informis
/
textfiles
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity
textfiles/sf/apf-6.0

6612 lines
290 KiB
Plaintext
Raw Permalink Blame History

From: apf@cp.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart)
Subject: The Annotated Pratchett File, v6.0
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Summary: BEING: THEE moft LEARNED and EDDYFYING COMPENDIUM intended for the
AMUSEMENT of the NOBLE and the INSTRUCTION of the VULGAR, pofted
on occafion upon THEE NETTE and CONSISTING of an OSTENTATIOUSNESS
of COMMENTARIES and EXPLICATIONS by which shall be shewn the TRUE
MEANING of the LEGION and MANY JESTS, SAWS and WITTICISMS to be
FOUND in the MULTITUDINOUS WORKS of MISTER TERENCE PRATCHETT
ESQUIRE, scribe of thysse parifh. FEATURING a CAST of THOUSANDS
confifting in PART of WIZARDS, WARRIORS, MONK^H^H^H^HAPES, DIURSE
ALARUMS and ONE THOUSAND ELEPHANTS.
BEWARE! Here be SPOILERS!
Organization: Unseen University
Followup-To: alt.fan.pratchett
Reply-To: apf@cp.tn.tudelft.nl
Archive-name: apf-6.0
Last-modified: 30 August 1993
Version: 6.0
Edited-by: Leo Breebaart (leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Welcome to the Annotated Pratchett File!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- What's all this, then?
'This' is the Annotated Pratchett File (or APF for short).
Discussions in the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett have made it clear
that sometimes people are not 'getting' all of the jokes and references in
Terry Pratchett's work. If you have never read Tolkien, you will not know
when he is parodying Tolkien. If you are American, you might not understand
some of the typically British references. And so on.
This file is an ongoing attempt to document and explain some of these
references, so that we might all enjoy Terry's books even more than we
already do.
Where appropriate, this file incorporates selected passages from articles
that Terry himself has posted to alt.fan.pratchett. As an active
contributor to the group he often provides us with inside information on
many aspects of his writing, and it would be a waste to let this first-hand
knowledge just disappear into the vacuum of Usenet history. The APF tries
to preserve all the interesting bits of Terry's postings, as far as they
deal with his writing.
Instructions on how to make sure you are reading the latest version of the
APF appear near the very end of this file, where you will also find
information about the typeset (PostScript-printable) version of the APF.
--- Great idea, this APF; how can I help?
Glad you asked. Input from its readers is the only thing that is going to
make the APF grow into something truly useful, and earn it its pretentious
'annotated' claim. You can e-mail your explanations and comments to:
apf @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl
if you want to be sure I see them, but I faithfully scan alt.fan.pratchett
as well, so just mentioning something in an article on the net will also
work fine.
--- So, didya notice that "Cohen the Barbarian" is a pun on "Conan the
Barbarian"?
In the first few versions of the APF, I had the following answer to this
question:
"No kidding. But let's try to avoid explaining the blindingly obvious,
shall we? Now if Cohen, on page 98 of "The Light Fantastic" did something
hilariously similar to what Conan did in a 1957 issue of "Conan Comics" --
that would be something else."
In retrospect an unfortunate paragraph, which has caused more than 90 % of
the submissions I get to start out with: "This will probably be too
obvious, but...".
The simple fact is that everybody has different (and sometimes *vastly*
different, believe me) ideas of what is trivial and what is obscure. So
please just keep sending me everything that might warrant inclusion, no
matter how glaringly obvious you think it is, and leave it to me to make
the decision on whether to actually include it or not -- that is what I am
editor for.
--- Will you get on with it, already?
Ok, ok. Here are the annotations I have collected so far. Note that I am
merely editor of this stuff: much of it was supplied by or stolen from
various Usenet and e-mail correspondents. All the credits are theirs; all
typo's and other mistakes are mine. Page numbers refer to whatever version
of the book in question I happen to have. Use them as a rough estimate. A
'+' prefixes all new or non-trivially expanded/changed entries (with
respect to the previous version of the APF); a '-' prefixes all other
entries.
Be aware that the information below by its very nature contains many
SPOILERS, so read the APF only if you are sure you don't care about that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Discworld Annotations
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLOUR OF MAGIC
+ [p. 8] "[...] the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would
continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, [...]"
Puns on the 'steady state' theory of explaining the size, origin and
future of the universe. The best-known *other* theory is, of course, the
Big Bang theory.
- [p. 9] The two barbarians, Bravd and Weasel, are parodies of Fritz
Leiber's classic fantasy heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
However, the name Ankh-Morpork is *not* derived from Leiber's
similar-sounding city of Lankhmar from the same series. Terry says:
"Bravd and the Weasel were indeed takeoffs of Leiber characters -- there
was a lot of that sort of thing in "The Colour Of Magic". But I didn't --
at least consciously, I suppose I must say -- create Ankh-Morpork as a
takeoff of Lankhmar. Originally it was just Morpork, then Ankh just
sounded nice..."
Finally, the name 'Ankh-Morpork' also does not have anything to do with
either of the Australian and New Zealand species of bird (frogmouths and
small brown owls, respectively) that go by the name of 'Morepork'.
+ [p. 11] "[...] two lesser directions, which are Turnwise and
Widdershins."
Widdershins is also the name of the planet where Dom, the major character
from "The Dark Side Of The Sun" lives. 'Widdershins' is, by the way, an
existing word meaning 'counter-clockwise'.
- [p. 12] "Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands
there are locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region
of sunny islands and balmy days."
A presumably knowledgeable correspondent tells me that actually, if you
do the calculations, it turns out that it would be the other way around
(on average, the sun is closer to the hub than the rim, so the hub would
be warmer).
Do not feel obliged to take his word for it, though. 'Discworld
Mechanics' is one of alt.fan.pratchett's favourite Perennial Discussion
Topics, and I don't think that any two given participants in such threads
have ever managed to agree on anything definite about the way in which
the Discworld might 'work'. See also the "The Turtle Moves" section in
Chapter 4 for more information about the physical aspects of the
Discworld.
+ [p. 16] "[...] found himself looking up into a face with four eyes in
it."
On the covers of the first two Discworld books, Josh Kirby actually drew
Twoflower with four physical eyes. Consensus on alt.fan.pratchett has it
that Terry was trying to get across the fact that Twoflower was wearing
glasses ('four-eyes' being a common insult thrown at bespectacled folks),
but that Josh Kirby simply triggered on the literal text and went off in
a direction of his own. Whether this action essentially shows Kirby's
interpretative genius (the KirbyFan explanation) or his inability to get
the joke / read very carefully (the NonKirbyFan explanation) or simply a
deliberate mis-interpretation (the Middle explanation) is a matter still
under discussion.
+ [p. 18] The inn called 'The Broken Drum' gets burned down in this book.
The later Discworld novels all feature an inn called 'The Mended Drum'.
The novel "Strata" contains (on p. 35) an explanation of why you would
call a pub 'The Broken Drum' in the first place: "You can't beat it".
This is probably as good a place as many to mention some intriguing
information that I received from one of my correspondents: if you have
ever wondered what it would be like to experience the atmosphere of an
establishment like the Mended Drum, then the closest you can possibly
come in our world is by paying a visit to Alexandria, where there exists
a bar called the 'Spitfire', populated mostly by soldiers and sailors,
and apparently a dead ringer for the Mended Drum. The story goes that
when the owner of the bar passed away a few years ago, his body was kept
in a freezer next to the toilets where, for all we know, it may still be
today. If any of you ever happen to be in Alexandria, be sure to visit
the 'Spitfire' and check it out for us.
- [p. 24] Terry has this to say about the name 'Twoflower': "[...] there's
no joke in Twoflower. I just wanted a coherent way of making up 'foreign'
names and I think I pinched the Mayan construction (Nine Turning Mirrors,
Three Rabbits, etc.)."
- [p. 44] "Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits?"
Surprising as it may seem (or at least as it was to me), there are quite
a few people who do not understand this cryptification of 'economics',
even though it is explicitly explained by Terry a bit later, on p. 71:
'echo-gnomics'. Some of the confusion perhaps arises from the fact that
we don't usually associate gnomes with spirits, as in: ghosts. But I
think Terry here simply means spirits (as in: souls) living underground,
with the emphasis on the word 'underground'.
- [p. 73] "'Here's another fine mess you've got me into,' he moaned and
slumped backwards."
This is a well-known Laurel and Hardy catchphrase. Hardy (the fat one)
always says it to Laurel (the thin one), who then usually responded by
ruffling the top of his hair with one hand and whimpering in
characteristic fashion.
- [p. 75] This is the first occurrence of the name 'Dunmanifestin' for the
home of the Gods at the top of Cori Celesti. It is used again in several
places throughout the other Discworld novels.
This is not only a reference to the many British placenames that begin
with 'Dun' (a Gaelic word meaning castle or fort and hence town) but also
a reference to the supposedly traditional name for a twee retirement
bungalow in the suburbs. When people (especially the bourgeois middle
classes) retire to the suburbs they always, according to the stereotype,
give the house some 'cute' punning name. Since the Dun/Done association
is well-known, one of the more common names (though it is a matter of
discussion if anyone has ever actually seen a house with this name) is
'Dunroamin' -- that is "done roaming" -- i.e. the owners of the house
have finished "travelling the world" and are now settled down to a life
of the Daily Mail, golf and coffee mornings. From this, we get that a
retirement home for gods not possessing much taste, might just be named
'Dunmanifestin'.
+ [p. 114] "'I spent a couple of hundred years on the bottom of a lake
once.'"
Reference to the sword Excalibur from the King Arthur legend. There's
another reference to that legend on p. 128: "'This could have been an
anvil'".
- [p. 117] "I'LL GET YOU YET, CULLY, said Death [...]"
Death is addressing Rincewind here, so the use of what looks like a
different name is confusing. Terry explains: "Cully still just about
hangs on in parts of the UK as a mildly negative term meaning variously
'yer bastard', 'man', 'you there' and so on. It's quite old, but then,
Death is a history kind of guy."
"The Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable", by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (a 19th
century reference book, still in print today) explains 'cully' as being a
contracted form of 'cullion', "a despicable creature" (from the Italian:
coglione).
- [p. 118] The entire "Lure Of The Wyrm" section parodies the Pern novels
(an sf/fantasy series) by Anne McCaffrey. The heroine of the first Pern
novel "Dragonflight" is called Lessa, and the exclamation mark in Terry's
dragonriders' names parallels the similar use of apostrophes in
McCaffrey's names.
+ [p. 125] "Oh, you know how it is with wizards. Half an hour afterwards
you could do with another one, the dragon grumbles."
The 'half an hour afterwards' quip is more conventionally made about
Chinese food.
- [p. 141] "[...] he had been captivated by the pictures of the fiery
beasts in "The Octarine Fairy Book"."
A reference to our world's Blue, Brown, Crimson, Green, etc., Fairy
Books, collected and edited by Andrew Lang.
+ [p. 168] "At that moment Lianna's dragon flashed by, and Hrun landed
heavily across its neck. Lianna leaned over and kissed him."
A strange error, since in the rest of the story the girl's name is
Liessa. Terry says the typos (which occurs in the Corgi paperback, 1st
edition) must have been introduced sometime during the publishing
process: they were not in his original manuscript.
- [p. 169] After Rincewind and Twoflower escape from the Wyrmberg they are
flying a dragon one moment and a modern jetliner the next.
Clearly they have been, get this, translated to another plane (the last
few paragraphs of this section seem to support the theory that Terry
actually intended this rather implicit pun). Note also the "powerful
travelling rune TWA" appearing on the Luggage: Trans *World* Airlines.
