#40 years of discworld

[murphymakestherules]

Rereading Discworld Part 2: The Light Fantastic

Welcome back to my 40th anniversary reread of Discworld, in publication order. Just finished book 2, The Light Fantastic, and boy howdy, even from the first one I can see how Sir Pterry's writing is smoother. If The Color Of Magic read like a series of short stories that happened in fairly swift sequence, The Light Fantastic stretches its legs and runs a single narrative from beginning to end. As before, my thoughts (in no specific order) below the cut.

1) Galder Weatherwax. Much less famous than Esme, but it's the first time we see the family name. Wonder if they're related, or if Sir Pterry just liked the name well enough to reuse it?

2) Plenty of little references here and there, although I do think at 87 Cohen knows the best things in life pretty well- and it's not to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

3) Swires?? Is that BUGGY Swires? I know it'll be a while before I get to see him in The Watch books, but I do wonder if it's the same character

4) TCOM told us that the only magic races left were elves and trolls, but then introduced such beings as dryads. Now we also meet dwarves and gnomes- it's an early inconsistency, but it also shows the way the world building is growing as he goes. In a few more books it'll be relatively pinned down.

5)There were flashes even this early of the incredible insight into humanity that the Discworld will be known for later- Death commenting on the star cultists and later Rincewind's inner observations when he faced down Trymon.

6) Death adopted a girl. Huh....no way is she gonna be important later (hint- she will be)

7)And in the same vein, Twoflower trying to teach Death and his friends Bridge. It's hard enough to teach that game to humans.

All vacations must end though, so as we say goodbye to the Disc's first tourist all we can do is hope it's another 40 years before the world spawns another of the species. And we cast our attention over the Disc as a whole, and Great A'Tuin the Star Turtle, with anticipation of the new adventure waiting in Equal Rites. See you in a few days.

[wizardlyghost]

sometimes i forget that discworld years are eight hundred days long, but humans still live a roughly equivalent number of years to people in real life, which means that they actually live a little more than twice as long.

[babykittenteach]

2023 in review! I made an effort to try more things and it worked mostly (at least for TV and movies). New things, new-to-me things, and new installments of old things all had characters to love even if I didn't necessarily feel fannish about them, and I'm hoping 2024 does, too.

[betterthanapokeintheeye]

The Worlds Of Terry Pratchett - At the British Library

[Event News]

The Worlds of Terry Pratchett: with Neil Gaiman and Rob Wilkins at The British Library

Date: Tue 21 Nov 2023, 19:00 - 20:30 (Bar opens at 18:00)

Location: Pigott Theatre, The Knowledge Centre, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB

A special celebration of the remarkable creative life of Sir Terry Pratchett, 40 years after the publication of the first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic.

This event takes place in the British Library and will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person, or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links will be sent out shortly before the event.

Soon after The Colour of Magic was published, it inspired a young journalist Neil Gaiman to meet Terry, beginning a long collaborative friendship that was epitomised by their joint novel Good Omens, which appeared in 1990. The TV version of Good Omens was created by Neil Gaiman, with the first season on screen in 2019 and the second earlier this year.

Neil is joined Terry Pratchett’s biographer and former assistant Rob Wilkins, in a conversation hosted by Kat Brown.

We'll be sat intently listening and cheering Rob on from the cheap seats!

This event is an In Person and Online event.

Tickets are available from:

[shortace]

Some fandoms are like, "You're only discovering this thing NOW? Newbie. Lame. It was made, like, a year ago. You're so fake for trying to join the fandom now."

The Discworld fandom is like, "The first book was published 40 years ago, and I'm so glad you're discovering it, you're in for such a treat, I love this for you!"

(The Artemis Fowl fandom is like "Yeah, we know it's kinda past its prime, but we're desperate, we love to see new content, pleeeeaaaaase?!?!)

[boyohazard]

Honestly, one of the things that Terry Pratchett got absolutely correct when he wrote the Discworld books is that wizards are exactly like people who have worked in various niches of academia for 30+ years. Every single person who has spent more than 15 years in niche academia is completely batshit insane and ready to fight you to the death about increasingly ridiculous bullshit. Mustrum Ridcully is literally like if you took a man who had only researched a specific translation of a single book for 40 years and made him the Dean of a university.

[deeisace]

I've just remembered that as a kid at home we had (in the house, as lived in post 40 years of commune types, almost none of the books were ours originally) a book called 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being In Aberystwyth'

I never did read it, far too preoccupied with Percy Jackson and Discworld an such, but I do remember looking through the shelves like huh wonder what that's about

[pers-books]

Royal Mail celebrates 40th anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series with special stamps

Royal Mail has today revealed eight Special Stamps they are issuing to celebrate Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, making the 40th anniversary of The Colour of Magic, his first book in the series. The stamps can be pre-ordered today, and will be available for general purchase as of 10 August 2023.

