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#Pratchat92 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 92, “Sand of the Scrounge Wizard”, discussing the 1996 computer game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!?, with guest Kat Clay.

Iconographic Evidence

Listener Michael recommended this review of Discworld II by YouTuber MitchManix.

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

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title – inspired by a gag made by Kat – is a riff on the title of the first Leisure Suit Larry game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from 1987. Inspired by their earlier text-based game Softporn Adventure, Leisure Suit Larry is a series of “adult” graphic adventure games from Sierra Entertainment. The Larry games are very 1980s style sex comedies, mostly starring Larry Laffer – a middle-aged, balding virgin whose big quest is to usually to seduce a woman. (Though to be fair, it does turn into sort of a love story by the end of the original trilogy.) There are ten games in the series, the most recent from 2020, though only the first six were designed by the series’ original creator, Al Lowe. The original has also been remade and re-released several times.
  • We mention the animated Discworld adaptations a couple of times, by which we mean the two from Cosgrove Hall. These were Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, originally broadcast in 1997 and 1998 – so after the release of Discworld 2. Of note: an interview with Terry about these adaptations from the time, for MelodyMaker magazine, has been doing the rounds on social media. He was very happy with them! This was also around the time Hollywood was trying to make a version of Mort, and he was less enthusiastic about that. But it seems that when it came to adaptations, he most loved the plays – he said he loved the thought of people rehearsing lines from his books!
  • Death’s Domain (1999) was the fourth official “Discworld Mapp” to be published, following The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (1993), The Discworld Mapp (1995), and A Tourist Guide to Lancre (1998). All of the maps were devised by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs; Steven Player illustrated the first two, while the Lancre map and Death’s Domain were illustrated by Paul Kidby. The last two maps reportedly didn’t sell as well as the ones of the Disc itself and its most famous city, and are no longer in print.
  • The “Paul Kidby pictures” Kat mentions are probably from The Pratchett Portfolio, a short collection of Kidby sketches and illustrations of Discworld characters, accompanied by brief notes from Terry. It was published as a large format but slim softcover in 1996. Another option might be the follow-up, The Art of Discworld, from 2004, which was a larger hardcover volume containing many more images, and sporting his original version of “The Mona Ogg” on the cover. For more on Kidby’s artwork, see #Pratchat88, “They’re All Good Dragons, Bront”, about Kidby’s much more recent book Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
  • The Scarlet Stiletto Awards are an annual competition for short crime fiction written by Australian women, launched by Sisters in Crime in 1991. At the 2018 awards, Kat’s story “Lady Loveday Investigates” (available on her website) won three awards: the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic Award, the Sun Bookshop Third Prize, and the Athenaeum Library Body in the Library runner-up prize.
  • “Dark academia” is an aesthetic and niche storytelling genre which emerged over the last decade, though its often traced back to The Secret History, Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel about murder and turmoil amongst students at university in New England. It mixes an idealised, old-fashioned version of higher education with goth-adjacent themes of finding beauty in darkness. Common touchstones include libraries, books, gothic architecture, tweed, pencil skirts and other 1930s fashion. If you thought Rupert Giles was the sexiest character in Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, then dark academia might be for you! The aesthetic is not without its critics, who point out that it romanticises a Eurocentric and elitist idea of education.
  • When Kat mentions a rubber chicken, she is almost certainly thinking of the infamous “rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle” that appears in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island. (See the list of adventure games below for more.) Sadly no rubber chickens appear in any of the three Discworld adventure games.
  • Discworld II was released shortly after the publication of Hogfather, but given when it was written and developed, it’s likely the team had only limited access to notes about any books after Maskerade. This might explain why some of the portrayals don’t quite match the books, especially when it comes to Hex (written as HEX in the game) and Ponder Stibbons.
  • Liz’s comment about “going up and down stairs for 15,000 years” is a reference to the length of time Rincewind spent navigating some locations – most notably Unseen University – in the first Discworld game.
  • For more about Abiotic Factor, The Bard’s Tale, The Outer Worlds 2 and Disco Elysium, see the list of “other videogames” below.
  • Monty Python’s Life of Brian was the third feature film from Eric Idle’s comedy troupe, Monty Python. Set around 33 CE, it tells the story of Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a man born in the stable next door to Jesus Christ. As an adult living in Roman-occupied Judea, Brian falls in love with the revolutionary Judith Iscariot (Sue Jones-Davies) and has a series of misadventures, including being mistaken for the Messiah. At the film’s end, he is captured and crucified by the Romans, but the people he thought would help him instead celebrate his sacrifice. As he despairs, a victim on the cross next door (Eric Idle) leads the crucified in the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” to cheer them all up. It has remained a popular song ever since.
  • While the game only briefly explains why Windle is having a deathday party, the manual explains that wizards can see Death and know when they will die. Like most of the manual, this is essentially done via a remix of text and jokes from the novels, reproduced below. (The footnote is one about Rincewind failing to have achieved even the first of the eight levels of wizardry.)

