Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld Read Online Free Page B

Transylvania the unfortunate Jonathan Harker saw in Dracula, with its howling wolves and mile after mile of forested land.
    Pratchett’s vampires run the gamut from bloodthirsty (the de Magpyrs of Carpe Jugulum ) to black ribboners (Lady Margolotta
von Uberwald in The Fifth Elephant, Lance-constable Sally von Humpeding in Thud!, Otto Chriek in The Truth and other books, Maladict/Maladicta in Monstrous Regiment ) who have taken the pledge to avoid the usual diet of vampires, to wannabes (Doreen Winkings—Countess Notfaroutoe in The Reaper Man and Thud! —who isn’t really a vampire, but acts as if she is).
    In Carpe Jugulum, the name Magpyr is an allusion to the Magyars—Hungarians in western Transylvania in the nineteenth century. Vlad is an allusion to Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler, the fifteenth-century ruler of Walachia known for impaling prisoners. Of course, you knew that. Stoker used Tepes as a model of sorts for Count Dracula. Not content to stop at that reference, Pratchett references a character known as Griminir the Impaler, a female vampire who merely bit people but did not suck their blood.
    The name Notfaroutoe is an allusion to the movie adaptations of Dracula, namely the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau and its 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampyre by Werner Herzog.
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    â€œThat’s Fronck-en-shteen” Mary Shelley’s creation came “to life” in 1818 and spawned Frankenstein movies as well as the Igor tradition in Discworld. Although there is no character named “Igor” in Shelley’s book, an Igor appears in many of the films based on the book (like Mel Brooks’s classic, Young Frankenstein, starring Gene Wilder where Igor—or rather, Eye-gore—is played by Marty Feldman).
    While visiting Lord Byron in 1816, Shelley (then Mary Woll-stonecraft Godwin), John William Polidori (the physician of Lord Byron), and Shelley’s then husband-to-be, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were encouraged by Byron to each write a scary story. Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Polidori wrote “The Vampyre.” And thus history was made.
    Jeremy Clockson plays a sort of Victor Frankenstein-like creator
in Thief of Time. Instead of using lightning to bring life to a creature amassed out of corpses’ body parts, he uses it to bring the ultimate clock to life. It’s apt that he’s assigned an Igor (yes, there’s more than one) to help him, since Igors usually work for vampires, mad scientists, and other criminally insane individuals.
    Throughout Discworld, the Igors carry on the Victor Frankenstein tradition by operating on themselves and others as well as recycling spare body parts. Just doing their bit to help the environment.
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    Ringing in the New. Moving along on this architectural tour, we come to one of the pillars of fantasy fiction. J. R. R. Tolkien is widely considered the father of twentieth-century fantasy. Pratchett read Tolkien’s trilogy during his childhood, and describing how he felt when he first read the trilogy, Pratchett remarked in an essay, “I can remember the vision of beech woods in the Shire … I remember the light as green, coming through trees. I have never since then so truly had the experience of being inside the story.” 21
    Maybe that’s why several allusions to Tolkien’s works became part of the Discworld makeup. In Equal Rites, Gandalf’s single state gets a shout-out in the second paragraph of the first chapter. In Lords and Ladies, witches are referred to as having minds “like metal” 22 —reminiscent of Treebeard’s description of Saruman in The Two Towers : “He has a mind of metal and wheels.” 23 A scene in Witches Abroad provides an allusion to aspects of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit. Perhaps you caught it. While on their way to Genua by boat, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick spy with their little eyes