The Turtle Moves! (4 page)

This is all possible because the Disc is
not
a world, but merely a setting for storytelling, and Mr. Pratchett generally hasn't bothered to pretend otherwise. More than one character in the course of the series is described as wanting the world to make sense, and encountering difficulties because it simply doesn't. It's out at the end of the bell curve, well past where things stop making sense.

The really amazing thing is how well it all hangs together, and how often it
does
seem to make sense.

Rather less amazing, given how extensive the series has become and how little advance planning went into setting it up, is how many things have altered over time. I'll try to point some of these out as we work through the story-by-story descriptions. The basics are constant; the details change.

So let's get on with the stories, and see how it goes.

I
T'S FAIRLY CLEAR THAT MR. PRATCHETT'S intent in this first Discworld book wasn't to launch a twenty-plus-year series of brilliant satirical novels, but to poke some good-natured fun at the popular fantasy of the day. A great many things here are not as they were in most of the later books in the series. He did, however, set out some of the basic geography, cosmology, theology, and so on, as described in the previous chapter.

The first Discworld novel set out to parody fantasy novels by sending a naïve tourist to visit various settings in various portions of a world much like the worlds of certain fantasy novels, only more so. It manages, in the process, to parody the behavior of tourists just as much as it parodies commercial fantasy.

It is, like all the Discworld stories, about stories and belief. In this case, it's about the genre of fantasy as it existed in the early 1980s, and about certain fantasy stories in particular. The commentary is not anything very sophisticated, but just parody gently mocking those assorted well-known works.

It's also about the stories our tourist has heard, and his belief in those stories, and in his own safety.

Unlike most of the later volumes in the series,
The Colour of Magic
has chapters—or I suppose one could consider them to be four separate novellas making up the novel, since each one is more or less a separate story. Each of the four stories parodies a certain sort of fantasy that was popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The first novella, also entitled “The Colour of Magic,” mocks the
genre of Sword & Sorcery
⁴⁷
in general, with its impossibly squalid and violent cities, its sword-wielding homicidal heroes, its wizards who somehow rarely seem to use their powerful magic very effectively, its corrupt rulers, its taverns and thieves and assassins and intrigue, its maidens and monsters.

More specifically, the two scoundrels we meet before the story really begins, Bravd and the Weasel, are clearly a parody of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and the city of Ankh-Morpork, while incorporating elements of several cities both real and fictional,
⁴⁸
seems to owe something to the city of Lankhmar, which served as Fafhrd and the Mouser's home.

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were the protagonists of a series of adventures extending from 1939 (“Two Sought Adventure,” published in
Unknown
)
⁴⁹
to 1988 (
The Knight and Knave of Swords
). The characters were the invention of Fritz Leiber, Jr., and his friend Harry Fischer; the poetically inclined northern barbarian Fafhrd was based on Leiber himself, and the witty little thief, the Grey Mouser, was based on Fischer. They were originally created in a series of letters the two exchanged, and then became the protagonists of stories the two wrote. Fischer dropped out early on, before any of the stories were actually published, and Leiber wrote almost the entire series by himself.

This pair of protagonists were notable at the time for being less than entirely heroic; these were no larger-than-life white knights, but a couple of good-hearted rogues.

Pratchett's parody gives us a couple of murderous cutthroats, instead, but manages to capture some of the essence of the characters all the same.

Their part in the story is fairly small, though; they serve mostly to introduce us to the young and rather sorry wizard Rincewind, who will be our guide for the remainder of the book. Rincewind is not based on any specific character from elsewhere, so far as I can see, but is rather a mockery of the standard fantasy heroes. He's a wizard who knows no magic, a hero who's a greedy coward, an adventurer who mostly wants to stay quietly at home.

And Rincewind winds up, at the insistence of the Patrician
⁵⁰
who rules
the city, acting as native guide and bodyguard to an Agatean
⁵¹
tourist named Twoflower, the first tourist in Ankh-Morpork's history, who has heard all the stories about heroes and adventure in Ankh-Morpork and the surrounding lands, and has come to see the place for himself. He's brought a not-very-good phrasebook, a large quantity of gold, the Discworld equivalent of a camera,
⁵²
and a magical trunk known hereafter as the Luggage.
⁵³

Twoflower has
heard
the stories, but he obviously hasn't really understood them. He's quite sure that
he
won't be harmed, no matter how dangerous the place may be, because after all, he's just a tourist, not an adventurer.

That adventurers can be people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the famous ones are the minority who didn't die, has never occurred to him. He looks on Ankh-Morpork as a big theater putting on a show for his entertainment, and doesn't for a minute see himself as a participant; he's just an observer. He wants to see the tavern brawls, the barbarian heroes, the Whore Pits,
⁵⁴
and so on, and is completely oblivious to any possible danger in this.

And he
does
get to see tavern brawls, barbarian heroes, and Whore Pits. Amazingly, thanks to Rincewind, he also survives intact, though he's responsible (quite unintentionally) for setting a large part of Ankh-Morpork ablaze.
⁵⁵
The two of them escape the city (and Bravd and the Weasel) and venture elsewhere.