- [p. 171] 'Zweiblumen' is the (almost) literal German translation of
'Twoflower' (it actually translates to 'Twoflower*s*', so a 'better'
translation would have omitted the plural form, and become: 'Zweiblume').
'Rjinswand', however, is merely something that was intended to *sound*
foreign -- it is not a word in any language known to the readers of
alt.fan.pratchett.
In the true spirit of Usenet, heated debates have been held on the
related subject of whether 'Rjinswand' actually sounds Scandinavian (a
view supported by the fact that we are told this character lives in
Stockholm) or Dutch (a view supported by the simple, but unavoidable fact
that quite a few native English speakers feel that it does).
Your friendly APF Editor, being Dutch himself (and knowing darn well what
Dutch names sound like, thankyouverymuch) has rather strong opinions on
this matter, which he, out of the kindness of his heart, has decided not
to burden you with at this point.
+ [p. 176] "'I am Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos,' said the craftsman."
'Dactylos' means 'fingers' in dog Latin. See also the note for p. 115 of
"Small Gods".
+ [p. 179] "[...] the incredibly dry desert known as the Great Nef."
'Neff' is the name of an oven manufacturer, and 'nef' is of course 'fen'
(i.e. something incredibly wet) spelled backwards.
+ [p. 184] "The captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole,
prefer to achieve immortality by not dying."
Probably the best known version of this line is from Woody Allen, who
said: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to
achieve it through not dying", but Groucho Marx apparently said it even
earlier, in the movie "A Day At The Races". [I'd like some confirmation
of this, if possible]
+ [p. 184] "'His name is Tethis. He says he's a sea troll.'"
In Greek mythology Tethys was the personification of the feminine
fecundity of the sea. She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the
youngest female Titan (or Titanide). Eventually she married her brother
Oceanus, and together they had more than 3000 children, namely all the
rivers of the world.
Note that this is one instance where Terry violates his own unwritten
rule that trolls should have 'mineral' names.
+ [p. 193] He told them of the world of Bathys, [...]"
'Bathys' is Greek for 'deep', as in for example bathyscaphe deep-sea
diving equipment.
+ [p. 194] "[...] the biggest dragon you could ever imagine, covered in
snow and glaciers and holding its tail in its mouth."
Tethis describes here a planet designed according to a world-view that is
about as ancient and as widespread as the idea of the Discworld itself.
The snow and glaciers seem to point specifically to the Norse mythology
however, where the Midgard serpent Jormungandur circles the world in the
manner described.
- [p. 207] "'A base canard!' interrupted Garhartra."
Canard is French for both duck and hoax. It comes from the French phrase
"vendre des canards a moitie", to deceive, or literally, to sell ducks by
halves.
- [p. 221] "Whoever would be wearing those suits, Rincewind decided, was
expecting to boldly go where no man [...] had boldly gone before [...]"
From the famous opening voice-over to the "Star Trek" television series:
"Space... The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship
Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek
out new life and new civilisations -- to boldly go where no man has gone
before."
+ [p. 222] "'? Tyo yur atl ho sooten gatrunen?'"
People have been wondering if this was perhaps a real sentence in some
Scandinavian language (the letters used are from the Danish/Norwegian
alphabet), but it isn't.
Terry remarks: "The point is that Krullian isn't Swedish -- it's *just a
language that looks foreign*. In the same way, I hope the hell that when
"Witches Abroad" is translated the translators use some common sense when
dealing with Nanny Ogg's fractured Esperanto."
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
+ [p. 6] "[...] proves, whatever people say, that there *is* such a thing
as a free launch."
The reference is to the classic saying "there ain't no such thing as a
free lunch" (also known by its acronym 'TANSTAAFL', made popular by
science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his classic novel "The Moon Is
A Harsh Mistress", although I have no idea if the acronym originated with
him).
- [p. 7] The philosopher Ly Tin Weedle makes other cameo appearances in
Discworld novels, for instance in two "Mort" footnotes (pages 24 and
218), and in "Sourcery", on p. 212.
- [p. 8] Many people have commented on the last name of the 304th
Chancellor of Unseen University: Weatherwax, and asked if there is a
connection with Granny Weatherwax.
In "Lords And Ladies", Terry supplies the following piece of dialogue (on
p. 161) between Granny and Archchancellor Ridcully as an answer:
"'There was even a Weatherwax as Archchancellor, years ago,' said
Ridcully. 'So I understand. Distant cousin. Never knew him,' said
Granny."
+ [p. 10] "'To the upper cellars!' he cried, and bounded up the stone
stairs."
The magic eating its way through the ceilings with the wizards chasing it
floor after floor vaguely resonates with the 'alien blood' scene in the
movie "Alien", where the acidic blood of the Alien burns through
successive floors of the ship, with people running down after it.
+ [p. 10] Dandelion Clock
Amongst English (and Australian) children there exists the folk-belief
that the seed-heads of dandelions can be used to tell the time. The
method goes as follows: pick the dandelion, blow the seeds away, and the
number of puffs it takes to get rid of all the seeds is the time, e.g.
three puffs = three o'clock. As a result, the dandelion stalks with their
globe of seeds is regularly referred to as a "dandelion clock" in
colloquial English.
+ [p. 24] "[...] when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his
dinner, [...], he is tired of life."
See the note for p. 193 of "Mort".
+ [p. 26] "I WAS AT A PARTY, he added, a shade reproachfully."
When someone on the net wondered if this scene had been influenced by
Monty Python (who also do a Death-at-a-party sketch), Terry replied:
"No. I'm fairly honest about this stuff. I didn't even see the film until
long after the book was done. Once again, I'd say it's an easy parallel
-- what with the Masque of the Red Death and stuff like that, the joke is
just lying there waiting for anyone to pick it up."
It is perhaps also worth pointing out that this sentence looks very much
like a classic Tom Swiftie (if you accept can Death as a shade). Tom
Swifties (after the famous series of boys' novels which popularised them)
are sentences of the form "xxx, said he zzz-ly", where the zzz refers
back to the xxx. Examples:
"Pass me the shellfish," said Tom crabbily.
"I'm into homosexual necrophilia," said Tom in dead earnest.
Or even:
Tom thought long and hard about Freudian symbols.
- [p. 34] "'Good grief! A real gingerbread cottage!'"
The cottage and the events alluded to a bit later ("'Kids of today,'
commented Rincewind. 'I blame the parents,' said Twoflower.") are
straight out of the "Hansel And Gretel" fairy tale by the brothers Grimm.
If you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of the
original fairy tale on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
/doc/literary/obi/Fairy.Tales/Grimm/ as the file hansel.and.gretel.txt.Z.
+ [p. 35] "[...] rather a lot of trouble to go to just to sharpen a razor
blade."
See the note for p. 226 of "Pyramids".
- [p. 37] "'Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.'"
From the first "Conan The Barbarian" movie (starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger): "Conan! What is good in life?" "To crush your enemies,
drive them before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." This
quote, in turn, is lifted more or less verbatim from an actual
conversation Genghis Khan is supposed to have had with his lieutenants.
- [p. 45] "'Of course I'm sure,' snarled the leader. 'What did you expect,
three bears?'"
Another fairy tale reference, this time to the story "Goldilocks And The
Three Bears".
+ [p. 46] "'Someone's been eating my bed,' he said."
A mixture of "someone's been eating my porridge" and "someone's been
sleeping in my bed", both from the "Goldilocks And The Three Bears" fairy
tale.
+ [p. 57] "[...] charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness."
A reference to the elementary quantum particles known as quarks. For more
information see the note for p. 97 of "Lords And Ladies".
+ [p. 82] "'Anyway, I don't believe in Caroc cards,' he muttered."
Caroc = Tarot. See also the note for p. 110 of "Good Omens".
- [p. 153] The idea of a strange little shop that appears, sells the most
peculiar things, and then vanishes again first appears in a short story
by H. G. Wells, appropriately called "The Magic Shop".
+ [p. 171] "'Do not peddle in the affairs of wizards...'"
See the note for p. 183 of "Mort".
EQUAL RITES
- For an explanation of the "Liber Paginarum Fulvarum" mentioned in the
dedication, see the note for p. 262 of "Good Omens". The "dumb redheads
in Fifties' sitcom" probably refers to Lucille Ball from "I Love Lucy"
fame.
- A central theme of this book (as well as of the other Discworld witch
novels) is the contrast between on one side the (female) witches or
wiccans, who are in touch with nature, herbs and headology, and on the
other side the (male) wizards who are very ceremonial and use elaborate,
mathematics-like tools and rituals. This conflict rather closely mirrors
a long-standing feud between occult practitioners in our real world. (And
all the infighting within each camp occurs in real life, as well.)
My source for this also mentions that Pratchett's witches, especially,
are obvious stereotypes of the kinds of people one can run into at wiccan
festivals.
+ One of my correspondents recalls that he interviewed Terry in 1987 for a
university magazine. In that interview Terry said that one thing which
had tickled him about Josh Kirby's artwork for the cover was that it
subliminally (accidentally?) reflected the Freudian overtones of the book
(references to "hot dreams", the angst of adolescence, things that might
be called "magic" envy)... Kirby's artwork "coincidentally" draws Esk
with the broom handle where a penis would be (traditionally supposed to
be the basis of the "witches flying around on broomsticks" myth).
+ Kirby caricatures himself as the pointy-eared wizard on the back cover --
anyone who has seen his picture in "The Josh Kirby Posterbook" can
confirm this.
+ [p. 8] "[...] up here in the Ramtop Mountains [...]"
RAMTOP was the name of a system variable in the old Sinclair Spectrum
computers.
- [p. 45] "'I've seen the thundergods a few times,' said Granny, 'and Hoki,
of course.'"
The name Hoki derives from 'hokey' in combination with the Norse god
Loki. The description of Hoki is pure Pan, however.
- [p. 80] "If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split-window
Morris Minor."
A Morris Minor is a British car that non-Brits might be familiar with
either through the video clip for Madness' song 'Driving in my car', or
through the TV series "Lovejoy". In that series, Lovejoy's car 'Miriam'
is a Morris Minor. For the rest of you, here's a description:
Imagine a curvaceous jelly-mould in the shape of a crouching rabbit, like
Granny used to use. Turn it open-side-down and fit four wheels, near the
corners. On the rabbit's back build a cabin, with picture windows and a
windscreen in two parts at an angle to each other. Add turn indicators
consisting of little arms which flip out of the body at roof level, just
behind the doors. Furnish the cabin in a post-War austerity style, and
power the result with a 1935 vintage 850cc flat four engine pulling about
30bhp. In its day, in 1948, this was the height of desirability -- so
much so that for its first few years it was only available for export.
Even in the Nineties, a fair number of Moggies are still going, eh,
strong. You can actually pay a couple of thousand pounds for a good one
which works, because they're so easy to maintain. And the split-screen
ones are very definitely collectors' items.
- [p. 119] "The lodgings were [...] next to the [...] premises of a
respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good
fences make good neighbours."
Pun on a saying that originated with Robert Frost's poem "Mending A
Wall":
"My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours'."
And since people keep pointing it out to me I suppose it might as well be
mentioned here that 'fence' is also the English word for a dealer in
stolen goods.
- [p. 122] "'Yes, that's it,' said Treatle. 'Alma mater, gaudy armours
eagle tour and so on.'"
Treatle refers here to an old student's (drinking) song, which goes back
at least as far as Brahms's Academic Festival Overture (it's the last
melody), and is still in use at many universities and schools, where it
gets sung during graduation ceremonies. The actual lyrics are:
"Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus.
Post iucundam iuventutem,
Post molestam senectutem,
Nos habebit humus, nos habebit humus."
Which roughly translates to:
"Let us be merry, therefore, whilst we are young men.