There exists a special relationship between all wizards and Death, as they can not only see him but also know the exact time of their death. Amazingly, some part of this bleeds off onto Rincewind, despite the readily apparent fact that Rincewind is not really a wizard*. Rincewind can see Death, but does not accurately know the time of his own death. He suspects, however, that it will be a fraction of a second after almost everything he does. Death and Rincewind have always had an interesting relationship: Death has often offered to reap Rincewind’s soul as he was passing by, just to save time, and Rincewind has very politely run away.

Discword II: Missing, Presumed…!? manual, page 4-5
  • Don Bluth is an American animator. He worked with Disney in the 1950s and 1970s before creative differences on The Fox and the Hound led to him founding his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. Their best-known films include The Secret of NIMH (1982) – a book adaptation with some similarities to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents – The Land Before Time (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Anastasia (1997), Titan A.E. (2000), and An American Tail (see below).
  • An American Tail (1986) is the story of a young Russian-Jewish mouse, Fievel Mousekewitz, and his adventures in New York when he is separated from his family while emigrating to America in 1885. It was a co-production between Amblin Entertainment and Bluth’s Sullivan Bluth Studios. Don Bluth directed and co-produced the film, which stars a mix of famous and little-known actors. It was a hit, followed by three sequels (albeit two direct-to-video) and a television series.
  • Dragon’s Lair (1983) was the first of several LaserDisc arcade games animated by Don Bluth’s company. The machines played scenes from a LaserDisc, with the outcome of each scene determined by what we would call a “quick time event” today – a precisely timed joystick movement or button press. In Dragon’s Lair the player controlled the knight Dirk the Daring, who must overcome various obstacles to rescue the Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe. It was a hit at the time for looking much better than other games – and for the daringly revealing outfit worn by Daphne – but by the time the sequel was released years later, it was seen as out-dated. A live-action movie adaptation of Dragon’s Lair has been in the works since around 2020.
  • King’s Quest is a series of graphic adventure games from Sierra, created by Roberta Williams, beginning in 1984 with King’s Quest, later renamed King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown. The series follows the royal family of the fairytale Kingdom of Daventry, beginning with Graham, a knight who becomes King by the end of the first game. Graphic adventures of the time hadn’t earned the nickname of “point and click”, and the first four in the series still used typed text commands to interact with items, characters and scenery. They were popular though, and King’s Quest was followed by multiple sequels alongside other series like Quest for Glory (originally Hero’s Quest), Space Quest and even Police Quest. The change in art style Kat mentions is probably the switch from high-resolution but still traditionally pixel-ish art in King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992), to the smoother cel-animation style of King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994) – though they predate Discworld and Discworld II by a few years, so they don’t look quite as good as Discworld II. Both of these games’ protagonists were women. For more on the specific King’s Quest games Kat mentioned, see the list of games below.
  • The 7th Guest was released in 1993 (three years before Discworld II), and was one of a number of games – including Myst and various other early 3D and “talkie” adventures – that helped drive the switch from floppy disks to CD-ROMs in the 1990s. The main attraction for The 7th Guest was the full-motion video and sound, rather than its puzzles. (For more on this generation of games, see the list below.)
  • The silver cord is a term used for a few different concepts related to ideas of a soul or higher self, all linked to the idea of “astral projection” – being able to project one’s consciousness outside of the physical body. The Western, Christian-influenced version of this goes back to at least the 1920s, but it borrows largely from other traditions, including Ancient Egyptian ideas of the soul, and Hindu spiritual practices. It gets a bit more complicated than Ben describes: the silver cord is said to connect the physical body not to the soul itself, but to the “subtle body” – a sort of intermediate presence, which is partly physical, and partly spiritual. The soul uses the subtle body to travel outside of the physical one. The name “silver cord” is usually consider to be a Biblical allusion, specifically to Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, which refers to “the silver cord” being severed, along with the “golden bowl” being broken and various other things being destroyed before the spirit returns to God. The meaning of the verse is unclear, though many scholars think it is a metaphor for the human body, with “silver cord” referring to the spinal cord.
