The Turtle Moves! (22 page)

It
all fits
.

And it gives Discworld that reality that makes us want to return there over and over.

There's an old saying, “It's funny 'cause it's true.” Well, Discworld is true because it's funny. In assembling things we readers would laugh at, Mr. Pratchett has put together enough truth to bring his creation to life.

If there were just one or two books, I don't think we'd see any fan merchandise to speak of, no reference books or maps or art books, even if it/they sold in huge numbers. There just wouldn't be enough to base them on; there are no obsessive appendices or maps in the first couple of books, no grand plans outlined, nothing like that.

But there aren't one or two books, there are more than thirty. Once there were half a dozen and the background had accumulated some depth, fans began to take note, and the spin-offs started to appear.

There have been other series in fantasy and science fiction that ran
dozens of volumes, but most of them didn't sell as well as Discworld, and perhaps more importantly, most series didn't get
better
from one book to the next. It's more common for the quality to deteriorate slightly, as the author runs out of ideas. Mr. Pratchett didn't run out of ideas, but he
did
get better at writing about them.

And
funny
series? No others have lasted anywhere near as long.
¹⁵⁶
Usually the author's jokes have all been run into the ground after three or four books, at most. As I said right at the beginning, in my first introduction, this whole world-on-a-turtle thing should've only been good for a couple of books, three at the outside. What's kept Discworld going—well, there are two things, fear and surprise. . . . I mean, there are two things:

First, it's not all one series. We'd have all been very sick of Rincewind after a dozen books if we never saw anyone else's view of the Disc—or really, we'd have gotten tired of any of the others, too. If it had just remained parodies of other fantasy books, it wouldn't have worked. The Disc itself is a parody of a fantasy world, but it's not
about
the Disc, it's about various people
on
the Disc, and a key word there is “various.” The multiple series keep everything fresh; they allow the author to run variations, rather than having to come up with something completely fresh each time—for example, having shown us the vampires in
Carpe Jugulum
, and introduced us to the Igors in Lancre and Uberwald, he can then show us vampires and Igors in Ankh-Morpork in subsequent books. Play with one idea with the witches, and then pit it against the Watch; try another on Rincewind, then throw it at the witches. You can get more mileage out of each invention, and generate new ideas in the process.

Second, Terry Pratchett is a fuckin' genius. He just is. Very annoying of him. And he's not your chortling, world-conquering sort of genius, either. He's a very pleasant sort of genius, the kind you want to sit and listen to endlessly.

Very
annoying.

So he gets to be a phenomenon.

And I don't.

It's so unfair.

I
T SEEMS AS IF I need to have a chapter about this, but really, what do I know about what makes someone a literary genius? If I knew how it was done, I'd bloody well do it myself, wouldn't I? And without having to write an entire book about Discworld first.

There's a book out there called
Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature
, edited by Andrew M. Butler.
¹⁵⁷
I haven't read it, because I didn't want to risk stealing anyone's ideas, or worse, finding that an idea I'd come up with on my own had already been used so that I couldn't use it without
looking
like I stole it. Besides, the book is a bit hard to find and fairly expensive. Also, it's literary criticism, or purports to be, and I don't like to think I'm doing literary criticism.
¹⁵⁸
I write for a living, which means I want to please editors and book-buyers, not critics. The two groups look for different things, and I don't want to be distracted by the critics' set.

Anyway, the book exists, and is a collection of essays about various aspects of Mr. Pratchett's work, not all of them related to Discworld.
¹⁵⁹
The title is suggestive, though. Whoever came up with it thinks Mr. Pratchett is committing literature.

I'm not convinced. He might be. Mostly, though, I think he's just really damn good at telling stories, which isn't the same thing.

I also think people have been trying to figure out how to tell really good stories for a few thousand years now, and nobody's really managed to determine exactly why some people are really good at it, and others . . . well, aren't.

I'm not going to pretend I know what the difference is. All I know is that Terry Pratchett's really damn good at it.

I
'VE SAID SEVERAL TIMES NOW that the Discworld series is about stories, that that's my grand theory about the whole thing. I think it's time to explain that in a little more detail. Let me begin by quoting a bit from Chapter 2, “The Umpty-Umpth Element,” from
The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
:

Discworld is a world constructed of stories. It's not just a place where stories are set; it's
about
stories.

It started out in
The Colour of Magic
as being about a specific sort of story: fantasy adventures. Discworld was constructed out of all the clichés and exaggerations of existing stories—the absurdly dirty and violent cities, the vicious and venal inhabitants of those cities, the indomitable barbarian heroes, the impossible geography, the gods and monsters and magic, the dreams and dragons. In most fantasy stories, the characters take all that for granted, and fit right in, but in
The Colour of Magic
we were presented with all this familiar material as seen by
two people who did
not
take it for granted and fit in. For Twoflower the tourist, it was all new and exciting, and while Rincewind did generally take it for granted, as a wizard with no magic and a cowardly hero, he didn't fit in very well. These two let us see the absurdity of the whole thing, and laugh at it.

The same approach continued in
The Light Fantastic
, and if that had been all there were to the series, it wouldn't have been anything special. However, with
Equal Rites
, it started to become something more.
Equal Rites
isn't a parody of fantasy novels; instead it's what happens when a story goes wrong, and someone is born into the wrong role.