After the joys of youth,
After the pain of old age,
The ground will have us, the ground will have us."
- [p. 132] The maid at Unseen University is called Ksandra, which puns on
Troy's Cassandra; but might also refer to Sandra being yet another
typical 'Tracey/Sharon' sort of name in England. See also the entry for
p. 117 of "Pyramids".
Perhaps the fact that nobody can understand Ksandra (because she talks
with her mouth full of clothes-pegs) is also an obscure reference to the
classical Cassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy, whom the Gods gave the
gift of prophecy and the curse of no-one believing a word she said.
+ [p. 133] "'Hmm. Granpone the White. He's going to be Granpone the Grey if
he doesn't take better care of his laundry.'"
You really have to read Tolkien in order to understand why this is so
funny. Sure, I can explain that in the "The Lord Of The Rings" a big deal
is made of the transformation of wizards from one 'colour' to another
(and in particular Gandalf the Grey becoming Gandalf the White), but that
just doesn't do justice to the real atmosphere of the thing...
- [p. 143] "[...] the Creator hadn't really decided what he wanted and was,
as it were, just idly messing around with the Pleistocene."
Refers to the Pleistocene geological era (a few dozen million years or so
ago), but also to Plasticine, a brand name that has become (at least in
Britain, Australia and New Zealand) a generic name for the modelling clay
children play with.
- [p. 163] Some folks thought they recognised the duel between Granny
Weatherwax and Archchancellor Cutangle from T. H. White's description of
a similar duel in his "Arthur, The Once And Future King" (also depicted
as a very funny fragment in Disney's "The Sword In The Stone", which was
an animation film based on this book). However, Terry says:
"The magical duel in "Equal Rites" is certainly not lifted from T. H.
White. Beware of secondary sources. Said duel (usually between a man and
a woman, and often with nice Freudian touches to the things they turn
into) has a much longer history; folkies out there will probably know it
as the song 'The Two Magicians'."
MORT
- [p. 17] "'They call me Mort.' WHAT A COINCIDENCE, [...]"
Not only does 'Mort' mean 'death' in Latin, but in "The Light Fantastic"
we also learned (on p. 95), that Death's *own* (nick)name is Mort.
- [p. 27] "'How do you get all those coins?' asked Mort. IN PAIRS."
A reference to the old Eastern European practice of covering a dead
friends' eyes with coins.
In the Greek version of this custom, a single coin or obulus was put
under the tongue of a deceased person. This was done so that the departed
loved one would have some change handy to pay Charon with (the grumpy old
ferryman who transported departed souls over the river Styx towards the
afterlife -- but only if they paid him first).
The Eastern European version has a similar background.
- [p. 30] Albert's stove has 'The Little Moloch (Ptntd)' embossed on its
door.
Let's turn to Brewer's (see the note for p. 117 of "The Colour Of Magic")
for an explanation of this one:
"*Moloch*: Any influence which demands from us the sacrifice of what we
hold most dear. Thus *war* is a Moloch, *king mob* is a Moloch, the
*guillotine* was the Moloch of the French Revolution, etc. The allusion
is to the god of the Ammonites [Phoenicians], to whom children were "made
to pass through the fire" in sacrifice."
To be fair to the Phoenicians, however, it must be pointed out that
almost all we know about Moloch is based on what the bitter enemies of
the Phoenicians said about him...
+ [p. 31] "The answer flowed into his mind with all the inevitability of a
tax demand."
Another acknowledgement of the "nothing is certain but death and taxes"
saying. See also the note for p. 133 of "Reaper Man".
- [p. 33] "'I shall call you Boy', she said."
The subplot of Ysabell and Mort and the matchmaking efforts by her father
echoes Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" (where Estelle for instance
also insists on calling Pip 'Boy' all the time).
- [p. 40] "AND WHY DO YOU THINK I DIRECTED YOU TO THE STABLES? THINK
CAREFULLY NOW."
The whole section on Mort's training, and this paragraph in particular,
explores a theme familiar from stories such as told in "The Karate Kid",
or "The Empire Strikes Back", and of course the TV series "Kung Fu",
where a young student is given many menial tasks to perform, which are
revealed to be integral to his education.
- [p. 47] "[...] the city of Sto Lat [...]"
A Polish correspondent tells me that 'Sto lat' is actually the title of a
Polish party song, more or less equivalent to 'For he's a jolly good
fellow'. 'Sto lat' means 'hundred years', and the lyrics to the song are
as follows:
"Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje, zyje nam.
Sto lat, sto lat, niech zyje, zyje nam.
Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz -- niech zyje, zyje nam.
Niech zyje nam!"
Which loosely translates to:
"Hundred years, hundred years, let him live for us,
Hundred years, hundred years, let him live for us,
Once again, once again, let him live for us!"
Thinking I was on to something I immediately enquired if 'Sto Helit',
another name Terry uses often, had a similar background, but my
correspondent says it's not even Polish at all.
- [p. 71] "[...] the abode of Igneous Cutwell, DM(Unseen), [...]"
DM(Unseen) means that Cutwell holds a Doctorate in Magic from Unseen
University. It's the usual way of writing an academic qualification in
Britain (e.g. DD for Doctor of Divinity, or PhD for Doctor of Philosophy)
-- though the University name ought to be in Latin.
+ [p. 84] "[...] just like a Cheshire cat only much more erotic."
See the note for p. 142 of "Wyrd Sisters".
- [p. 85] "[...] the fire of the Aurora Coriolis [...]"
This is the air glow around Cori Celesti (as in our aurora borealis), but
it is also a pun on the Coriolis force that acts on spinning objects.
- [p. 90] "Princess Keli awoke."
Another 'dumb blonde' pun (on Kelly this time) along the lines of Ptraci
and Ksandra? See the note for p. 117 of "Pyramids".
- [p. 93] "[...] if Mort ever compared a girl to a summer's day, it would
be followed by a thoughtful explanation of what day he had in mind and
whether it was raining at the time."
Considering the sheer volume of Discworld material written so far, with
its high jokes-per-page count, it is quite remarkable that Terry
Pratchett doesn't recycle (or inadvertently reinvent) his own jokes more
often than he does. As for instance in the case of this particular
Shakespeare-inspired joke that would be repeated two books later in "Wyrd
Sisters" (see the note for p. 213 of that book).
- [p. 99] "'[...] the princesses were so noble they, they could pee through
a dozen mattresses --'"
Albert here mangles the Grimm fairy tale known as "The Princess And The
Pea", in which a princess proves her nobility to her future husband and
his mother by being so fine-constitutioned that a pea placed underneath
the dozen mattresses she was given to sleep on kept her awake all night.
If you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of the
original fairy tale on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
/doc/literary/obi/Fairy.Tales/Grimm/ as the file princess.and.pea.txt.Z.
I have since then received mail indicating that the best known version of
this fairy tale was the one written by Hans Christian Andersen, and that
the Grimm version was in fact pulled from the collection because it was
so similar. I was not able to obtain any further evidence for this claim,
so if anybody out there knows something about this, please drop me a
line.
- [p. 110] Caroc cards and the Ching Aling.
Caroc = Tarot and Ching Aling = I Ching: two ways of accessing the
Distilled Wisdom of the Ancients, and all that.
- [p. 126] "'-- and then she thought he was dead, and she killed herself,
and then he woke up and so he did kill himself, [...]'"
Ysabell starts to list off a number of tragic romances, mostly mangled
versions of existing stories. This one appears to be the Shakespearean
tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
- [p. 127] "'-- swam the river every night, but one night there was this
storm and when he didn't arrive she --'"
This is the saga of Hero and Leander. Leander swam the Hellespont each
night to be with Hero (who was a virgin (hah!) in the service of Venus,
and therefore not accessible through more conventional ways). But then
there was indeed a storm, and the candle she used as a beacon blew out,
and the Gods couldn't hear his prayers over the noise of the storm, and
so he drowned, and the next morning she saw his body and drowned herself
as well. Read Christopher Marlowe's "Hero And Leander" for more details.
- [p. 154] Alberto Malich was rumoured to have disappeared when trying to
perform the Rite of AshkEnte backwards. Since we know that the Rite is
used to summon Death, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to suppose that
performing it backwards might drive Death away from you, which is
probably why Albert did it. Unfortunately for him, it is also not very
unreasonable to suppose that performing the rite backwards will instead
summon *you* to Death...
- [p. 161] Queen Ezeriel refers to our world's Cleopatra who also used to
bathe in asses' milk, and who eventually committed honourable suicide by
clutching a venomous snake (an asp, to be precise) to her bosom.
- [p. 183] "'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal
often offends, I read somewhere.'"
Ysabell probably read one part of this in Tolkien's "The Lord Of The
Rings" where we find (in "The Fellowship Of The Ring", Book One, Chapter
III) that Gildor Inglorion the High Elf says: "Do not meddle in the
affairs of wizards because they are subtle and quick to anger". The other
part she got from a sign often seen in British pubs: "Do not ask for
credit, because a refusal often offends".
See also the note for p. 264 of "Lords And Ladies".
- [p. 184] In the Disc model, Ankh-Morpork was a carbuncle. A carbuncle is
(1) a red semiprecious gem, and (2) a festering sore like a boil.
- [p. 193] "'When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep
slurry.'"
The original quote here dates back to 1777, and is by Samuel Johnson (a
well-known harmless drudge): "When a man is tired of London he is tired
of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
Quite a few people have mistaken this quote for a reference to Douglas
Adams. Of course Adams was simply parodying Johnson's quote as well when
he wrote (in Chapter 4 of "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe"):
"[...] when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article
with the words 'When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of
life', the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight."
+ [p. 195] "'Alligator sandwich,' he said. 'And make it sna--'"
Refers to an old playground one-liner: "give me an alligator sandwich and
make it snappy!". Terry uses this joke in a different context in "Witches
Abroad" (see the note for p. 154 of that book).
- [p. 197] "'Fireworks?' Cutwell had said."
The stuff about wizards knowing all about fireworks is a reference to
Tolkien's "The Hobbit", where the great Wizard Gandalf is known (in times
of peace) for entertaining everybody with fireworks.
- [p. 224] "I don't even *remember* walking under a mirror."
Superstition says that both walking under a ladder and breaking a mirror
give bad luck. Therefore, by the sort of skewed logic Terry continually
gives to his characters, walking under a mirror must be *really* bad
news.
- [p. 226] "[...] purposes considerably more dire than, say, keeping a
razor blade nice and sharp."
A reference to the pseudo-scientific 'fact' that (small models of)
pyramids are supposed to have, among many other powers, the ability to
sharpen razor blades if they are left underneath the pyramids overnight.
- [p. 255] "IS THIS THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SHIPS, AND BURNED THE
TOPLESS TOWERS OF PSEUDOPOLIS? wondered Death."
A reference to Helen of Troy (or Tsort, I suppose I should say), over
whom the Trojan War was started. The exact original quote, from
Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragical History Of Dr. Faustus", goes:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!"
Ilium is the Latin name for Troy.
SOURCERY
+ [p. 8] "'My son,' he said. 'I shall call him Coin.'"
A pun on the English boy's name 'Colin', with a wink to the expression
"to coin a phrase".
+ [p. 12] "[...] this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess
game [...]"
This subject comes up every now and again on alt.fan.pratchett, so it is
time for an annotation to settle this matter for once and for all:
playing (chess) games with Death is a *very* old concept, that goes back
much further than both Ingmar Bergman's famous 1957 movie "The Seventh
Seal", or Chris deBurgh's less famous 1975 song 'Spanish Train'.
+ [p. 22] "It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous
worlds [...]"
A reference to C. S. Lewis's classic fantasy story "The Lion, The Witch
And The Wardrobe".