  • There’s no definitive origin for the cinema term Dutch angle, but the technique is also known as a “Dutch tilt”, alongside other names. Its usage goes back to the early twentieth century, when it was often used in Germany – leading to the theory that “Dutch” should more properly be “Deutsch”. In English language cinema it was popularised by Alfred Hitchcock, among others, but has been used by many filmmakers since to heighten tension or to portray madness, disorientation, or things being otherwise “out of joint”. This is thought to align (more or less) with other uses of the term “Dutch” in British English, dating back to the trade rivalry between the two countries.
  • OSR (Old School Renaissance, or Old School Revival) roleplaying is difficult to precisely describe as not everyone agrees on what it means. This is partly because it emerged in many online forums at once, in large part as a response to the release of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in the year 2000. At its core, it’s a philosophy or style of play that seeks to emulate what people liked about editions of D&D and similar games from the 70s and 80s. But not everyone agrees on what those elements are – indeed, some would argue that the Renaissance and the Revival are two distinct movements, and even those may be further broken down into different traditions. As a result, there are many “OSR” games which work quite differently, as well as “NSR” (New School Revival) games that seek to marry the good of the old with more recent game design philosophies. But a few things commonly cited as being important to OSR roleplaying include:
    • Player skill over character skill – the character’s capabilities are less important than the player’s skill at devising plausible solutions for the obstacles in their way.
    • High danger, or lethality – in many OSR games player characters are much more likely to die or suffer serious losses or injury than in other kinds of roleplaying games. This is both because of the rules (it may be very easy to roll enough damage to kill a character outright, for example), and because the expected setup is that dungeons and similar adventuring environments are full of deadly hazards, traps and creatures.
    • Rulings over rules – OSR games usually have simpler rules which don’t try to account for everything players might try to do. Instead, the “referee” is expected to make up rulings on the fly for how to resolve situations.
    • Compatibility – though specific rules might vary considerably, many OSR and NSR games are designed to be compatible with older and newer published adventures, without requiring a great deal of translation or conversion.
  • The manual gives the official names of the dialogue icons as “Greeting” (the smile), “Question” (the question mark), “Sarcasm” (the Jack-in-the-Box), “Muse” (the candle in the thought balloon) and one Ben forgot to mention: “Goodbye”.
  • A branching narrative is a story in which decisions made by the audience (usually a single player or reader) result in a different version of the story, often including different endings. While this is now common in videogames, it was invented in print media first. The most famous versions are the Choose Your Own Adventure books, created by Edward Packer in the US in the 1970s, and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson in the UK in the early 1980s. Not all videogames have branching narratives – many require them to experience the events of the game in a fixed order (a “linear narrative”), or at best all the same events but in slightly different orders.
  • Discworld versions of the wandering shop appear most prominently in The Light Fantastic (see #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup”) and Soul Music (see #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got Rocks In”).
  • As far as Ben can tell, no, Terry Pratchett does not appear in the final crowd scene in Discworld II. As mentioned, he does appear in a similar scene in the first game – and is part of an Easter egg that can get Rincewind to say a very cheeky line of dialogue.

More notes coming soon!

Videogames

As in our episode about the previous game, we mention plenty of videogames in this episode. We’ve split these into two lists below.