The second section (or chapter, or novella) of
The Colour of Magic
, “The Sending of Eight,” gives us haunted forests and mysterious ancient crypts and destinies guided by the whims of gods—dark fantasy, in the mode of
Weird Tales
,
⁵⁶
with some distinctly Lovecraftian
⁵⁷
touches, but adapted to the Discworld.

We now learn that, like many fantasy characters, these characters are caught up in a game played by the gods, notably Fate and the Lady, the latter clearly being Lady Luck, though her name is never mentioned, since it's bad luck to address her by name.

The Lady, being who she is, cheats.

While the idea of names or words one mustn't say aloud for fear of attracting the attention of hostile supernatural powers is an old and familiar one—for example, in Lovecraft's stories, speaking the name of Hastur the Unspeakable aloud is “a punishable blasphemy”—Mr. Pratchett carries this a step farther into absurdity in this story with the unspeakable
number
, the one between seven and nine. This is the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, also known as the Sender of Eight and the Soul Eater, an abominable god much like the Great Old Ones that H.P. Lovecraft originated. (Many other authors have imitated Lovecraft's creations since then.)

Rincewind attempts to rescue Twoflower from the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth; Twoflower, the determined innocent tourist, does not make this easy.

We also see a good bit of Hrun the Barbarian, who makes his living robbing ancient temples, battling monsters, and so on, and who is clearly based on Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. We're definitely
in
Weird Tales
territory here, even though I don't see much that's specifically taken from Clark Ashton Smith—but on the other hand, there's also the frequent mention of the sound of rolling dice. While that's a reference to the game being played by the gods, it's also a reference to the unfortunate spate of second-rate fantasy novels in the late seventies and early eighties that were a little too obviously based on Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, games where dice rolls determine the outcome of every fight. Readers of the time would often say disparagingly of such obviously game-based novels, “You can hear the dice rolling.”

Well, in “The Sending of Eight,” the characters can
literally
hear the dice rolling, as the gods play with them.

There are other interesting tidbits here, as well. Rincewind, despite being a wizard, doesn't much like magic, and often wishes the world operated on more sensible principles, but alas. . . .

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.”

In short, where people in our world dream of a world full of magic and wonder, people on the Disc dream of a world that makes sense, and doesn't have all that magic and wonder confusing matters.

As the series progresses, several different characters will have this attitude—most of them wizards, perversely enough—though it will eventually settle most thoroughly not on Rincewind, but on one Ponder Stibbons.

As far as the development of Discworld itself goes, we encounter our first troll as just one of the various menaces Rincewind and Twoflower meet on the road; it dies rather more easily than is entirely in accord with later depictions, and is otherwise not quite what we'll see in subsequent volumes.

Trolls and dryads appear, but no dwarfs. Elves are mentioned that don't appear to be the sort we'll meet in
Lords and Ladies
. A great many things aren't what we'll wind up with. There are various place-names mentioned—Chirm, B'Ituni, Re'durat, and so on—that are remarkable for their failure to reappear in later stories. Generally, throughout the series, names keep turning up over and over even if we never learn much about
the places mentioned, but that's not the case in this first volume, where any number of exotic names are thrown about, never to be seen again.

I suppose Chirm
might
be an alternate spelling of the city of Quirm, which does indeed appear many times, but I wouldn't bet on that being deliberate.

Well, moving on, the third part of
The Colour of Magic
is “The Lure of the Wyrm.” This is largely a direct parody of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, but generalizes nicely to the whole wish-fulfillment sort of setting that some fans
⁵⁸
disparagingly call “magic pony” fantasy, where powerful magical beasts selflessly serve the whims of their human masters for no very clear reason. In this case, the wish-fulfillment aspect becomes a bit more literal than usual.

In case you aren't familiar with it, in “magic pony” fantasy, the protagonist is always a girl or young woman (often red-haired) who has been abused or mistreated in some fashion, but who mystically bonds with some wonderful, powerful, empathic or telepathic creature, whether horse, dragon, unicorn, wolf, or whatever, because she's just so
special
, and uses this bond to elevate herself to some exalted status. Mercedes Lackey , Jennifer Roberson, and assorted others—pretty much all of them female—have written this sort of thing, with varying degrees of talent and success, but Anne McCaffrey's
Dragonflight
is the classic in the field, in which a kitchen drudge named Lessa of Ruatha bonds with the great golden dragon Ramoth and becomes Weyrlady of Benden, leader of all the dragonriders of Pern.

In “The Lure of the Wyrm,” Liessa Wyrmbidder is the rider of the great dragon Laolith, and the Lady of Wyrmberg. I think it's pretty clear what's going on here. Liessa Dragonlady is not quite as likeable as Lessa of Ruatha, but the resemblance is unmistakable.

Hrun says that dragons are extinct,
⁵⁹
but obviously, these people are riding dragons; plainly, something strange is up.

Here, Twoflower's invincible optimism finally finds useful application; if anyone has wishes looking for fulfillment, he does. It seems Wyrmberg is even closer to the edge of reality than the rest of Discworld, and Twoflower, like Liessa, can use that. Though not always safely or effectively.

In the end, Rincewind and Twoflower briefly fall out of their native reality entirely, into another plane
⁶⁰
—but only briefly, before plummeting back to another part of the Disc, and into the fourth and final novella.