+ [p. 28] "'I saw this picture of a sourcerer in a book. He was standing on
a mountain top waving his arms and the waves were coming right up [...]'"
Probably a reference to a famous scene from the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice'
segment in Disney's 1940 film "Fantasia". The "sourcerer" being in fact
the Apprentice, Mickey, dreaming of commanding the wind to blow, the
waves to wave, the stars to fall, and so on.
+ [p. 44] "'Psst,' it said. 'Not very,' said Rincewind [...], 'but I'm
working on it.'"
Play on the word 'pissed', common British (but not American) slang for
'drunk'.
+ [p. 69] "'*Anus mirabilis?*'"
"Annis mirabilis" translates to "year of wonder". "*Anus* mirabilis" does
not.
+ [p. 75] "'[...] that would be the Patrician, Lord Vetinari,' said Carding
with some caution."
A sideways pun (via 'veterinary') on the name of the famous de Medici
family, who were the enlightened rulers of Renaissance Florence.
During one of those interminable "which actor should play which Discworld
character if there was a movie?" discussions, Terry gave some insight in
how he himself visualises the Patrician:
"I can't remember the guy's name, but I've always pictured the Patrician
as looking like the father in "Beetlejuice" -- the man also played the
Emperor of Austria in "Amadeus". And maybe slightly like the head bad guy
in "Die Hard"."
The actors Terry is thinking of are Jeffrey Jones and Alan Rickman,
respectively.
+ [p. 76] "[...] his chair at the foot of the steps leading up to the
throne, [...]"
In Tolkien's "The Lord Of The Rings", the Stewards of Gondor also sat on
a chair on the steps below the real throne, awaiting the return of the
king. The prophecy in that case also included a magic sword, although
Tolkien neglects to make any mention of a strawberry-shaped birthmark.
This is probably one of those annotations where both Tolkien and Terry
draw on much older ideas. Legends about kings, swords and birthmarks are
of course legion, but neither I nor the person who wrote me about this
annotation could come up with another example of the 'chair below the
real throne' thing. Anybody?
+ [p. 76] "[...] the sort of man you'd expect to keep a white cat, and
caress it idly while sentencing people to death in a piranha tank [...]"
A reference to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the arch enemy of James Bond.
- [p. 88] "The market in Sator Square, the wide expanse of cobbles outside
the black gates of the University, was in full cry."
The word 'Sator' may refer here to a famous magic square (magic square,
get it?) dating back to the times of the spread of Christianity in
Europe. 'Sator' means sower or farmer. The complete square is:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
This square is palindromic in all directions. The sentence you get reads:
"Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas", which means, more or less: "The sower
[i.e. God] in his field controls the workings of his tools [i.e. us]".
- [p. 122] "'It looks like someone has taken twice five miles of inner city
and girded them round with walls and towers,' he hazarded."
From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan":
"So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girded round"
+ [p. 122] "the kind of spaghetti that would make M. C. Escher go for a
good lie down [...]"
Maurits C. Escher: Dutch (yeah!) graphic artist of this century,
well-known for his tangled, paradoxical pictures of optical illusions and
plane-filling tilings. Read Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach"
for much, much more information.
- [p. 122] 'Sherbet' is an oriental cooling drink as well as a fizzy sweet
powder children eat as a sweet, and which comes in a cardboard tube with
a liquorice 'straw' at the top. To get to the sherbet you bite off the
end of the liquorice and suck through it. [ Somewhere in "Sourcery" I
believe there is an actual reference to the liquorice straw, but I
couldn't find it. Anybody? ]
+ [p. 125] "'[...] pretty much of a miracle of rare device.'"
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan":
"It was a miracle of rare device
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"
- [p. 125] "My name is Creosote, Seriph of Al Khali, [...]"
Ok, lessee: Creosote puns on the proverbially rich Croesus (king of Lidya
(which lies in what now is Turkey) in the 6th century BC), 'Serif' is a
typographical term which also puns on 'caliph', and 'Al Khali' is
pronounced 'alkali' (just covering all the bases here, as my original
source put it), but probably refers to the Rub' al Khali desert in
Arabia.
Creosote itself is actually the name for an oily liquid mixture of
organic chemicals, resulting as a by-product from the industrial burning
of coal or wood.
- [p. 126] Creosote's poetry is mostly based on Edward Fitzgerald's
translation of the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam. The poem parodied on this
page goes:
"A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou"
- [p. 126] The hashishim as the "original Assassins".
Brewer's:
"*Assassins*. A band of Carmathians, collected by Hassa, subah of
Nishapour, called the "Old Man Of The Mountains", because he made Mount
Lebanon his stronghold. This band was the terror of the world for two
centuries, when it was put down by Sultan Bibaris. The assassins indulged
in *haschisch* (bang), an intoxicating drink, and from this liquor
received their name."
For more information, see also the Hawkwind song 'Hassan I Sabbah' on
their album "Quark, Strangeness And Charm".
+ [p. 127] "'They spent simply ages getting the rills sufficiently
sinuous.'"
"Kubla Khan":
"And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills."
+ [p. 127] "'You can't play a dulcimer, by any chance?'"
"Kubla Khan":
"It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played."
+ [p. 128] "'Has anyone ever told you your neck is as a tower of ivory?'"
This, and Creosote's further compliments to Conina ("your hair is like a
flock of goats that graze upon the side of Mount Gebra", "your breasts
are like the jewelled melons in the fabled gardens of dawn", etc.) are
all very similar to the compliments in the Biblical 'Song of Solomon':
"Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair;
thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks:
thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead."
"Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury,
whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men."
"Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
which feed among the lilies."
I did an electronic search across the entire King James bible for
"jewelled melons", but those appear to be an invention of Creosote's.
Fine by me -- I was already slightly shocked to find out that "thy hair
is as a flock of goats" was a genuine compliment and not something Terry
had made up.
- [p. 129] "Get up! For the morning in the cup of day, / Has dropped the
spoon that scares the stars away."
The "Rubaiyat":
"Awake! for morning in the bowl of night
Hath flung the stone that puts the stars to flight."
+ [p. 130] "[...] a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slopping
over the edge of the bath."
A falling apple supposedly helped Newton discover the Law of Gravity, a
boiling kettle helped Watt revolutionise the steam engine (see also the
note for p. 153 of "Reaper Man"), and Archimedes, according to legend,
discovered the principles of fluid displacement while taking a bath.
- [p. 132] "The Seriph's palace, known to legend as the Rhoxie, [...]"
No connection to the original Croesus here, but rather to the Alhambra,
the palace of the Emirs of Granada in 15th century Spain. As Terry says:
"Incidentally, the Seriph's palace, the Rhoxie, is indeed a 'resonance'
with the Alhambra -- a famous Moorish palace which became a synonym for
an impressive building, and later became a common cinema name as in Odeon
and, yes, Roxy."
- [p. 141] "Nijel the Destroyer" may be a suitably heroic-looking name, but
'Nijel' is of course pronounced as 'Nigel', a name that is traditionally
associated with wimpy rather than with heroic males.
+ [p. 142] "'For example, do you know how many trolls it takes to change a
lamp-wick?'"
Someone, somewhere, hasn't heard of the "How many <insert ethnic group>
does it take to change a light-bulb?"-jokes this is a reference to. This
annotation is for him/her.
+ [p. 154] "[...] the Library dropped on him like the descent of Man."
Reference to Charles Darwin's landmark 1871 book "The Descent Of Man".
- [p. 162] "'He asked me to tell him a story.'"
This is the first, but not the last time in the book that Creosote asks
Conina for a story. This refers to "1001 Nights", and the stories
Scheherazade had to tell to *her* Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, every night.
- [p. 167] "'I'm looking up the Index of Wandering Monsters', said Nijel."
'Wandering Monsters' is a phrase that comes from the world of fantasy
role-playing games such as "Dungeons And Dragons", and it more or less
means just what you think it means. Nijel is of course exactly the type
of nerd who would, in our world, actually play D&D.
+ [p. 171] "'It have three legges of an mermade, the hair of an tortoise,
the teeth of an fowel, and the wings of an snake.'"
More reputable witnesses than Broomfog describe the chimera or chimaera
(from Greek mythology) as a fire-breathing monster having either the
hindquarters of a serpent and the head of a lion on the body of a goat,
or else the back of a goat, the wings of a dragon, the front half of a
lion, and three heads (one each for goat, lion and dragon).
+ [p. 185] "Next to it was a small, sleek oil lamp and [...] a small gold
ring."
The magic lamp and magic ring, which summon a demon when rubbed, appear
in the legend of Aladdin. On p. 208 Creosote tells the story of how "one
day this wicked old pedlar came round offering new lamps for old [...]".
This is also part of the original Aladdin fairy tale, an online version
of which you can find on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
/doc/gutenberg/etext93 in a file named alad10.txt.Z.
+ [p. 210] "It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid [...]"
Refers to the British 'Filofax' system: a small notebook (the more
expensive versions are leather-bound) with loose-leaf information sheets,
diary, calendar, notes, wine lists, London underground maps, etc.
+ [p. 215] "'Like not thinking about pink rhinoceroses,' said Nijel [...]"
I always thought that the impossibility of trying not to think of
something specific was a general concept, but a correspondent informs me
that the writer Tolstoy actually founded a club as a boy, which you could
be admitted to if you managed a test. The test was to sit in a corner,
and *not* think of a white bear.
- [p. 215] Significant Quest --> Trivial Pursuit.
+ [p. 236] "'We are poor little ... unidentified domesticated animals ...
that have lost our way ...' he quavered."
'Sheep' was *almost* right. The exact song the horsemen are trying to
sing goes:
"We're poor little lambs, that have lost our way"
CHORUS: "Baaa, baa, baa."
and is a favourite of the highly drunk.
+ [p. 245] "'It's not that, then?'"
At least in the UK Corgi paperback, this is printed in a plain font. It
seems logical, however, that the line is said by Pestilence and should
therefore have been in italics.
- [p. 259] "For a moment the ape reared against the darkness, the shoulder,
elbow and wrist of his right arm unfolding in a poem of applied leverage,
and in a movement as unstoppable as the dawn of intelligence brought it
down very heavily."
This is a rather subtle reference to the scene with the bone and tapir
skull in the 'Dawn of Man' portion of Kubrick and Clarke's movie "2001: A
Space Odyssey".
WYRD SISTERS
- This whole novel brims with Shakespearean references, to the Scottish
Play in particular (the three witches, the blood that won't come off, the
king's ghost, etc.). Some of the more striking references are documented
below, but the list isn't exhaustive.
- Throughout the book, Hwel the Playwright suffers from flashes of
inspiration that come from plays and movies in our world. Most of these
references are easy to understand (Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel
and Hardy, etc.), and need not be listed here. A few entries that seem to
me (slightly) less obvious are documented in this section.
- [p. 5] "Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve
Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; [...]"
Probably the most famous Chance (or Community Chest) card in Monopoly:
"GO TO JAIL -- Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect
$200.". (or 200 pounds, or 200 guilders, or 200 of whatever currency you
care to name).
+ [p. 7] "The junior witch, whose name was Magrat Garlick, relaxed
considerably."
Terry says: "Magrat is pronounced Magg-rat. Doesn't matter what I think
is right -- *everyone* I've heard pronounce it has pronounced it
Maggrat."
+ [p. 8] "Meanwhile King Verence, monarch of Lancre, was making a
discovery."
There exists a book entitled "Servants Of Satan", which is about the
history of witch hunts. It contains the following paragraph:
"This brings us back to Pierre de Lancre. He became convinced that Basque
women where an immoral and unfaithful lot when observing their social
arrangements during his witch-hunting expedition. De Lancre was
especially horrified at the leadership roles in religious services taken
by Basque women, the very women among whom witchcraft was rife..."