Adventure games

We mentioned these text and graphic adventure games, in order of release:

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom 1984) – a text-based adventure game which broadly follows the plot of the Hitchhiker’s story, but with many new and changed details to provide puzzles the player won’t know how to solve. The player takes on the role of Arthur Dent. It was co-written by Douglas Adams himself, and is infamously difficult – though there are harder text adventures!
  • King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (Sierra Entertainment 1988) – this game casts the player as Princess Rosella, who must help a fairy in order to save the life of her father King Graham, the protagonist of the first two games. (For more on the series as a whole, see the errata and notes section above.)
  • King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (Sierra Entertainment 1990) – King Graham returns to a starring role when an evil wizard, seeking revenge for Graham’s sons actions in King’s Quest III, takes the rest of his family captive. This was the first King’s Quest game without text-based commands.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990) – a comedy adventure game created primarily by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. The story follows Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who comes to Melêe Island to seek his fortune and become “a mighty pirate”. Along the way he falls in love with the island’s governor, Elaine Marley, and earns the wrath of the evil ghost pirate LeChuck. It is still one of the most popular adventure games of all time. Remastered as the “Special Edition” with more modern cartoony art in 2009.
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991) – the sequel to The Secret of Monkey Island is set some years later, when an older Guybrush is finding it harder to live off the glory of his exploits from the first game. He goes searching for a fabled treasure, but is followed by LeChuck, now a zombie. Monkey Island 2 has some notably harder puzzles than its predecessor, and like the first Discworld game, involved a lot of going back and forth between locations to solve puzzles. It does have something in common with Discworld II, though: a great musical number involving skeletons! It was popular, but its unconventional ending left fans a bit confused, and the third and fourth games were made without the original creative team. This one was also remastered as a “Special Edition” in 2010, and its ending was revisited in Ron Gilbert’s surprise sequel, Return to Monkey Island, in 2022.
  • Gobliiins (Coktel Vision 1991) – the first in a series of French fantasy adventure games in which the player controls a variable number of goblins; the number of “i”s in the title of the game indicates how many goblins you will control.
  • King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Sierra Entertainment 1992) – this game picks up at the end of King’s Quest V, when the newly rescued Prince Alexander meets and falls in love with Princess Cassima. He goes on a quest to find her in the Land of Green Isles, travelling between several islands each themed after a different kind of mythology. Notably for its open world design, and for having many optional puzzles which, if completed, provided a more satisfying ending.
  • Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts 1992) – the first Indiana Jones game to feature an original story. While primarily an adventure game, the player can choose one of three modes early on: the Team Path has the player control both Indy and his new partner, Sophia Hapgood; the Wits Path has Indy solve more difficult puzzles alone; and the Fists Path focuses on fighting, which is present but optional in the other two modes.
  • The 7th Guest (Trilobyte 1993) – more an interactive movie than an adventure game, this was one of the first CD-only games. It made extensive use of full-motion video in a horror story set in a haunted mansion.
  • Myst (Cyan 1993) – a hugely influential 3D puzzle game, another of the early CD-only games. It was was one of the best-selling games for about a decade. The player finds a book titled Myst, which magically transports them to a mysterious island of the same name.
  • King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (Sierra Entertainment 1994) – the first King’s Quest game with multiple player characters. Just before Princess Rosella’s wedding, an evil witch transforms her into a troll, and transports her and Queen Valanice – in her first starring role – to a far away kingdom. The game takes place across six chapters (not unlike the acts of Discworld II), with the player alternating between the protagonists, who are split up until late in the game. They must find a way to break the curse and get back home.
  • The Dig (LucasArts 1995) – based on a plot by Steven Spielberg about a group of astronauts exploring an alien world, this science fiction adventure game was also notoriously difficult.
  • Toonstruck (Burst Studios 1996) – a hugely expensive game blending full motion video with cel animation, and an all-star cast. Christopher Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a frustrated animator drawn into the cartoon world of his saccharine children’s show, with his weirder, less child-friendly creation as a sidekick.
  • Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (7th Level 1996) – though Ben remembers this as not being much of adventure game, that’s how it was sold. The mini-games were definitely the highlight when he tried playing it back in the day, though!
  • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997) – the third Monkey Island game more or less ignores the ending of the second one, and features Guybrush escaping from LeChuck – now a fiery demon – only to accidentally curse Elaine and turn her into a golden statue, and she is stolen by pirates. This game features cel-style animation similar to Discworld 2.
  • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) – LucasArts’ first 3D animated adventure game, written and directed by Tim Schafer. The player controls Manuel “Manny” Calavera, a junior travel agent to the newly deceased in an Aztec-inspired, 1950s retro afterlife. While trying to avoid getting fired from his job, Manny unwittingly discovers corruption and conspiracy in the Department of Death.
  • Escape from Monkey Island (LucasArts 2000) – the first Monkey Island game in 3D sees Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley, now married, return home to find Elaine has been declared dead. Guybrush works to restore her position as governor, this time opposed by Australian property developer Ozzie Mandrill (a parody of Rupert Murdoch) and the surprise return of LeChuck. This sequel leaned heavily on concepts from and references to the earlier games, and wasn’t super well-received. (Not everyone was convinced the 3D models were an improvement on the previous art styles, either.)
  • Bye Sweet Carole (Little Sewing Machine 2025) – a horror adventure game in cel-animation style, in which the player tries to unravel the mystery of her missing friend Carole in early twentieth century England.
  • The Drifter (Powerhoof 2025) – an Australian game about a drifter who returns to the city for a funeral, only to be caught up in a supernatural mystery.

