The Turtle Moves! (23 page)

If you're not, I'd recommend starting with
Wyrd Sisters
,
Small Gods
, or
Guards! Guards!
, depending on which series seems most suited to your tastes.

And how do you know which series is best suited to your tastes? Well, if you've read this far, you might have figured it out already, but if not, the next seven chapters, Part Five, are further remarks about each of the series (other than the Amazing Maurice).

W
HEN MR. PRATCHETT INTRODUCED us to the nominal hero of
The Colour of Magic
, we did not find ourselves face to face with a sword-wielding hero, nor a farmer's son with a destiny, nor a young female outcast, nor any of the other standard fantasy protagonists; instead we met a rather bedraggled young wizard by the name of Rincewind, who was in the process of fleeing the burning city of Ankh-Morpork.

In fact, Rincewind spends most of the first two books fleeing one thing or another. Fleeing becomes his most salient characteristic. In
Sourcery
, he's relatively flightless, but through
Eric
,
Interesting Times
, and
The Last Continent
, he spends most of his time trying to run away from one something or another.

By the time we get to
The Last Hero
and the three volumes of
The Science of Discworld
, Rincewind is an acknowledged expert on running away, to the point that he no longer needs to demonstrate his mastery of the art. Instead it's recognized that despite his cowardice, he has a knack for not dying—he's a sort of mirror image of Cohen the Barbarian, who has survived to a great age by being very, very good at not dying while being direct, fearless, and violent. Rincewind has become very good at not dying by being sneaky, cowardly, and harmless.
Both of them are survivors; they just take opposite approaches to the problem.

Most people would not send a coward off to save the world, but Mustrum Ridcully, with his skewed way of looking at things, has noticed Rincewind's talent for survival, and therefore does indeed repeatedly thrust poor Rincewind into various perils in
The Last Hero
and
The Science of Discworld
.

It' s notable, though, that by that point Rincewind is no longer a solo protagonist. In
The Last Hero
, he's just one of a band of heroes, while in the three volumes of
The Science of Discworld
he's a member of the ensemble cast that is the faculty of Unseen University. Yes, he's the one that Ridcully sends into danger first at every opportunity, but the other wizards are there as well. Rincewind really needs other characters to play off; for one thing, left to his own devices, he wouldn't
do
anything. He is, as Mr. Pratchett has said, an observer by nature, rather than someone who makes things happen.

In the first two books, he has Twoflower to drag him into things. In
Sourcery
, he's forced into action by the world collapsing around him. In
Eric
it's Eric who pushes Rincewind, in
Interesting Times
he's summoned against his will, in
The Last Continent
it's Scrappy urging him on, and then finally, in
The Last Hero
and the science books, it's Archchancellor Ridcully thrusting Rincewind, with his knack for surviving, into danger.

By that point, the other wizards have become a regular cast, and Rincewind is merely their point man.

This logical but apparently backward approach of sending a coward to play hero is representative of the wizards of Unseen University as a group. Students come to Unseen University to learn magic, but generally learn that often the best way to use magic is
not
to use it. The University, ostensibly dedicated to disseminating magical knowledge, actually serves to restrain it; in fact, it exists largely to
suppress
magic, thereby preventing widespread devastation, not by any sort of crude ban, but by redirecting wizards' energies.

The typical wizard at Unseen University is not as interested in magic as he is in dinner.

In fact, the wizards expend much of their energy on eating. They're too busy stuffing their faces to cause trouble. They're greedy, fat, and lazy. Sloth, gluttony, and cowardice are not vices among the faculty, but merely the norm.

In a way, Rincewind is the ultimate wizard, even though he can't perform any magic; he no longer even
pretends
to be accomplishing anything.

And this is a good thing. Why? Well, in
Sourcery
we get a look at what happens when you have wizards who are energetic and inventive, and it's not pleasant. Keeping most of the Disc's most powerful magicians focused on their next meal is far safer than letting them focus on their spells.

When the wizards do tackle real difficulties, they very rarely defeat them through the direct application of magic. Magic almost always seems to cause more problems than it solves.

Ponder Stibbons and Hex may well be one of the greatest threats to the well-being of Discworld, even though they're utterly well-intentioned, because Stibbons has
not
let himself be distracted from his magical studies. They're messing around with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

In a way, Ponder Stibbons is Simon from
Equal Rites
reinvented.

Except for Granny Weatherwax, Rosie Palm, Death, the Librarian, and Mrs. Whitlow, none of the characters from
Equal Rites
ever appeared again, but several of their characteristics resurfaced later.
¹⁶¹
Simon's dangerous ability to understand and use powerful magic without seeing the risks involved reappeared in Stibbons, in a somewhat softened form. Where Simon was so focused on his theories that he barely noticed the outside world, Stibbons has the knack of telling Archchancellor Ridcully whatever portion of the truth will get Stibbons what he wants.

To some extent, Stibbons may be taking over the series from Rincewind, just as Susan has taken over Death's series; after a while, there's not much more to do with a character as limited as Rincewind. Stibbons, on the other hand, has great potential as a source of disasters.

In fact, the wizards have turned up in roles of varying importance in any number of other series, with Ridcully and Stibbons being particularly useful.

At any rate, the series that began as a mockery of fantasy adventure has gradually mutated into a satire on academia and Big Science—the
academic angle is most obvious, perhaps, in “A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices.” Rincewind has gone from being a young wastrel to being a burned-out wreck. There are rumors that another Rincewind novel may be in the works, but I have no idea what else can be done with the character.