Fans can get their hands on stamps featuring Rincewind, The Librarian, Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, and Great A’Tuin, as well as specially commissioned artworks of Death and Mort, Tiffany Aching and Moist von Lipwig, all of which are by Terry’s illustrator of choice for the Discworld series, Paul Kidby.

Royal Mail have been working closely with the Terry Pratchett Estate and Paul at the link above.

Illustrator, Paul Kidby says: “It has been a huge honour to illustrate this set of stamps to commemorate 40 years of Discworld. I am delighted to finally be able to tell people about it as it has been a big secret to keep! It’s a wonderful celebration of Terry’s ongoing legacy and continued popularity.”

David Gold, Director of External Affairs and Policy at Royal Mail says: “These striking stamps will be loved by generations both young and old. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels remain as popular as ever and it is fitting that in the 40th anniversary year of The Colour of Magic, we celebrate with a set of stamps that honour the work of an iconic and globally admired writer.”

The Discworld stamps are available to pre-order via Royal Mail’s website, by telephone on 03457 641 641 and at 7,000 Post Office branches across the UK. A Presentation Pack including all eight stamps in the set is also available and is priced at £13.50.

If you're overseas (or in the UK obvs!) and want to get them, you can buy them online and they *will* ship overseas!

[murphymakestherules]

Discworld 40th anniversary reread: The Color Of Magic

So it's been a long time since I read this one. Like, a REALLY long time - I think I've maybe come back to it once or twice since the beginning (I am one of those oddballs who started here, but as a teenager I missed maybe half of the references.) So, in no particular order, here are some of, my thoughts.

1) The Elephants are named RIGHT FUCKING HERE! A'Tuin is referenced by name in nearly every book, but the names of the four elephants are right in the fifth paragraph. Let's give Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen some love, right?

2) Bravd and The Weasel. Hrun. Krull and Nef and the Seven Deserts. As a writer, I know that sometimes you just sprinkle little things into the narrative to make the world more full and realistic, but I would have loved to see more of those fun little ideas.

3) WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME TO FORGET THAT THE FIRST BOOK IS ALSO THE FIRST TIME WE SEE FATE AND THE LADY PLAYING AGAINST EACH OTHER ASDJDFHGDH

4) I love the scenes with The Lady and Fate so much I love the way no one can cheat Fate but He tends to lose to The Lady because Discworld is a magical setting and as will be codified later, "million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten"

5) Ok, I did remember correctly that Rincewind and Twoflower falling off The Edge was the setup for The Light Fantastic, but the snippet about Dr. Rjinswand and Jack Zweiblumen is just so beautiful.

6) The Luggage.

7) Reflected-sound-as-of-underground-spirits and inn-sewer-ants. I do enjoy clever puns, thank you Sir Pterry

Now I move on to The Light Fantastic, where if I recall correctly (I may not, it's been a while for this one too) we get to meet Cohen the Barbarian, get Rincewind and Twoflower back to something approaching what passes for civilization on The Disc, and have wacky shenanigans before Twoflower the insurance assessor goes home.

[higgsbison]

where can i start reading disc world?

(tl;dr version: Either with Guards!Guards! if you want angry urban fantasy or Wyrd Sisters if you want angry rural fantasy, then follow the list for that sub-series)

Oh anon brace yourself, there are in fact several ways people have big opinions on.

These are mine:

1. My least favorite way is from the start in chronological order

the trouble here is the first few Discworld novels were written as these kinda silly goofy fantasy/dnd parodies that weren't even supposed to be a part of a bigger thing and they honestly aren't that good, especially not compared to later books. That's the way I started and I just dropped the series for a few years cause of it, so I really don't recommend it. The author himself said he wasn't that good of a writer back then which is understandable, cause it was like 40 books ago.

2. What I reccomend is in chronological order based on different sub-series

Discworld novels all happen in the same world, but they follow different groups of characters, so you have several sub-series.

I'll post a list here, but it's pretty confusing so I'll also explain two of my favs below.

City Novels (Watch novels and Industrial Revolution novels)

About a huge, terrible metropolis and the people that help it run, stumble and sometimes trip over the years.

People normally split this into watch novels which follow the city watch and are crime procedurals/adventure books with a ton of social commentary and industrial revolution novels which are about the city speedrunning from medieval to industrial era via several inventions and follow different main characters who are mostly all there against their will.