Other videogames

These games are from other genres, though as with all classification of art, the line isn’t always clear! Some of these certainly have adventure-like elements, but in general the focus isn’t on solving puzzles to progress through a story.

  • Abiotic Factor (Deep Field Games 2025) – a dark comedy horror survival game, set in an underground bunker in outback Australia belonging to Gate, a super-science organisation similar to
  • The Bard’s Tale (Interplay 1985) – a classic roleplaying game that plays with the standard tropes of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure. Followed by a long string of sequels and remakes.
  • The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian 2025) – a satirical action roleplaying game on capitalism and consumerism, set in a retro-futuristic alternate history where monopolies were never reigned in, and a star system colonised by humans is thus run by a handful of megacorporations.
  • Disco Elysium (ZA/UM 2019) – an award-winning roleplaying game set in which the player is an amnesiac alcoholic cop investigating a murder in the weird Eastern Europe-inspired dystopia of Revachol.
  • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive 2025) – a turn-based action roleplaying game in which the player controls the members of Expedition 33. They are the latest to try and reach “the Paintress” – a mysterious figure on a distant island who every year paints a decreasing number which causes everyone that age or older to evaporate. Ben likes to describe it as “sad beautiful French Final Fantasy”.
  • Elden Ring (FromSoftware 2022) – an action roleplaying game set in an open world of warring demigods, inspired in part by Norse mythology, and with a story by George R R Martin. It’s part of a sub-genre of “souls-like” games that stem from FromSoftware’s earlier game Dark Souls. Souls-like games generally have challenging combat that relies on player skill and timing, frequent character death, and other aspects that give them a reputation for being very difficult. Kat wrote a blog about finishing Elden Ring in August 2025: “I was wrong about Elden Ring. Here’s why…”

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

#Pratchat92 – Sand of the Scrounge Wizard

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Writer and game designer Kat Clay joins Liz and Ben to point and click on Rincewind once more, as we discuss the 1996 graphic adventure game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? from Perfect Entertainment.

When the wizard Windle Poons dies, no-one comes to collect his soul – and this isn’t the first time Death has been derelict in his duty. Something must be done, and the Archchancellor knows just the man for the job: so-called wizard and veteran videogame protagonist, Rincewind! Can he – that is to say, you – navigate an ever more fiendish chain of elaborate tasks to summon Death, and persuade him to go back to work? Or will the Disc be doomed to immortality?

The first Discworld point-and-click graphic adventure, released in 1995, was a hit. So of course Perfect Entertainment – the merged form of Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions – returned just one year later with a sequel. While not quite as well known as the original, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (or Discworld II: Mortality Bytes in the US) once again features Eric Idle as Rincewind, a cast of thousands (voiced by three), and a plot constructed from bits of Discworld novels (mostly Reaper Man and Mort). It also features an original song written and performed by Idle, a brand new visual style, and more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a Suffrajester at. The team, headed by Angela Sutherland and Gregg Barnett, would go on to produce one more Discworld game: Discworld Noir, a brand new story with an original protagonist. But like its stablemates, Discworld 2 is currently out of publication.

