textfiles/reports/goodomen.txt

                                 Good Omens
                                     by:
                               Terry Pratchett
                                      &
                                 Neil Gaimen
                       1990 Workman Publishing, New York


                           Report by Duncan Brown
                                 10/25/1993
















  Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen is about the end of the world, 
well... the near end of the world.  You see, the Anti-Christ and the 
representatives of Heaven and Hell have decided that they like the planet and 
they want it to be around for a while longer, this doesn't go along with the 
grand scheme of things and confusion reigns supreme.  The Anti-Christ is named 
Adam, he is a rather ordinary child who is inspired and captivated by about 
anything, for about 5 minuets.  He is joined by Pepper a fiery red headed girl 
around his own age, Brian and Wenslydale who basically follow anything that 
Adam says with little or no argument, together they make up a gang that is 
known as the Them.  Newt Pulsifer is a man without direction so he decides to 
join the witch finder group, Newt is the kind of man that cannot do too much 
right in his life, he buys the kind of things that go obsolete within the week 
that they are shipped in.  Dog is the Hellhound that is supposed to look after 
Adam for the rest of his life, but becomes more interested in hunting down 
insects and other smaller creatures.  The representatives are Aziphrale and 
Crowley, Crowley is the representative of hell who likes the good things in 
life like fast cars, VCRs and drinking bars, Aziphrale is the representative 
of heaven and has the world's largest collection of rare books except for one, 
Agnus Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies, but we'll get into that later.  
Anthema Device is Agnus Nutter's descendant who has the only remaining copy 
of the book, but looses it.  The Four Horsemen (actually it's three horsemen 
and one horsewoman) DEATH, War, Famine, and Pestilence are doing exactly what 
their names say.  So much for the players, now for the game.

  We start off the story with Crowley bringing Adam to the Chattering Order's 
hospital in the middle of England for the switch of Adam and two other 
innocents, they get mixed up at the "hospital". Adam, who is supposed to go 
with a rich American who has some business in the British Isles but is sent 
with Mr. and Ms Young.  Azaphraile and Crowley are supposed to influence the 
child.  They find out 11 years later that they have been trying to influence 
the wrong child by noticing that the Hell hound doesn't show up at the child's 
party.  The Hellhound finds Adam and his crew at a pit that has become their 
main hangout spot and is magically changed to whatever Adam thinks that his 
dog should look like, and then comes the time of truth, the naming of the 
Hellhound.  After a tense moment, Adam tells them exactly what he would name 
it, and it was Dog.  Now instead of being huge, gruesome, and mean, Dog is 
small, furry, has a bent ear and is pretty much the cutest mutt that you 
could ever see.  Needless to say, Dog was disappointed but quickly adapted to 
what he was now.
  
  That evening, Azaphraile and Crowley are driving through the British 
countryside without the use of headlights.  Anthema Device is riding her bike 
down the same road going in the opposite direction of,the Demon and Angel.  
Bang.  Anthema is thrown clear of the road with a fractured arm and a broken 
bicycle.  With a sweep of his hand, Azaphraile fixes the bike, mends her arm 
and makes a bike rack with tartan straps, Anthema is too dazed to know what is 
really going on, so in that state of confusion she forgets the book o' 
prophicies prophecies that was given to her.  After dropping her and her bike 
off at her abode, Azaphrale discovers the book in the back of the car and 
doesn't tell Crowley about his discovery.
  