Terry comments: "I'm astonished. I've never heard of the guy, and I'm
reasonably well-read in that area. But it *is* a lovely coincidence."
- [p. 20] "[...] with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his
droit de seigneur."
'Droit de seigneur' or 'jus primae noctis' ('right of first night'): a
custom alleged to have existed in mediaeval Europe giving the lord of the
land the right to sleep the first night with the bride of any one of his
vassals. The evidence for this custom deals with redemption dues which
were paid to avoid its enforcement. It probably existed as a recognised
custom in parts of France and possibly Italy and Germany, but not
elsewhere.
- [p. 36] "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All"
Terry invented this title; he has *not* written any words to it (apart
from the fragments that appear in the novels); but many fans (including a
folk singer called Heather Wood) have; and there *did* turn out to exist
an old Oxford drinking song that also uses the key phrase of the hedgehog
song. See the end of this file for one documented version of that song.
Terry pleads parallel evolution, and observes that: "There is a certain,
how shall I put it, natural cadence to the words."
Readers of alt.fan.pratchett have also engaged in a collective
songwriting effort, the results of which can be found in the Pratchett
Archives (see Chapter 5 for details), in the file
/pub/pratchett/misc/hedgehog-song. See also Chapter 4 for a sample.
- [p. 37] "'Tom John,' she said firmly, and swept out."
Tom John's name might be based on John Tom in Alan Dean Foster's
"Spellsinger" fantasy series.
- [p. 60] "It was the cats and the roller skates that were currently giving
him trouble..."
Refers to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals "Cats" and "Starlight
Express".
- [p. 75] "A faint glow beyond the frosted panes suggested that, against
all reason, a new day would soon dawn."
The first scene of the first act of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" starts at
midnight, and describes a scene lasting about fifteen minutes -- yet the
act ends at dawn. Likewise, the summoning of WxrtHltl-jwlpklz the demon
takes place at night, but ends with the quote given above.
+ [p. 84] "[...] its eyes two yellow slits of easy-going malevolence [...]"
This is probably the best-known screw-up in all of the Discworld novels:
Greebo is, of course, supposed to have only *one* eye.
+ [p. 109] "Granny glanced around the dungeon."
This is another misprint: it should be Nanny, not Granny. Terry says the
error is not present in his own version of the text, but both the UK and
USA paperbacks have it.
- [p. 133] "'I have no recollection of it at this time,' he murmured."
Duke Felmet is echoing the words of Richard Nixon's subordinates under
questioning by the Senate Committee during the Watergate affair.
- [p. 142] "Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but
the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the other way round."
Refers to the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures In
Wonderland", a beast famous for slowly vanishing until only its grin
remains.
- [p. 159] "[...] the hero had been born in a handbag."
The protagonist in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance Of Being Earnest" was
found, as a baby, in a handbag.
+ [p. 160] The Dysk.
The famous Globe Theatre was built by Cuthbert Barbage on the Bankside in
Southwark (London) in 1599. Shakespeare had a share in the theatre and
acted there.
The Globe was destroyed by fire, rebuilt, and eventually completely
demolished in 1644. Currently, The Globe is being rebuilt again by an
American entrepreneur on the South Bank, a few hundred yards from its
original site.
+ [p. 178] "The pay's the thing."
Puns on a well-known Shakespeare quote from "Hamlet" (act II, scene ii):
"The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king"
If you have access to the Internet, you can find online versions of all
of Shakespeare's plays on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
/doc/shakespeare.
- [p. 186] "Leonard of Quirm. He's a painter, really."
Refers to Leonardo da Vinci, who also worked on (but didn't succeed in
building) a flying machine.
- [p. 193] "1ST WITCHE: He's late. (Pause)" [Etc.]
Refers to Samuel Beckett's classic play "Waiting For Godot", where
similar dialogue occurs.
- [p. 199] "'Did you know that an adult male carries up to five pounds of
undigested red meat in his intestines at all times?"
Stereotypical (but basically true) propaganda that radical vegetarians
like to quote in order to gross people out and get them to stop eating
meat (of course, the average vegetarian has about five pounds of
undigested vegetable matter in his intestines). The cliche is used fairly
often, amongst other places in the movie "Beverly Hills Cop".
Terry had this to say on the subject: "Yep. That one I got from some way
out vegetarian stuff I read years ago, and went round feeling ill about
for days. And two years ago I saw "Beverly Hills Cop" on TV and rejoiced
when I heard the line. God, I wish I'd seen the film before I'd written
"Guards! Guards!"... I'd have had someone out on stake-duty on horseback,
and someone creep up behind them with a banana..."
- [p. 213] "I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day.
Because -- well, June 12th was quite nice, and ..."
One of Shakespeare's more famous sonnets (Sonnet XVIII, to be precise)
starts out:
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate"
PYRAMIDS
+ [p. 8] "Some people think a giant dung beetle pushes it."
Like the ancient Egyptians, for instance.
+ [p. 10] "Morpork was twinned with a tar pit."
A reference to the concept of twin cities.
Following the horrors of the Second World War, and in the spirit of
egalitarianism and common feeling for our fellow men which prevailed at
that time, it was decided that the best way to cement bonds between the
people of the world so that they would never *ever* even consider
dropping big noisy things on each other again, was to have every town,
village and (apparently) cowshed in Europe 'twinned' with an equivalent
one which had previously been on the other side.
With these new-found unities, the merry laughing people of Europe would
engage in fraternal and sporting activities, school-children would go on
two-week exchange visits to discover that they couldn't stand sauerkraut,
and the respective mayors of the towns would be able to present each
other with touching and expensive symbols of international friendship and
get in the local paper all on other peoples' money.
The most visible effect of this accord is the presumptuous little legend
under the sign at the entrance to towns and villages saying "Little
Puddlebury -- twinned with Obermacht am Rhein". Some towns (Croyden
springs to mind) got a little over-enthusiastic about twinning, with the
result that they are coupled to several towns, which makes the sign
saying "Croyden welcomes careful drivers" look reminiscent of a
seventeen-year-old's jacket at a Guns n' Roses concert.
+ [p. 12] Teppic's test.
Teppic's examination is heavily modelled on the British Driving test,
which, as with the other important tests in British life such as 16- and
18-plus exams, undergraduate finals, and doctoral vitas is not actually
intended to test whether you are actually any *good* at what is being
tested, concentrating instead on your proficiency at following arbitrary
instructions.
Many of the elements of a driving test are present in the passages which
follow: The short list of questions, the sign on a small card (often held
upside down), the clipboard. Mericet's rather stilted language, "Now, I
want you to proceed at your own pace towards the Street of Book-keepers,
obeying all signs and so forth", is almost a direct parody, as is the
little speech at the end of the test. The 'Emergency Drop' (p. 42) is the
'Emergency Stop', where you have to stop the car "as if a child has run
out into the road, while keeping control of the vehicle at all times".
Finally, the back of the Highway Code has a table with minimum vehicle
stopping distances, which examiners *almost* never ask about.
- [p. 14] "He [...] jumped a narrow gap on to the tiled roof of the Young
Men's Reformed-Cultists-of-the-Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth Association gym,
[...]"
Puns on our world's YMCA youth hostels. YMCA stands for 'Young Men's
Christian Association'.
- [p. 17] Djelibeybi.
A pun on the sweets called Jelly Babies.
+ [p. 19] "[...] the Plague of Frog."
Refers to the Biblical 'Plague of Frogs' from Exodus.
- [p. 20] On the subject of the Assassin's Guild School, Terry has this to
say: "Yes, the whole setup of the Assassin's Guild school has, uh, a
certain resonance with Rugby School in "Tom Brown's Schooldays" (note to
Americans: a minor Victorian classic of school literature which no-one
reads anymore and which is probably now more famous for the first
appearance of the Flashman character subsequently popularised by George
MacDonald Fraser)."
The scene in the dormitory on the first night when Arthur gets down to
say his prayers is an almost exact parody of a similar scene in "Tom
Brown's Schooldays".
+ [p. 45] "It transpired that he was the son of the late Johan Ludorum
[...]."
At a British public school/grammar school sports day, the pupil who
overall won the most, was declared 'Victor Ludorum' -- "Winner of the
games".
- [p. 50] The legend of Ankh-Morpork being founded by two orphaned brothers
who had been found and suckled by a hippopotamus refers to the legend of
Romulus and Remus who were two orphaned brothers raised by a wolf, who
later went on to found Rome (the brothers did, not the wolf).
+ [p. 50] "It's rather like smashing a sixer at conkers."
Conkers are the nuts of the Horse Chestnut -- not the one you eat, the
other one with the really spiky outer covering. It is a regular autumn
pass-time in England for school-boys to put conkers on the end of bits of
string, and commence doing battle.
The game of conkers is played by two players, almost always by challenge.
One player holds his conker up at arms length on the end of its bit of
string, and the other player tries to swing his one with sufficient force
to break the other player's conker. After a swing, roles are reversed.
Since this is a virtually solely male sport, whose participants' average
age is about seven (although there is a bunch of nutters who regularly
get on local news programmes with their "world championship"), there is
of course much potential for strategic 'misses' against the opponents
knuckles, or indeed against almost any other part of his anatomy.
In the (rather unlikely, usually) event of one conker breaking the other
one, the winning conker becomes a 'one-er'. A conker which has won twice,
is a 'two-er'. Hence a 'sixer' (although it must be remembered that there
are of course the usual collection of bogus seventeeners and
sixty-seveners which circulate the black market of the playing field).
There is a black art as to how to ensure that your conker becomes a sixer
-- baking very slowly in the oven overnight, is one approach, as is
soaking for a week in vinegar. Most of these methods tend to make the
conkers, if anything, more rather than less brittle. There's a lesson for
us all in there somewhere.
+ [p. 58] "Hoot Koomi, high priest of Khefin [...] stepped forward."
The name Koot Hoomi (or Kuthhumi) is a Sanskrit word that means
'teacher'.
Koot Hoomi is the author of a series of letters that were published as
"The Mahatma Letters To A. P. Sinnett", and which form the basis of many
theosophical teachings.
+ [p. 63] "'Look, master Dil,' said Gern, [...]"
Since not everyone is familiar with all those weird English food items,
this is probably a good place to point out that there is a red line that
runs from 'Dil the Embalmer' to 'Dill the Pickler' to 'dill pickle', a
British delicacy.
+ [p. 64] "'Good big sinuses, which is what I always look for in a king.'"
In the process of embalming, the Egyptians removed the deceased's brain
through the nose cavity. That's all I know about the process, and if it's
all right with you people I'd rather keep it that way.
+ [p. 90] "'This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.'"
See the note for p. 226 of "Mort". There's another more explicit
reference on p. 146: "[...] contrary to popular opinion pyramids don't
sharpen razor blades".
- [p. 95] Pteppic's dream about the seven fat and seven thin cows is a
reference to the Bible's Joseph, who had to explain a similar dream
(which did not have the bit about the trombone, though), to the Pharaoh.
"Pyramids" is of course riddled with religious references, most of which
are too obvious or too vague to warrant inclusion here.
+ [p. 109] "'*Doppelgangs*,' he said."
Pun on the German word 'doppelgaenger', meaning 'body double', but thanks
to dozens of bad sf-movies the word has entered the English language in
the mostly sinister meaning of some metamorphic life form taking the
shape of a human being.
- [p. 117] Ptraci.
Should be pronounced with a silent 'p'. Note also that in the UK the name
Tracey (Sharon, too) is often used to generically refer to the kind of
girl immortalised in the "dumb blonde" jokes.
The stereotype may have arisen because of Keith Waterhouse who has been
using the names for many years in his Daily Mail columns to represent
typical innumerate rude shop assistants.