Have you played Discworld 2? Did you find it easier than the first one? Was it written with an awareness that women play videogames? Do you prefer the cel-animation look of this game, or the cartoony pixels of the first one? Does it feel more like the Discworld, or a spin-off from Monty Python? And for subscribers especially, would you like to watch Ben stream these games and play along? Join our online conversation by using your fingers with the social media platform, and then clicking on the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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Guest Kat Clay (she/her) is a writer of fiction and tabletop roleplaying games from Melbourne, Australia. Her writing is mostly horror, and has included short stories, game reviews, novellas and hopefully an upcoming full-length novel. Kat won a Silver ENNIE award for her Call of Cthulhu adventure, The Well of All Fear, and her recent modern-day Cthulhu adventure, Resort, won Best Scenario at the 2025 Australian Industry Roleplaying Awards. You can find out more about Kat, and read some of her work, at katclay.com. You can also find her on social media, including Bluesky as @katclay.com, and buy her adventures via DriveThruRPG – where they’re all bestsellers!

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

Next month we’re getting schooled in legends and lore via Pratchett’s collaboration with Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld! We’ll be looking at the third edition, which references all the novels up to Raising Steam. Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or send us a magpie via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat93.

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.

#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.

#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.

#Pratchat19 Notes and Errata

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These are the show notes and errata for episode 19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got Rocks In” featuring guest Fury, discussing the sixteenth Discworld novel, 1994’s Soul Music.

Iconographic Evidence

We didn’t know about this when we recorded this, but twenty episodes later in #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?”, guest Marc Burrows told us about the 1981 song “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”, the lead single from debut album Desperate Character from British singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000). Clearly the inspiration for a certain line of dialogue! And, no doubt, one of many music references we likely missed (though this one might be forgiven; we’re not sure it charted highly in Australia!). Here’s Kirsty is performing it on what we think might be Top of the Pops. (Thanks to listener James for prompting us to add this Kirsty in the comments.)

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title puns the title of Duke Ellington’s 1931 jazz standard “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, which has been recorded dozens if not hundreds of times over the last 90 years.
  • The Valhalla Cinema was a cinema in Melbourne which specialised in audience participation films – and in its early days you had to bring your own seats. Opening in 1976, it later relocated to Westgarth and changed names. The Wikipedia entry has a charming story about a rather eventful screening of The Blues Brothers – though we doubt that this was the one that Pterry attended (if, indeed, he attended one at all).
  • Look, the French Foreign Legion have a long and storied history, but in popular culture they are the go-to reference for the group you join when you want to get well away from your old life. Brendan Fraser’s character in The Mummy? French Foreign Legion.
  • Why are denim trousers called jeans? They’re named after the city of Genua, where the original fabric was manufactured. Read more about their history here. We know; we hoped they would be named after Gene Wilder too.
  • Rebel Without a Cause is one of James Dean’s most famous films and is often credited with kicking off the idea of the teenager.
  • Arthur Daley is a character from Minder, a British comedy-drama series that ran from 1979 to 1994.
  • Animorphs, first a book series, later adapted into a TV show, followed the adventures of a group of friends who had been given the power to morph into different animal shapes in an attempt to fight back against a secret alien invasion on Earth. Their enemy were the Yeerks – a parasitic species which would occupy the body of a host and control them.
  • Is Sioni bod da real Welsh? According to the Annotated Pratchett File: “‘Bod Da’ is Welsh for ‘be good’. Ergo, ‘Sioni Bod Da’ = ‘Johnny B. Goode’.”
  • “The Day the Music Died” is the name given to the tragic day where musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson were killed in a light aircraft accident. Both Holly’s wife and mother heard the news from media rather than authorities (his wife, Maria Elena, via a TV report and his mother via the radio). His mother collapsed at the news, and Maria Elena shortly afterwards had a miscarriage. This series of events led to the development of a policy for proper notification of victims’ families. The events of the day also inspired Don McLean’s song “American Pie”.
  • There have been at least two Dalek invasions of contemporary Earth in Doctor Who; the first was in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion of Earth, later adapted into a feature film starring Peter Cushing.
  • The natural human preference for length of day is a subject of much debate. Some studies showed that the human circadian rhythm, when absent of outside stimuli like light and knowledge of time skewed more towards 25 hours, but later studies dispute this. Need more people to volunteer to sleep whenever they want for further study? We’re available!
  • Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game. A designated “spinner” throws two coins into the air from a special paddle or board called a “kip”, which has recesses to hold the coins. Players bet on which way the coins will land: obverse (both heads), reverse (both tails) or “Ewan” (one of each). It’s often played on ANZAC Day, when it is officially legal (at least in the state of New South Wales), as it was very popular among soldiers during World War I. Modern games still often use old pre-decimalisation pennies from a significant year like 1915, the year of the Gallipoli campaign.
  • According to the Stratocaster Guide, Keith Richards once said “The Strat is as sturdy and strong as a mule, yet it has the elegance of a racehorse. It’s got everything you need, and that’s rare to find in anything.” Basically? They’re the quintessential cool guitar.
  • In the TV series Gilmore Girls, Dean and Jesse are, respectively, Rory Gilmore’s first and second boyfriends. Dean is an absolute garbage heap of a human being which only becomes more apparent as the show progresses. Jesse starts out only marginally better, but he improves. In the end it doesn’t actually matter though, as the re-boot proves that Rory herself is actually the worst of them all.
  • Popular Scottish indie group Belle & Sebastian are named for the book and television series about a boy and his dog. Their namesake is about as charming as the music they produce.