To me, the main character is the city itself and I super recommend reading these from start to finish in order to see how it changes with time.

starting book: Guards! Guards!

Witches Novels

About three witches doing witch things in a small mountain kingdom, unless they're going on a trip somewhere.

Incredible horrid old lady characters, a lot of exploration of fantasy tropes, some deep emotional beats, very warm human phlosophy and personal responsibility themes.

There's a semi-seperate "YA" series about a younger witch (Tiffany Aching novels), but don't let that fool you, because those hit just as hard as the "adult" ones.

starting book: Wyrd Sisters (technically Equal Rites, but that's also in the awkward early books period for me)

As for the others, the death novels are also very very good, Small Gods is an amazing standalone book and I'd literally just avoid the Rincewind novels until you're already hooked on the series, but they probably have their fans too.

3. Just pick up a random book you see in the library

A tried and tested method a lot of people swear by, most of the books are standalone enough for this to work, BUT my personal opinion is at least the city books should be read in order (especially Night Watch) and there's several less than stellar books you could pick up first by mistake this way (Color of Magic, Light Fantastic, Interesting Times and Faust being the worst imo).

[thebibliosphere]

I’ve been out of the loop a longass time 😅 We’re you always a Batfam fan, or did you get big into it in the last couple years?

I've been into it for as long as I can remember (Dad was a huge fan and even has some original comics from the 40s), but it's a fixation that comes and goes every few years.

Honestly, the last time I was this fixated on it was over a decade ago when the Nolan movies came out, and my irl friends got enough into it that I could info dump about comics while also trying to be very normal about it and not vibrate out my skin.

But yeah, it's always been special to me. I had a "Gotham" table at my wedding reception where I sat all my Internet friends who showed up for the wedding. (The other tables were also named after media @mothman-etd and I bonded over when we first started dating. Lots of Zelda, Lotr, Discworld, Star Wars, Muppets and Doctor Who references. I still wonder if the hotel ever found all the miniature Tardises (Tardi?) we hid around the place for the kids to find.)

Now I just happen to have an audience willing to enable my shenanigans who don't seem to mind that this is my personality for a while 😅(also hi, welcome back! Nice to see your username again!)

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Reminder that the British Library event with Neil Gaiman and Rob Wilkins to celebrate Terry's 40 years of the first Discworld novel starts in 19 minutes (19BST 21.11.2023), the british library webpage for some reason doesnt work now so I hope it will be okay. Anything GO related I will report! :) ❤

(and sorry folks about not much posting lately, brain been a bit unfocusedand not functioning, I know I have a big backlog of neil's posts to reblog and fun facts from inefable con to put together and social media posts of cast and crew to go through, but don't worry, it's all coming! :D <3)

[terrypratchettestate]

FORTY YEARS OF DISCWORLD!

In the beginning there was… a turtle, somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality. Now, in the midst of our Year of Discworld, we’re happy to unveil the logo for these celebrations!

On 24th November 2023, 40 years after the publication of Terry Pratchett's first Discworld book The Colour of Magic, it was announced that the coming year would be dedicated to four magical decades of the series.

The Estate’s goal every year - but even more so in this celebratory one - is to keep Sir Terry Pratchett’s writing alive and welcome new and returning readers into these wondrous pages. We'll have more of what to expect from the Year of Discworld in time...

[betterthanapokeintheeye]

Celebrating 40 years of The Colour of Magic! 

The Discworld series of books has been around for what seems like a lifetime, with 41 books in the main series and a huge amount of companions, maps, atlases, colouring books and short stories, Discworld has been in people’s consciousness for almost as long as I have been on this planet. 

It all started, however, with a set of 4 short stories which featured Rincewind the inept wizard and Twoflower, the Discworld’s first tourist which were published by Colin Smythe Publishing as the book we love The Colour of Magic on 24th Nov 1983.

We all fell head over heels in love with the Luggage and marvelled at Rincewind’s amazing ability to stay alive. Twoflower’s constant positivity at all the chaos and potential death inducing moments keeps the stories humourous whilst also giving us, the readers, a firm view of the planet we were going to spend the next 40 years wishing we were living on. 

Terry Pratchett was never going to be a fantasy writer, he wanted to write serious science fiction, how different would things be if he had never written The Colour of Magic. 

Tonight we will raise a glass to the book that started the Discworld swimming, we hope you will too. 

If you don’t own a copy, you can grab one via our Bookshop, https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/40-years-of-the-colour-of-magic-by-terry-pratchett