Mort
is about what happens when people refuse to follow the story they're in.

Stories. It's all about stories. Right from the start, Discworld ran on stories, and the stories we were told were the ones where something didn't go the way it was meant to, where the stories played out
because people expect them to
, even though something had not gone according to plan, or a character had wound up in the wrong role.

Mr. Pratchett has said several times that Discworld is a place that doesn't have much reality to it; it's a place where pretty much
everything
can go away if people stop believing in it. As such, it's almost the opposite of our own world where, as science fiction writer Philip K. Dick famously said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” What the Disc
does
have is an intense magical field, and as Messrs. Stewart, Cohen, and Pratchett tell us, “Magic is indissolubly linked to Narrative Causality, the power of story.”

That is, “. . . magic is what turns stories into reality.”

So the Disc's magical field builds Discworld's reality out of stories. Narrativium is what makes it all go. It's all about stories.

Each series takes its own approach, but they're all about stories. It's stories all the way down. Just as what Ankh-Morpork is mostly built on is Ankh-Morpork, Discworld stories are mostly built on stories. Where much modern fiction tries to base its story on reality—well, reality is thin on the Disc, so the stories have to be built on something else.

Other stories.

N
OTICE THAT DOESN'T SAY
ALL
your questions answered, but I do want to respond to a few that I suspect some of you fine readers would like to ask, especially those who haven't already read several Discworld stories.

Let's start with, “I haven't read anything by Terry Pratchett. Will I like Discworld?”

Obviously, I don't know, since I don't know your tastes, but
I
sure like it, as do millions of other people. There's a very broad appeal here.

There's humor. Every book has plenty of funny moments of varying kinds. If you don't like puns, there are character bits; if character bits don't appeal, there are double entendres; if those do nothing for you, there's slapstick. In-jokes. Running gags. Grotesque exaggeration. Mordant wit. Clever banter. There isn't a trick in the comic writer's arsenal that Mr. Pratchett hasn't tried at least once—except possibly fart jokes, and I may just not happen to remember those, since that's a form of humor that doesn't amuse me.

There are complex characters—Granny Weatherwax and Sam Vimes and Tiffany Aching are fascinating.

There's lovely prose. I'm not going to cite examples because everyone's tastes vary in this, too, but honestly, Mr. Pratchett can turn a phrase beautifully.

There are exciting plots. If your pulse doesn't quicken when Vimes is running down Carcer, or Granny confronts the vampires, well. . . .

So yeah, if you like reading any sort of humor
or
any sort of fantasy, I'd expect you to enjoy at least parts of the Discworld series.

But not necessarily the whole thing.

Where, then, to start?

The traditional answer for any series is to start at the beginning, but that's not necessarily the best approach here. The earliest books are noticeably weaker than later ones—though fans can argue endlessly about whether the best are the most recent, or whether there was some peak that we're now past and they've gotten too dark, or whatever. And the various series within the whole may appeal to different audiences; the Watch stories are almost police procedurals, Tiffany Aching's series is a coming-of-age story, and so on.

Discussions of where to start can get very long and complicated, but let me give you my own opinions:

Since there are eight series within the whole, there are eight obvious starting points—the first books in each series. Any of these would work. Those eight are:

Of those eight,
The Colour of Magic
is short, so it's not a major commitment, and it's divided into four stories to make it even more accessible for those just wanting a taste, but it's generally considered atypical of the series as a whole as well as one of the weakest, and it ends on a cliffhanger that's resolved in
The Light Fantastic
. I therefore don't recommend it—though I am reliably informed that it sells the most copies, presumably simply because it
was
the first. If you really want to start with a story about the wizards,
Sourcery
is probably the way to go.

Equal Rites
is a fun book and a decent starting place, but it's only loosely tied to the rest of the series, and I'd suggest starting the witches series with
Wyrd Sisters
, instead. It's a better story, it's more typical, and you really won't have missed anything by starting there instead of with
Equal Rites
.

Mort
stands on its own quite well. Good starting point if you aren't bothered by its metaphysical nature—I mean, it's a book about Death. Some readers don't mesh well with that.

Pyramids
is very much a stand-alone story, and a good starting point—but so is
Small Gods
, and all in all,
Small Gods
may be a better book. Many people suggest
Small Gods
as the best Discworld story for a beginner, and I can't gainsay that.

For the Watch series, you really do need to start at the beginning, which is
Guards! Guards!
It builds up from there.

If you're a fan of parody,
Moving Pictures
is a fine place to start. It stands on its own well, and contains lots of the best features of the series. The one drawback is that it doesn't lead naturally into the next, and after reading it you may find yourself saying, “That was great! Which should I read next?” and not having an obvious answer.

That's a possible issue with
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
, too, but in that case I'll suggest going on to the Tiffany Aching series next, as the other “young adult” entry.

And like the Watch series, the Tiffany Aching books need to be read in order, starting with
The Wee Free Men
.

So there you have . . . well, eleven choices, which is still too many. Let me arbitrarily narrow that down.

If you're a kid, or a kid at heart, start with
The Wee Free Men
.