  Azaphrale spends about half of a day reading the book and mutters the 
occasional "brilliant", but not much else.  During the time that Azaphrale had 
the book to read, Crowley was extraordinarily worried about what he was going 
to do with his superiors because he had goofed with the babies.  Another thing 
that was going on was that Newt finally meets Anthema by getting into a car 
crash because he swerved in order to miss a Tibetan that just happened to pop 
up out of a tunnel that he was mysteriously teleported into by none other 
than Adam.  It's at this time that Adam starts thinking about what was in the 
magazines that Anthema had loaned to him the previous day, stories about 
saving the whales and protecting the ozone, but most importantly about the 
lost continent of Atlantis and how it disappeared.  Adam gets very fired up 
about this one day and starts preaching about it, as he is doing so storm 
clouds start to form and the Them realize that Adam is more than they 
originally thought.  It is at this time that Adam lets his imagination run 
free and the world is a stranger place because of it.  By the way, Atlantis 
surfaces.
  
Now for the Four Horsepersons, they all meet at a small diner in the middle 
of the English countryside.  There is one difference between the Four that 
are depicted in the bible and the ones that are in the book, these horsepeople 
ride motorcycles, wear leather, and fly.  Their names are War, Famine, 
Pestilence and DEATH.  In this diner they are joined by four other motorcycle 
riders.  The new four decide to give themselves names of new terrible things 
of the modern day, like Really Obnoxious People.  We'll join the 8 horsepeople 
later, at the climax of the story.
  
  Let's get back to Anthema and Newt, since this is the first time that Newt 
has ever been in such close proximity to a woman and they weren't in an 
argument nor was she a public servant, he was having thoughts about her that 
were totally alien to him.  Sexual thoughts.  She was having quite similar 
thoughts about him, but they went along the lines of  "Well, he is the last person 
that I will ever see again on the Earth, and he isn't all that bad looking..".  
They were going over plans and the notecards that have been made up over the 
years that served as a translation of what Agnus was trying to say, we are 
told that Agnus's paranormal abilities were so specific and limited that they 
were almost totally useless because you would only understand it after the 
event had actually happened.  It was like looking at a huge tapestry through 
a paper towel tube, you can only see a small part of the whole picture, but 
you could see alot of detail.  Instead of standing around and procrastinate, 
they decide to do something about the end of the world (which is about 4 hours 
away).

Back to Adam and his crew, Adam knows that he has a job to do, but he has no 
idea what it is.  He leads the Them to a Nuclear Armory.  They don't know it, 
but they are being followed by Newt and Anthema.  The 8 horsepeople are also 
there, but they are about 30 minutes late for the big one.  Adam's theory 
about how to make the world right is to start it all over, and he decides to 
do just that by setting off some nuclear weapons.  Not good.
  
With very little time to spare, Newt and Anthema try frantically to destroy 
the machine, but no matter what Newt does, the machinery seems to work.  Maybe 
even better than before.  It is then that Anthema has a brainstorm, why not have 
Newt try to fix the machine, he always has bad luck with whatever he does.  
She instructs him to do so and in turn destroys the guidance systems of the 
missiles.  Now the four horsemen arrive in front of the military installation 
(the other four couldn't fly, so they couldn't keep up with the others) and 
have it out with the Them.  War, Famine and Pestilence are defeated bye members 
of the Them, but DEATH is left standing, DEATH is eternal.  After the battle, 
God and the Devil himself Appear in front of Adam and try to persuade him to 
end it all, they are in for a surprise.  Adam decides that the world is better 
left alone than destroyed, and he's going to help it become a better place to 
live in.  Azaphrale and Crowley are quite happy with this decision because they 
would be in big trouble with the big guys (God and the Devil) because of how 
Armageddon was botched.  Newt doesn't get the girl, but that isn't a surprise, 
he has no luck with anything anyway.  DEATH goes on doing exactly what he 
always does.  Everybody lives happily ever after, except Newt who gets
absolutely nothing, save the memories.

  The conflict in this story is man against nature, or more appropriately, man against the supernatural.

  In my opinion, this was a very good book throughout, but it didn't live up to the claims on the cover of being a direct ancestor of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  All it had in common with it was that they were both written by and English author(s).  One problem with this book was that it seemed to be censored at parts where it may have had strong language, this was done by summarizing the paragraph in one or two sentences.  I give it a B.