history intact. But he’s not just reliving any old past: it’s almost the Glorious 25th of May. The day the people deposed the paranoid Patrician Lord Winder; the day hundreds were killed in violent clashes across the city; and the day John Keel died…

Night Watch is beloved by Discworld fans, no least because it gives a double dose of everyone’s favourite “honest copper”, Sam Vimes. But he leaves Sybil in labour as he’s thrust back intp the best and worst days of his early career, forced to grapple with the darkness in his and others’ souls with only the technobabble of a few time boffin monks for guidance. It’s possibly Pratchett’s darkest book, and certainly takes us into one of the darkest corners of the Discworld: Ankh-Morpork before the rise of Vetinari and the Guilds.

Does Vimes knows where to draw the line in this book? Is Carcer an intriguing villain, or a cookie cutter evil psychopath? Could you teach your younger self everything you needed to know to become you? And is this book in your top five, or do you fail to see what all the fuss is about? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat54 on social media.

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Guest Nadia Bailey is a writer, editor and critic. She’s published a number of pop-culture related books about such diverse subjects as Stranger Things, Frida Kahlo and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her latest publication is The Deck of Crystals, a deck of cards which looks into the history, superstition and lore of gemstones. Nadia has just begun a PhD researching (among other things) the lives of queer women during World War I. You can find Nadia on Twitter as @animalorchestra, or visit her website at nadiabailey.com.

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

Next month we’re joining a ragtag crew of misfits on a desperate mission to save the Disc in the second big illustrated Discworld adventure, The Last Hero! And to help us navigate Paul Kidby’s astonishing illustrations, we’re welcoming back illustrator and comic book creator Georgina Chadderton. Send us your questions via the hashtag #Pratchat55, or via 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.

#Pratchat61 – What Terry Wrote

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Designer and educator Matt Roden delves deep under Ankh-Morpork with Liz and Ben as they unravel the mystery of the penultimate City Watch book, 2005’s Thud!.

As the anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley approaches, the dwarfs and trolls of Ankh-Morpork find their ancient enmity stirred up – not least by Hamcrusher, a conservative leader of the “Deep Down” dwarfs, who has preached hatred against the trolls. But now Hamcrusher’s dead – not that the other deep downers want the Watch to know about it – and Vimes must solve the puzzle of his murder before tensions explode across the city. On top of that, he’s also been sent a government inspector, he’s had to take on the Watch’s first vampire, someone’s stolen the most talked-about painting in town – and he has to get home at 6 o’clock sharp, every night, to read Where’s My Cow? to his infant son…

While most Watch books have a mystery that needs solving, none so far have felt as much like a contemporary thriller as Thud! There’s an awful lot going on, with politics, religion, art and history all in the mix. Is it too much for one book? Are there threads that get dropped along the way? Is Pratchett having his cake and eating it too with his fantasy abstractions of real world issues? And who do you think should star in Discworld legal drama The Good Dwarf? Join in the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat61 on social media!

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Guest Matt Roden is a graphic designer, educator and the Creative Learning Manager for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Matt has a long history with storytelling and education; he helped set up The Ministry of Stories in London, and was the first volunteer and a long-running Storyteller with Sydney’s Story Factory. You can follow Matt on Instagram (where you can see photos of his dog) at @matthewrodeo.

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

We apologise that this episode has gone out much later than planned. While our schedule has gotten a little out of whack, we’ll still be continuing our “Thud! trilogy” next episode with our special crossover with sibling Pratchett podcast The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. We’ll be joined by Jo and Francine to discuss Where’s My Cow?, the hottest children’s book in Ankh-Morpork! Plus we have plans to extend our Thud! trilogy to four parts – details coming in our very next episode.

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 – Punching Up

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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)

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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.