This annotation may also help explain why over on alt.fan.pratchett
people regularly and affectionately refer to their Favourite Author as
'Pterry' (although the lazier participants usually just refer to him as
TP, conforming to the sometimes bloody annoying Usenet habit of
acronymising everything longer than two words or four characters,
whichever comes first. Hence DW stands for Discworld, TCOM for "The
Colour Of Magic", and APF for Annotated Pratchett File -- but you already
knew that).
I was later informed that 'Pterry' was also the name of a pterodactyl on
a kids' TV program called "Jigsaw", but as far as I can recall Terry's
nickname was not coined with that in mind.
- [p. 127] Notice the sound accompanying the pyramid flares. It
phonetically spells 'Cheops'.
+ [p. 144] "'She can play the dulcimer,' said the ghost of Teppicymon
XXVII, apropos of nothing much."
Reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". See also the note
for p. 127 of "Sourcery".
+ [p. 153] "And this particular camel [...] was called You Bastard."
If you pronounce 'You Bastard' the right way, it sounds just like the
name of the ancient Egyptian cat goddess 'Nubastis'.
This annotation was pointed out to me by somebody who got it from the
Dutch translator of the Discworld novels. I find the reference
unbelievably farfetched, but at least it does show that this translator
fellow definitely has the right mindset and attitude regarding Terry's
writings. Pity he doesn't have access to the net...
- [p. 156] "[...] distilling the testicles of a small tree-dwelling species
of bear with the vomit of a whale, [...]"
Until quite recently, animal substances were extensively used as
fixatives in perfume. Examples include musk (from deer-testicles; 'musk'
is Sanskrit for 'scrotum'), ambergris (from the intestines of whales) and
castor (from a beaver's perineal gland).
- [p. 157] "...Phi * 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to
twelve..."
Some confusion has arisen here, because the asterisk symbol '*' is the
same one used in at least some of the editions of "Pyramids" as a
footnote marker. This has caused a few people to wonder if there's a
'missing footnote' intended for this page. Matters are not helped much by
the fact that the American paperback edition *does* contain the text of a
footnote on (their equivalent of) p. 157. This footnote is simply
misplaced and the marker for it occurs on the *previous* page (see also
previous annotation).
We'll let Terry have the last word in order to remove any remaining
doubt: "I'm pretty sure the missing footnote in Pyramids doesn't exist.
If it's what I'm thinking of, we just bunged in loads of gibberish maths
and among the symbols was, yes, '*'."
- [p. 176] The philosophers shooting arrows at tortoises are discussing one
of Zeno's three motion paradoxes. See also Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel,
Escher, Bach". Or Zeno.
- [p. 179] Philosophers' names.
Xeno refers to Zeno, of aforementioned paradox. Copolymer ("the greatest
storyteller in the history of the world") might refer to both Homer
(because of the name) and Herodotus, 'the father of history', who was
known for his very chatty and discursive style, and who basically made
his living as a story-teller/dinner guest. Pthagonal ("a very acute man
with an angle") refers to Pythagoras. Iesope ("the greatest teller of
fables") to Aesop. Antiphon ("the greatest writer of comic plays") to
Aristophanes. And Ibid (whose name reminds us of Ovid) is actually short
for ibidem, which means, when citing literature references: 'same author
as before'. Hence the quip later on: "Ibid you already know".
The only one left is Endos the Listener, who is perhaps meant to portray
the standard second-man-in-a-Socratic-dialogue -- the man who spends the
entire dialogue saying things like "That is correct, Socrates", "I
agree", "you're right", "your reasoning appears correct", and the like.
Also, an 'antiphon' is a name for a versicle or sentence sung by one
choir in response to another (e.g.: "No you can't / Yes I can!" repeated
many times with rising pitch. Or a more modern example would perhaps be
Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody': "We will not let you go / Let me go!").
'Copolymer' is a term from chemistry; it refers to a polymer (plastic)
made from more than one kind of monomer (simple compound).
[ Finally, my source also suspects that Copolymer's monologue may be a
take-off on a particular translation of his "Histories". Anybody?]
+ [p. 179] "'The tortoise *did* beat the hare,' said Xeno sulkily."
Reference to Aesop's classic fable "The Hare And The Tortoise".
If you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of the
Aesop fables on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
/doc/literary/obi/Aesop in a file named Fables.Z.
+ [p. 181] "'Sacrifice a chicken under his nose.'"
Refers to the old practice of burning a feather under the nose of an
unconscious or fainted person.
+ [p. 181] "'[...] here comes Scarab again... yes, he's gaining height...
Jeht hasn't seen him yet, [...].'"
The high priest's commentary on the gods' battle for the sun is obviously
based on sports commentators. In particular, several of the phrases are
based on the diction of David Coleman, a popular British figure of fun
noted for his somewhat loose grasp on reality and his tendency towards
redundancy and solecism. In fact, an amusingly redundant comment spoken
live by a personality is sometimes referred to as a 'Colemanball', after
the column of that name in the satirical magazine "Private Eye".
Typical Colemanballs include, "...He's a real fighter, this lad, who
believes that football's a game of two halves, and that it isn't over
until the final whistle blows", or during the test (cricket) matches,
"And he's coming up to bowl now... The bowler's Holding, the batsman's
Willey...". (That last one wasn't even by David Coleman, but still
qualifies as a Colemanball).
- [p. 197] The Tsortean wars refer to the Trojan wars. (Read also "Eric".
Or Homer.)
- It has been remarked that there are quite a few parallels between the
country of Djelibeybi and the castle of Gormenghast as described by
Mervyn Peake in his "Gormenghast" trilogy (which we know Terry has read
because in another Discworld novel he compares Unseen University to
Gormenghast). The hero of "Gormenghast", Titus, also has a mother with a
cat obsession, and his father died because he thought he was an owl.
Furthermore, the atmosphere of decay, ancient history and unchanging
ritual pervades both Djelibeybi and Gormenghast, with in both cases the
presence of arbiters of tradition who are almost as powerful as (or even
more so than) the actual ruler.
For those interested in pursuing Gormenghast further (people who have
read it almost invariably seem to think it's a work of genius), the names
of the three novels are "Titus Groan" (1946), "Gormenghast" (1950) and
"Titus Alone" (1959, revised 1970).
+ [p. 201] "A philosopher had averred that although truth was beauty,
beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was breaking out."
A famous quotation from John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn':
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
- [p. 250] "'Go, tell the Ephebians --' he began."
This is a paraphrase of "Go tell the Spartans", which is the beginning of
the memorial for the Spartan soldiers who got massacred by the Persians
at Thermopylae as a result of Greek treachery. The full quote is given by
Simonides (5th century BC) as:
"Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here obedient to their laws we lie"
+ [p. 277] "'For the asses' milk?' said Koomi [...]"
See the note for p. 161 of "Mort".
ERIC
- The subtitle to "Eric" ('Faust', crossed out) already indicates what
story is being parodied in this novella: that of the German alchemist and
demonologist Johannes (or Georg) Faust who sold his soul to the devil.
The most famous version of the Faust legend is perhaps the one told by
Goethe in "Faust", with Cristopher Marlowe's earlier play "The Tragical
History Of Dr. Faustus" a close second.
- [p. 21] The book Eric uses to summon his demon has the title
"Mallificarum Sumpta Diabolicite Occularis Singularum", or the Book of
Ultimate Control. But note the initials.
Also, the actual dog Latin translates more or less to: "Evil-making
Driver of the Little One-Eyed Devil".
- [p. 41] The name of the Tezumen god, 'Quetzovercoatl', puns on the actual
Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.
According to Aztec mythology, Quetzalcoatl was also supposed to return to
his people at some particular future date.
- [p. 46] "There are quite a lot of uses to which you can put a stone disc
with a hole in the middle, and the Tezumen had explored all but one of
them."
This may refer to the Aztecs (who the Tezumen are obviously modelled on
anyway) who did not know about the wheel either, but reputedly used small
discs with holes in them for money, and who had a basketball-like game
where the baskets were also stone discs with holes in them. The tale that
the losers got sacrificed is probably untrue. But the winners were
allowed to take the possession of any spectators they chose -- no one
hung around after the game in those days, unsurprisingly.
- [p. 51] Ponce da Quirm, looking for the Fountain of Youth, refers to
Ponce de Leon, the 15th century Spanish nobleman who did the same.
+ [p. 70] "Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules, of Hector and
Lysander and such great names as these."
This is actually the opening line to the march 'The British Grenadiers',
an English song dating back to the 17th century with about the same
jingoism factor as 'Rule Britannia' or 'Land of Hope and Glory':
"Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules,
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great men as these;
But of all the world's brave heroes there's none that can compare
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadier."
- [p. 75] Lavaeolus is not only a dog Latin translation of 'Rincewind', but
the character is also a parody of Ulysses, tragic hero of the Trojan
wars. It's really not necessary to annotate all the stuff about wooden
horses and such, right? Right?
+ [p. 81] "'It'll be fifteen choruses of 'The Ball of Philodephus' next,
you mark my words.'"
Refers to an old and rather obscene British drinking song called 'The
Ball of Kerrymuir', which, according to Terry: "[...] belongs in the same
category as 'Colonel Bogey' -- everyone knows a line or two [sorry...
everyone male and in the UK, anyway]".
For a sample of the lyrics to this song, see the "Song..." section in
Chapter 4 of this file.
+ [p. 82] "-- vestal virgins, Came down from Heliodeliphilodelphiboschromenos,
And when the ball was over, There were --"
From one of the more printable verses of 'The Ball of Kerrymuir' (see
previous annotation):
"Four and twenty virgins
Came down from Inverness,
And when the ball was over
There were four and twenty less"
One page later (p. 83) there is a final reference to the song: "-- the
village harpy she was there --"
+ [p. 97] "'Centuries [...]. Millenia. Iains.'"
For some reason, Rincewind has problems with the word 'aeons'. See p. 93
of "Sourcery" for the first documented occurrence of this particular
blind spot.
+ [p. 101] "'Multiple exclamation marks [...] are a sure sign of a diseased
mind."
People like using this particular quip in Usenet conversations or in
their .signatures, and every time somebody will follow-up with "hey,
you're wrong, that's a quote from "Reaper Man" that is!".
The answer is simply that the quote occurs in *both* books (in "Reaper
Man" it's on p. 189, and runs: "Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of
an insane mind"). Hopefully this entry will lay the confusion to rest for
once and for all.
+ [p. 103] "I mean, I heard where we're supposed to have all the *best*
tunes,"
Refers to the old saying "the devil has all the good tunes".
GUARDS! GUARDS!
Many references to well-known detective novel and cop action movies here.
+ [p. 10] "'Hooray, hooray for the spinster's sister's daughter.'"
This recalls the ritual question "Is there no help for the Widow's Son?"
in Masonic ritual.
+ [p. 11] "'We're the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee.'"
May be a vague reference to the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria from
the "Illuminatus" books.
+ [p. 15] "'Let's say a skion turns up, walks up to the Patrician [...]'"
The correct spelling is actually 'scion', meaning "young descendant of a
noble family".
+ [p. 19] "'They were myths and they were real,' he said loudly. 'Both a
wave and a particle.'"
Reference to the wave/particle duality theory of e.g. light, which
appears to have the properties of both a wave and a particle, depending
upon what problem you are referring to.
+ [p. 19] "'That was where you had to walk on ricepaper wasn't it,' said
Brother Watchtower conversationally."
Reference to the old David Carradine TV series, "Kung Fu". In one of the
earliest episodes our Shaolin monk-in-training was tasked to walk along a
sheet of ricepaper without ripping it or leaving a mark.
- [p. 27] "'And Bob's your uncle.'"