#Pratchat86 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 86, “Of the Watch the Last”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s thirty-ninth Discworld novel, 2011’s Snuff, with guest Freyja Stokes.

Iconographic Evidence

Watch this space!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title adapts one of the common formats for goblin names to describe Snuff in bittersweet terms. The book is the eighth and last in the Watch sub-series, though characters from the Watch books do appear in the final two Discworld novels. (No spoilers about who, though.)
  • There are several publicly available theses and academic articles about Terry Pratchett and/or Discworld from Australian scholars, most (but not all) the result of the Pratchett Scholarship at UniSA. Here are are a few we’ve found; references are in Australian Government (author-date) style.
  • There are several published collections of Pratchett-related academic writing, including:
    • Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works (Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell (eds), 2014)
    • Philosophy and Terry Pratchett (Jacob Heald and James B South (eds), 2014)
    • Terry Pratchett’s Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods – Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature (Marion Rana (ed), 2018)
    • Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds: Essays on Identity and Narrative in Discworld and Beyond (Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin (eds), 2020)
    • Powers and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Building a Fantasy Civilization (Justine Breton (ed), 2025)
  • How Christie wrote her mysteries – going back and putting the clues in afterwards
  • Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries was a series of historical crime novels starring glamorous sleuth Phryne Fisher (played by Essie Davis in the television adaptation, which was produced from 2012 to 2015; there was a film too, but forget that, just watch the show). Mostly set in Melbourne, the books were written by Australian author Kerry Greenwood, who sadly passed away on 26 March 2025, aged 70. Greenwood was, by all accounts, a delightful person. GNU Kerry Greenwood. We’ve previously mentioned Phryne in #Pratchat37 (about Johnny and the Bomb) and #Pratchat75 (about the Guards! Guards! boad game), as well as the bonus episode #EeekClub2023.
  • Downton Abbey was a hit British television series about fictional aristocratic family the Granthams and their servants, set in their eponymous country estate in the early twentieth century. It ran for six series on ITV between 2010 and 2015, and two feature films in 2019 and 2022. We’ve previously talked about it, most notably in #Pratchat36 (about Carpe Jugulum), #Pratchat48 (about Thief of Time) and #Pratchat61 (about the previous Watch book, Thud!).
  • The children’s authors we mentioned who scratch the itch of “gross stuff for kids” were:
  • We had to cut Freyja’s explanation of spontaneous human combustion for time, but the short version is that it happened to people sitting in armchairs which, at that time, were stuffed with and covered in extremely flammable materials. Even a small spark or ember would cause them to go up instantly in a fire so hot, it rendered a human body quickly into ash. Only the sitter’s outstretched foot would escape. Charles Dickens did indeed believe in it; a character dies from spontaneous human combustion in Bleak House.
  • The book series Freyja mentions with the harp-playing subjugated alien is Sheri S. Tepper’s Marjorie Westriding trilogy, set on the planet of Hobbs Land, hence the alternate name “Hobbs Land Gods”. We think the specific book is probably the second one, Raising the Stones.

More notes coming soon!

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