Some Liz Thoughts on Discworld

Fantasy Tropes 1 Thought Experiments Thought experiments are the bread and butter of fantasy and science fiction. They are a hallmark of Terry Pratchetts’s writing style. Starting with a “what if'' and running with it. There are plenty in Soul Music. a) In creating the character of Death Terry Pratchett has already set us up with one. What might an anthropomorphic personification look and behave like? What if he became influenced by the very people he was, in a sense, serving? In Soul Music he presents us with another. What if a human child should discover that they were related to him and had inherited his role? In our cultural context this is not as fantastical an idea as it sounds. In the most common faith in Western culture the in-person appearance of the son of God is a key tenet. Christianity is a belief system based on the belief that this father from another dimension sent a representative or part of himself in human form. I don’t believe Terry Pratchett was in any wa...

"In a beautiful, incremental sequence of images across a number of passages Terry Pratchett contrasts DEATH, plagued by these memory intrusions, his desperate need to forget, with Susan’s gradual return of memory, from creeping to flooding “feeling…no, she realised…the memory was creeping over her from somewhere that this one was not only real but on her side.” “Images rose from the mud at the bottom of her mind.” “The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.” “The hippo of memory wallowed…” “Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head. “I remember about that bathroom now,” she said. “It’s all coming back to me.” “Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.” “She stood and stared at it as memory flooded back.” In the bereavement section I mention that severely intrusive memories can be a symptom of PTSD (recalling the bad thing that happened) and in chronic unresolved grief (reliving the good things and hankering). and unresolv...

  Fan theories and spoilers throughout.  I was chuffed to see someone else enjoying Soul Music recently.  It was one book I didn’t really appreciate until I reread it recently. I liked all the jokes and bad puns and music references, but found it a bit silly. I hadn’t spotted the bitter dark chocolate heart in the middle of the occasionally sickly sweet fun. I was too distracted. I found some amazing writing once I started looking.  1) TP is the FIRST to write orphans or boarding school themes within a short while of us hearing of the situation of the Romanian Orphans which broke in 1990 . Rowling, Pulman, Martin etc all came after TP publishing Soul Music in 1994. It turns out there was a small but growing movement discussing Boarding School Syndrome in the UK in the early 90s too - exposing the fact that children placed too young in institutions, even elite ones, could be damaged by the experience (work of Duffel, Beard, later Shcaverein).  I hadn’t seen the ...

Terry Pratchett’s Reaper Man. DEATH or death? Back to the Discworld for a new reading I, like so many, have been touched by details of character or story which youth and enthusiasm missed, so keen were we for the meat of the action. Returning to these books is like taking on foot, roads formerly dashed down by car. My overriding impression is that Pratchett is first and foremost a comedian, willing to sacrifice consistency for the gag, for the flow of the story. Ditto in his public persona. Watching interviews with him he frequently goes for laughs. It seems he may well have been like that behind the scenes too. I heard Marc Burrows, an unofficial biographer, interviewed on a podcast (now un-refindable of course). He recounted that part of his decision to write the book was due to his disappointment at having narrowly missed an opportunity to meet Pratchett. He had not been able to go when a friend of his was involved in the BBC radio programme A Museum of Curiosities when Pratchett w...