Some people have been wondering just where this expression comes from.
Terry himself gives the following answer:
"Apparently from a 19th Century Prime Minister, Lord Robert Stanley, who
was a great one for nepotism. If you got a good Government job it was
because "Bob's your uncle". It came to mean 'everything's all right'."
+ [p. 47] The fizzing and flashing illuminated sign outside Captain Vimes'
office is a reference to the tired old visual cliche from most film noir.
The seedy detective's office or apartment always has a big neon sign just
outside the window.
- [p. 48] The motto of the Night Watch: "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC" is dog Latin
for "Make my day, punk", a well-known Clint 'Dirty Harry' Eastwood quote.
Notice also that the translation Terry supplies ("To protect and to
serve") is actually the motto of the Los Angeles Police Force.
My source tells me that Hollywood writers and directors, notorious for
the accuracy of their movies and TV shows, tend to have *all* police cars
bear this motto. In a sort of reverse formation, this has caused some
individual police forces across the USA to adopt it, so that by now the
motto has become fairly wide-spread.
+ [p. 51] "'*Shershay la fem*, eh? Got a girl into trouble?'"
"Cherchez la femme" ("look for the woman") is a cliche phrase of pulp
detective fiction: when someone's wife has been murdered one should
always search for signs of another woman's involvement.
+ [p. 55] "'Good day! Good day! What is all of this that is going on here
(in this place)?'"
Carrot's actions and words in this scene mirror the behaviour of the
stereotypical British friendly neighbourhood bobby attempting to break up
a family argument or innocent street brawl. Nearly all my correspondents
trace this stereotype directly back to the sixties BBC television series
"Dixon Of Dock Green", where every bobby was your friend and it was
perfectly acceptable for a copper to walk into a room and say "'Ello!
'Ello! What's going on 'ere then?". Calling people 'sunshine' (next
footnote on the page), and signing off with "Evening, all" are apparently
also Dixonisms.
+ [p. 56] "'Evenin', Detritus.'"
'Detritus' is a word meaning "any loose matter, e.g. stones, sand, silt,
formed by rock disintegration".
+ [p. 76] "'Do *real* wizards leap about after a tiny spell and start
chanting 'Here we go, here we go, here we go', Brother Watchtower?
*Hmm*?'"
"Here we go, here we go" is a chant (usually sung to the tune of Sousa's
'Stars and Stripes Forever') commonly associated with football (soccer)
fans whose team has just scored.
According to my correspondent it is also used, historically, by gangs of
striking miners just before they realise that the mounted policemen with
big sticks are coming their way. Definitely a British phenomenon.
+ [p. 83] "It was strange, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses
and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news
of the moment [...]"
Just for the record: some famous dogs fitting this description are Lassie
and Rin Tin Tin; horse examples are Champion, Trigger, Silver ("I said
*posse*!"), and Black Beauty; the only dolphin example I know is probably
the most famous of them all: Flipper.
Australian fans have expressed their disappointment that Terry left out
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, whose ability to communicate very complex,
often extremely abstract concepts with a bit of clicking and hopping
around was apparently a wonder to behold.
+ [p. 85] "'Who loves you, pussycat?', said Nobby under his breath."
Nice amalgamation of TV detective Kojak's use of the word 'pussycat' and
his catchphrase "Who loves ya, baby?".
+ [p. 86] "'I've seen a horsefly [...] And I've seen a housefly. I've even
seen a greenfly, but I ain't never seen a dragon fly"
Sounds reminiscent of the 'I've never seen an elephant fly' song which
the crows sing in Walt Disney's 1941 movie "Dumbo". Another similar
children's song is called 'The Never Song' by Edward Lipton.
+ [p. 90] "'One just has to put up with the occasional total whittle.'"
Describing Errol as a whittle is actually a quite clever pun. On the one
hand 'whittle' simply means something reduced in size (usually by means
of slicing bits and pieces off it), while on the other hand Sir Frank
Whittle was the inventor of the modern aircraft jet engine.
- [p. 94] "'Just give me the facts, m'lady,' he said impatiently."
"Just the facts, ma'am", is a catchphrase from the "Dragnet" TV series
(later a Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks movie).
+ [p. 94] "Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he
thought, it's flown into mine..."
Pretty obvious Bogart/Casablanca paraphrase, in keeping with Vimes' role
as the Discworld equivalent of the ultimate film noir anti-hero.
- [p. 104] "Pour encourjay lays ortras."
Discworld version of the French phrase "pour encourager les autres". The
phrase originates with Voltaire who, after the British executed their own
admiral John Byng in 1757 for failing to relieve Minorca, was inspired to
write (in Chapter 23 of "Candide") a sentence that translates to: "in
this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to
encourage the others".
- [p. 104] The bit about the hero killing a monster in a lake, only to have
the monster's mum come right down the hall the next day and *complain*,
is a reference to Grendel and his mother, two famous monsters from the
"Beowulf" saga.
+ [p. 106] "'For example, foxes are always knocking over my dustbins.'"
Terry, at least at one point in his life, lived in the west country, near
Bristol. Bristol has become famous for its urban foxes (although they
apparently operate in all largish greenish cities in the UK). About 10-12
years ago, BBC Bristol made a famous programme on these urban foxes,
called "Foxwatch".
On this programme, hitherto unachieved photographs of vixens caring for
their sprogs were aired; this made the programme (which was narrated by
David Attenborough) very famous. The Archchancellor's rant is a very good
approximation of a David Attenborough wildlife programme narration.
And according to the Foxwatch myth, foxes knock over dustbins.
+ [p. 107] "'Did you suggest a working party?', said Wonse."
It is British Government Policy to suggest a working party whenever an
intractable problem presents itself. It is usually stocked with
opposition MPs.
- [p. 108] "Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left,
however improbable, must be the truth. [...] There was also the curious
incident of the orangutan in the night-time ..."
This paraphrases a famous piece of Sherlock Holmes dialogue found in the
story "Silver Blaze" -- and to me it also invokes, in a very roundabout
way, echoes of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders In The Rue Morgue".
+ [p. 115] "'Dunno where this place is, Captain. It belongs to some posh
bint.'"
This is very British slang. Posh, meaning upper class, arises from the
days of the Empire. It is an acronym, standing for 'Port Out, Starboard
Home'. These were the most pleasant (least hot?) cabins on the ships
sailing to the jewel in the crown, India, and therefore the most
expensive, meaning that only the aristocracy could afford them.
(The above explanation is in fact quite false -- that is, it's true that
posh means upper class, but the acronym is one of these persistent, oh so
plausible, after-the-fact etymologies, which are nearly always wrong.)
'Bint' arises as a bit of cockney soldier slang in WWII. It is actually
Arabic for 'young girl'. Many British soldiers were stationed in
Alexandria, Egypt, in North Africa, and this word was brought into the
language by them.
- [p. 124] "This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest
dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off."
Vimes replays here one of the best-known scenes in Clint Eastwood's first
'Dirty Harry' movie, the 1971 "Dirty Harry".
+ [p. 130] "''E's plain clothes, ma'am,' said Nobby smartly. 'Special Ape
Services'."
"Special Ape Services" shares the acronym SAS with the crack British
troops who are sent to storm embassies, shoot prisoners of war, and
execute alleged terrorists before anything has been proven by trial, etc.
Not that one wants to get political.
+ [p. 141] "'Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,' said another
protomonarchist knowingly.
See the note for p. 76 of "Lords And Ladies".
+ [p. 181] "'This is love-in-a-canoe coffee if ever I tasted it.'"
This refers to the punchline of the old joke (familiar from, for
instance, a Monty Python sketch):
Q: What do American beer and making
love in a canoe have in common?
A: They're both fucking close to water.
+ [p. 182] "'He's called Rex Vivat.'"
"Rex Vivat", of course, means: "long live the king". This reminds me a
bit of Robert Rankin, who named his lead character in "They Came And Ate
Us" Rex Mundi. Rex's sister has a role in the book too. Her name is
Gloria.
Now you may begin to understand why Rankin is so often discussed on
alt.fan.pratchett, and why there is so much overlap between his and
Terry's audiences.
+ [p. 214] "'The Duke of Sto Helit is looking for a guard captain, I'm
sure.'"
The Duke of Sto Helit, in case anyone had forgotten, is none other than
Mort.
- [p. 257] The scene where Errol's supersonic boom smashes the dragon out
of the air is possibly based on another Clint Eastwood movie, the 1982
"Firefox".
+ [p. 284] "'Sergeant Colon said he thought we'd get along like a *maison
en Flambe*.'"
Maison en Flambe = house on fire.
+ [p. 285] "'Here's looking at you, kid,' he said."
Another quote from "Casablanca".
MOVING PICTURES
This one has uncountable references to classic Hollywood movies and
anecdotes.
- Terry actually meant for Gaspode to die at the end of the book, but his
editors/beta-readers made him reconsider.
- People have noticed that the two femmes fatale of this novel are called
Ginger and Ruby, both names signifying a red colour. Terry Pratchett says
that he did *not* intend this as a reference to "Gone With The Wind"'s
Scarlett.
- Instead, Ruby got her name because like all trolls she needed a mineral
name. Ginger got her name because Terry wanted to use the Fred Astaire
quote (see a few notes further down) about her partner, and so Ginger was
an obvious choice for the leading lady's name.
+ [p. 7] "This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier."
See the note for p. 221 of "The Colour Of Magic".
+ [p. 12] "'Looking,' it said [...] 'f'r a word. Tip of my tongue.'"
The word is 'Eureka'. See the note for p. 101 of "Small Gods."
- [p. 15] Archchancellor Ridcully's wizard name is 'Ridcully the Brown'.
In Tolkien's "The Lord Of The Rings" there's a (relatively) minor wizard
called 'Radagast the Brown', who was also very well in tune with nature,
and definitely of the "roams-the-high-forest-with-every-beast-his-brother"
type. Talked to the birds, too.
- [p. 15] "'Not now, man,' snapped the Archchancellor. 'Got to see a man
about a horse, what?'"
In previous versions of the APF, I had a bit of trouble finding out just
what this phrase refers to, since I received several conflicting reports.
The general consensus now appears to be, however, that the phrase
originates from "got to see a man about a dog", an English euphemism for
going to the lavatory.
- [p. 18] "And then a voice said: 'That's all, folks.'"
Anybody out there who has never seen Porky Pig use this phrase to end one
of those classic Looney Tunes animated cartoons?
- [p. 19] "'You know what, lordship? They liked them. They actually liked
them!'"
Refers to Sally Field's acceptance speech at the 1985 Academy Awards (for
her role in "Places In The Heart"), where she burst into tears and kept
saying (to the audience): "you like me, you actually like me!".
+ [p. 23] "They often didn't notice them, or thought they were walruses."
Sometimes people send me annotations that are so beautifully outrageous
that I simply *have* to include them. For instance, the walruses may be
connected to the boiling mercury mentioned earlier in the text, via the
chain: boiling mercury --> mad hatters --> Lewis Carroll --> walrus.
Isn't it a beauty?
+ [p. 28] "'[...] what is the name of the outer-dimensional monster whose
distinctive cry is 'Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat'?'
I have been getting some conflicting stories concerning this annotation,
so I hope that this time I have managed to get it right.
Apparently "Yer what?" is a common London phrase, used when you didn't
catch what someone said, or you want them to repeat it because you can't
believe it.
The longer form is more typically associated with soccer fans, as part of
a chant, usually made in response to an opposing supporter army's war
cries in an attempt to imply a certain lack of volume (and hence numbers)
to the other side's support:
"Yerwhat (pause) Yerwhat (pause)
Yerwhatyerwhatyerwhat."
- [p. 28] "'Yob Soddoth,' said Ponder promptly."