T
HE WITCHES OF DISCWORLD seem very English to me, each serving a village as midwife, veterinarian, nurse, and constable. These are not the isolated, forest-haunting old crones of the Brothers Grimm, or the cattle-cursing terrors of the Scottish witch trials, or Satan's handmaidens as described in the
Malleus Malificarum
, or the gossip victims of Salem, Massachusetts. They're clearly largely based on the witches in fairy tales, but only on the most benign sorts; they see cackling, poisoned apples, and ginger-bread houses as occupational hazards best avoided.

They're a very
practical
sort of witches, and really, the whole series about them, including the Tiffany Aching books, demonstrates their practicality, along with their refusal to be bound by the stories other people unquestioningly accept.

In
Equal Rites
, Eskarina Smith is a female wizard, something that's never been seen before, but Granny Weatherwax accepts it—she doesn't force Esk to go on trying to be a witch once that's clearly not working, yet she refuses to give up when Archchancellor Cutangle fails to accept Esk. She deals with what's
there
, instead of what's expected, or what
should
be there.

This contrast between expectation and reality is far more pronounced in
Wyrd Sisters
, right from the opening scene: three witches gathered around a cauldron in the midst of a stormy night, straight out of
Macbeth
. One says, “When shall we three meet again?”

And the response, rather than being poetical or theatrical, is, “Well, I can do next Tuesday.”

Which is not just funny, but sets the tone for the entire novel, which is constantly playing expectations off against reality, story against truth. The witches always see the truth, but they know that most people won't, that most people want the story—so they try to make sure that it's the
right
story, the one that will have the best outcome for the kingdom. The Duke is trying to promulgate the story of the hero deposing the wicked king and ruling happily in his stead, and initially the witches don't really have a problem with this, but when it turns out that the Duke is incapable of ruling competently, they substitute the story of the rightful heir returning to claim his birthright, even though they know that isn't any more true than the Duke's version of events.

The witches don't care who's king, as long as he's a
competent
king. They're utterly pragmatic. They know people will believe stories, rather than truth, but they want them to believe the stories that will treat them well—they want people to control the stories, rather than letting the stories control people.

They don't want stories that treat people as things—that's Granny Weatherwax's definition of sin in
Carpe Jugulum
, treating people as things, and it's a good one.

So in
Witches Abroad
, they reject and destroy the story Lily is presenting. In
Lords and Ladies
, they reject the fiction the elves impose. In
Maskerade
, they reject the fantasy of the Phantom they're given. In
Carpe Jugulum
, they reject the vampires' lies. In every case, they see through the story intended to lull people into the acceptance of evil, see to the truth underneath, and find a better story to put in its place.

In fact, Granny Weatherwax becomes a story
herself
, the story of the prideful, powerful witch who will defend Lancre against all threats. The vampires know that story, and try to get around it, only to find that the story is simpler than the truth.

And in “The Sea and Little Fishes,” Letice Earwig makes it plain that she doesn't
like
Granny's story, and wants a nicer one, only to find that Granny's story is too firmly established to change—even
she
doesn't believe Granny can really change.

Granny is what she is, whether she wants to be or not—and she makes plain in
Witches Abroad
that it's not what she would have chosen, but if it's what she has to be, then she'll bloody well do it up right. And
she'll have no truck with people or creatures who commit the sin of treating people like things, who put the stories in control rather than the people.

O
NE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS of the Disc's intense magical field, as explained in the
Science of Discworld
books, is reification—things that people believe in becoming actual
things
, rather than remaining abstract concepts. Foremost among those is everyone's final friend, the Grim Reaper, the man with the scythe: Death.

The idea of Death as a person, or at least a conscious entity, is ancient, of course. Death has turned up in stories for centuries, and is still turning up, in everything from Ingmar Bergman's
The Seventh Seal
to
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
on the Cartoon Network, from Edgar Allen Poe's “Masque of the Red Death” to Neil Gaiman's
Sandman
comics. The traditional representation has always been a tall, skeletal figure in a dark robe, so of course that's the form Death takes on the Disc—Discworld is home to every fantasy cliché, after all, and this is just one more. A seven-foot scythe-wielding skeleton in a black robe, bearing an hourglass and riding a great white horse through the sky—this is very much the classic figure of Death as he's been seen in western civilization at least since the plagues of the fourteenth century.

But this is Discworld, so when we look close, some of the details that
aren't in the traditional tales turn out to be somewhat skewed. For example, the big white horse is named Binky.

Somehow, I doubt that anyone else ever gave Death's horse a name like Binky; not even Neil Gaiman, who represented Death as a perky goth girl, would have done that.

Death in Discworld is not quite the standard model in other ways; traditionally Death has been depicted as heartless, implacable, a cold and unfeeling monster, but Pratchett's creation is instead a working man who takes pride in his craft, and rather likes people—though he doesn't understand them.

That's one of the more interesting conceits Mr. Pratchett has come up with—Death is not bound by time or space, he exists in a higher reality than that perceived by mere humans, he never has very much contact with people,
¹⁶²
so he doesn't really grasp how we think. He
tries
, since after all we're part of the job, but he just doesn't quite get it.

In a way, it's very similar to Arthur Weasley in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, whose job is devoted to dealing with muggles (non-magical people). He handles muggle technology all the time, but because he himself has lived his entire life in the wizarding world, he really doesn't grasp how muggles think, or how the muggle world works. Even when he
thinks
he does, he gets the details wrong.