The Turtle Moves! Read Online Free
Author: Lawrence Watt-Evans
46
Discworld has an intense magical field which affects practically everythingâunlike our own world, which has no magic. This field distorts probability, makes wizardry and witchcraft possible, gives belief real power, allows anthropomorphic personifications to existâno, requires anthropomorphic personifications to existâand generally complicates life for the Discâs inhabitants.
Perhaps this fieldâs strangest effects are on light. Light travels much more slowly than it does in what we consider ânormalâ space, and behaves more like a liquid than it has any right to. This is described in detail many times in the early volumes. Oddly, several volumes in, it seems to be deemed unworthy of further attention, and ceases to have any noticeable effect on the stories, though itâs still getting the occasional mention as late as Thief of Time .
The spectrum on the Disc contains an eighth color in addition to the customary seven: octarine, the color of magic. That also starts out as an important feature of the setting, but becomes less significant over time.
Furthermore, reality itself is very thin on the Disc, so that things (and Things) from other dimensions and alternate realities tend to leak in on
occasion. As Mr. Pratchett put it in a recent interview, Discworld is far out at the absurd end of the bell curve, right at the edge where if it were any more absurd, it couldnât exist at all.
Many fantasy authors go to great lengths to work out the internal logistics necessary to give their invented worlds the appearance of independent existence and substantial reality; Mr. Pratchett did not go that route. In fact, he seems to have kicked over the signposts and burned the maps to avoid that route. Heraldic mottos are in dog Latin, while exotic names are mostly French, Latin, German, Arabic, Welsh, or bad pastiches of those languages; thereâs no pretense of any linguistic sense to any of it. The economy of Ankh-Morpork makes very little sense. In the course of the series, an ostensibly late-Medieval/early-Renaissance society somehow transforms into more or less a nineteenth-century setting, developing motion pictures, rock music, tabloid newspapers, an analogue of computer networks, and assorted other outrageous anachronisms along the way. This is all explained away as the Discâs magical field interacting with ideas leaking through from other realities.
This is all possible because the Disc is not a world, but merely a setting for storytelling, and Mr. Pratchett generally hasnât 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 doesnât. Itâs 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. Iâll try to point some of these out as we work through the story-by-story descriptions. The basics are constant; the details change.
So letâs get on with the stories, and see how it goes.
PART THREE
The Stories
3
The Colour of Magic (1983)
I TâS FAIRLY CLEAR THAT MR. PRATCHETTâS intent in this first Discworld book wasnât 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
Discworld has an intense magical field which affects practically everythingâunlike our own world, which has no magic. This field distorts probability, makes wizardry and witchcraft possible, gives belief real power, allows anthropomorphic personifications to existâno, requires anthropomorphic personifications to existâand generally complicates life for the Discâs inhabitants.
Perhaps this fieldâs strangest effects are on light. Light travels much more slowly than it does in what we consider ânormalâ space, and behaves more like a liquid than it has any right to. This is described in detail many times in the early volumes. Oddly, several volumes in, it seems to be deemed unworthy of further attention, and ceases to have any noticeable effect on the stories, though itâs still getting the occasional mention as late as Thief of Time .
The spectrum on the Disc contains an eighth color in addition to the customary seven: octarine, the color of magic. That also starts out as an important feature of the setting, but becomes less significant over time.
Furthermore, reality itself is very thin on the Disc, so that things (and Things) from other dimensions and alternate realities tend to leak in on
occasion. As Mr. Pratchett put it in a recent interview, Discworld is far out at the absurd end of the bell curve, right at the edge where if it were any more absurd, it couldnât exist at all.
Many fantasy authors go to great lengths to work out the internal logistics necessary to give their invented worlds the appearance of independent existence and substantial reality; Mr. Pratchett did not go that route. In fact, he seems to have kicked over the signposts and burned the maps to avoid that route. Heraldic mottos are in dog Latin, while exotic names are mostly French, Latin, German, Arabic, Welsh, or bad pastiches of those languages; thereâs no pretense of any linguistic sense to any of it. The economy of Ankh-Morpork makes very little sense. In the course of the series, an ostensibly late-Medieval/early-Renaissance society somehow transforms into more or less a nineteenth-century setting, developing motion pictures, rock music, tabloid newspapers, an analogue of computer networks, and assorted other outrageous anachronisms along the way. This is all explained away as the Discâs magical field interacting with ideas leaking through from other realities.
This is all possible because the Disc is not a world, but merely a setting for storytelling, and Mr. Pratchett generally hasnât 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 doesnât. Itâs 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. Iâll try to point some of these out as we work through the story-by-story descriptions. The basics are constant; the details change.
So letâs get on with the stories, and see how it goes.
PART THREE
The Stories
3
The Colour of Magic (1983)
I TâS FAIRLY CLEAR THAT MR. PRATCHETTâS intent in this first Discworld book wasnât 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
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