Yob Soddoth should be pronounced: "Yob sod off". 'Sod off' is a British
form of 'piss off', and 'yob' is an old term now almost entirely
synonymous to the phrase "English football supporter" (apparently Mark
Twain once said: "they are not fit to be called boys, they should be
called yobs"). The word probably derives from 'back-chat' -- a 19th
century London thieves' argot in which words were turned round in order
to confuse police eavesdroppers. Not so far removed from Polari, in fact
(see the "Words From The Master" section in Chapter 4").
At the same time it is also a pun on H. P. Lovecraft's 'Yog-Sothoth', one
of the chief supernatural nasties in the Cthulhu Mythos (see especially
the novel "The Dunwich Horror").
Finally, Ponder and Victor are studying the "Necrotelicomnicon" in this
scene. See the note for p. 145 for more information on the Lovecraft
connection there.
- [p. 28] "Tshup Aklathep, Infernal Star Toad with A Million Young"
Another one of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos nasties is 'Shub-Niggurath',
The Goat with a Thousand Young. ('The Black Goat of the Woods with a
Thousand Young' is the full, but less common, title).
- [p. 29] Victor Tugelbend's university career, with his uncle's will and
all that, shows parallels to similar situations described in Roger
Zelazny's (highly recommended) science fiction novel "Doorways In The
Sand", and in Richard Gordon's 'Doctor' series of medical comedy books
("Doctor In The House", "Doctor In Love", "Doctor At Sea", etc.)
[ I had noticed the Zelazny parallel when I first read "Moving Pictures",
but thought the reference was too unlikely and too obscure to warrant
inclusion. Since then *two* other people have pointed it out to me... ]
- [p. 34] Movie producer Thomas Silverfish is directly modelled on movie
mogul Samuel Goldwyn, whose real name was Samuel Gelbfisch, and who spent
a short time as Samuel Goldfish before changing his name a second time to
Goldwyn.
Many well-known Goldwyn quips are repeated (in one form or another) by
Silverfish throughout the book ("you'll never work in this town again",
"include me out", etc.).
- [p. 41] "No-one would have believed, in the final years of the Century of
the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and
impatiently by intelligences greater than Man's, or at least much
nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinised and studied as a man
with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar
menu outside Harga's House of Ribs..."
This paragraph is a word-by-word parody of H. G. Wells' "War Of The
Worlds", which begins with:
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century
that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences
greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied
themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and
studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might
scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of
water."
+ [p. 47] "'Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little.'"
Refers to the quip: "Can't act. Can't sing. Can dance a little.", made
about Fred Astaire, reputedly by a studio-executive at RKO after
Astaire's first screen test.
When somebody once asked Astaire's producer about the story, however, he
was told that it was complete and obvious nonsense, since Fred Astaire
already was a established major Broadway star at the time.
- [p. 48] "'This is Gaffer Bird,' beamed Silverfish."
A gaffer is not only an 'old man' (according to the dictionary), but also
the head electrician in a film production unit, charged principally with
taking care of the lighting.
- [p. 62] "[...] Victor fights the dreaded Balgrog".
In Tolkien's "The Lord Of The Rings" you can find a very nasty monster
called a Balrog.
- [p. 67] Ginger's real name is Theda Withel, which probably refers to
Theda Bara, famous movie star of the 1920's, a kind of Elvira, Mistress
of the Dark, avant la lettre ('Theda Bara' is an anagram of 'Arab
Death'!). Her portrayal of evil women in movies like "Cleopatra" and
"Kiss Of A Vampire" caused the current meaning of the word 'vamp' to be
added to the English language.
- [p. 69] The resograph built by Riktor the Tinkerer.
Terry says: "The reality meter in Moving Pictures is loosely based on a
Han dynasty (2nd Century AD) seismograph; a pendulum inside the vase
moves and causes one of eight dragons to spit a ball in the direction of
the tremor."
Also, the name 'Riktor' refers to our 'Richter', of the earthquake scale
fame.
+ [p. 71] "And perhaps even a few elves, the most elusive of Discworld
races."
Some people were wondering if this doesn't contradict the information we
get about Elves later, in "Lords And Ladies", such as that they can only
enter our World during Circle Time -- besides, Elves would hardly be the
type of beings to become actors, one should think.
The answer can be found in "Lords And Ladies" as well, however, on p.
165:
Ridcully:
"Elves? Everyone knows elves don't exist any more. Not proper
elves. I mean, there's a few folk who say they're elves --"
Granny Weatherwax:
"Oh, yeah. Elvish ancestry. Elves and humans breed all right, as if
that's anything to be proud of. But you just get a race o' skinny
types with pointy ears and a tendency to giggle and burn easily in
sunshine. I ain't talking about them. There's no harm in them. I'm
talking about real wild elves, what we ain't seen here for --"
- [p. 73] "'We just call it the 'Hiho' song. That's all it was. Hihohiho.
Hihohiho.'"
The best-known song in Walt Disney's 1937 full length animation movie
"Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs" is sung by the seven dwarfs and goes:
"Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It's home from work we go"
- [p. 80] "The Boke Of The Film"
Traditional (if somewhat archaic by now) subtitle for movie
novelisations. The related phrase "The Book of the Series" is still alive
and well, mostly in the context of documentaries.
- [p. 84] "'And my daughter Calliope plays the organ really nice, [...]'"
Calliope is not only the name of the Muse of Epic Poetry, but a calliope
is also a large, organ-like musical instrument consisting of whistles
operated by steam. There exists a very funny Donald Duck story, called
'Land of the Totem Poles' (written by the one and only Duck-meister Carl
Barks), in which Donald somehow manages to become a travelling calliope
salesman. This one is definitely required reading for people with a sense
of humour. All in my opinion, of course.
- [p. 95] "[...] Victor couldn't understand a word."
The duck's incomprehensibility brings to mind the animated incarnation of
Donald Duck. In fact, all of the Holy Wood animals have begun to act a
bit like famous cartoon animals; for instance the cat and the mouse
acting out a Tom & Jerry scene (although the speech impediment of the cat
is more reminiscent of Sylvester).
- [p. 95] "'What's up, Duck?' said the rabbit."
One of Bugs Bunny's catch phrases: "What's up, doc?". (There is in fact a
cartoon where Bugs actually says "What's up, duck?" to Daffy Duck...)
+ [p. 124] "'Go, Sow, Thank You Doe.'"
The usual slang for a one-night stand or a quickie at the local brothel
is "Wham, Bam, thank you, Ma'am."
- [p. 126] "'A rock on the head may be quite sentimental, [...], but
diamonds are a girl's best friend.'"
In the 1949 movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", Marilyn Monroe sings:
"A kiss on the hand may be quite continental
But diamonds are a girl's best friend"
+ [p. 129] "'What's it called?' 'Laddie,' said the handler."
Laddie is of course our world's Lassie (I can't *believe* I'm actually
annotating this...)
+ [p. 132] "'[...] we're doing one about going to see a wizard. Something
about following a yellow sick toad,' [...]"
That's a yellow brick road, and the reference is of course to the "Wizard
Of Oz" movie.
- [p. 132] Film studio names.
Untied Alchemists is United Artists. Fir Wood Studios is Pinewood
Studios. Microlithic Pictures is Paramount (tiny rock vs. big mountain),
and Century Of The Fruitbat is Twentieth Century Fox. Terry says: "I've
already gone electronically hoarse explaining that Floating Bladder
Productions was just picked out of the air [...]"
- [p. 137] "It was about a young ape who is abandoned in the big city and
grows up being able to speak the language of humans."
The Librarian's script is of course a reversal of Edgar Rice Burroughs'
"Tarzan" story. Since Tarzan is supposed to be one of those five or so
cultural icons that are so truly universal that *everybody* in the world
is familiar with them, I expect this may well turn out to be the APF's
Most Unnecessary Annotation of all...
- [p. 143] "'It sounded like 'I want to be a lawn', I thought?'"
Ginger echoes movie star Greta Garbo's famous quote: "I want to be
alone".
Garbo later claimed, by the way, that what she had actually said at the
time was "I want to be *let* alone", which is of course not quite the
same thing at all...
- [p. 145] We learn that on the Discworld, the "Necrotelecomnicom" (see
also the entry for p. 262 of "Good Omens") was written by the Klatchian
necromancer Achmed the Mad (although he preferred to be called Achmed the
I Just Get These Headaches). In real life, horror author H. P. Lovecraft
tells us of the evil book "Necronomicon", written by the mad Arab Abdul
al-Hazred.
- [p. 148] "'It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,' he said. 'We've
got three hundred and sixty elephants, fifty carts of forage, the
monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of
things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes...'"
Paraphrases a well-known quote from the "Blues Brothers" movie, fifteen
minutes before the end, just as the famous chase scene is about to begin
and Jake and Elwood are sitting in their car:
Elwood: "It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full
tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're
wearing sunglasses"
Jake: "Hit it."
- [p. 164] "'In a word -- im-possible!' 'That's two words,' said Dibbler."
Another Goldwyn quote: "I can tell you in two words: im-possible."
- [p. 184] "'Just one picture had all that effect?'"
Dibbler and Gaffer don't put a name to it, but they are discussing the
theory of subliminal messages here. It's one of those theories that
somehow manages to sound so 'right' you just *want* it to be true. As far
as I understand, however, nobody has ever shown tricks like subliminal
advertising to actually have any measurable effect on an audience.
+ [p. 186] "'It always starts off with this mountain --'"
Ginger's dream describe the characteristic 'logo' scenes of all the major
movie companies. The mountain is from Paramount ("there are stars around
it"), and after that we get Columbia ("a woman holding a torch over her
head"), 20th Century Fox ("a lot of lights"), and MGM ("this roar, like a
lion or tiger").
- [p. 191] "'And Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter, practic'ly eats the
dark for his tea,' said Gaspode."
Puns on Indiana Jones, and for the explanation about 'Balgrog' see the
note for p. 62.
'Howondaland' also brings to mind Gondwanaland, a name for the southern
continents mashed together by continental drift.
+ [p. 204] "'You find nice place to indulge in bit of 'What is the health
of your parent?' [...]'"
"How's your father" is a British euphemism for "sexual intercourse", made
popular by the "Carry On" series of films.
- [p. 235] "Twopence more and up goes the donkey!"
Terry explains: "[...] In "Moving Pictures" and "Reaper Man" a lot of use
is indeed made of, god help me, Victorian street sayings that were the
equivalent of 'sez you'. "Tuppence more and up goes the donkey", a
favourite saying of Windle Poons, comes from the parties of strolling
acrobats who'd carry their props on a donkey. They'd make a human pyramid
and collectors would go around with the hat declaring that "tuppence more
and up goes the donkey" as well. But the donkey never got elevated
because, of course, the collectors always needed "tuppence more"."
- [p. 249] The climactic scene of the novel is not only a "King Kong"
reversal spoof. Terry says the 50 ft. woman also refers to the
protagonist from the 1958 movie "Attack Of The 50 Ft. Woman".
+ [p. 254] "'If it bleeds, we can kill it!'"
This line is from the 1987 movie "Predator", starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger. 'It' in this case was a green-blooded, invisible alien
hunter.
- [p. 255] "YOU BELONG DEAD, he said."
This is based on Boris Karloff's final words in the 1935 movie "Bride Of
Frankenstein": "We belong dead".
+ [p. 255] "'Careful,' said the Dean. 'That is not dead which can eternal
lie.'"
This is from a famous H. P. Lovecraft quote (which was also used by metal
groups Iron Maiden (on the "Live After Death" album cover) and Metallica
(in the song 'The Thing That Should Not Be')):
"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die"
It is supposed to be a quote from Abdul al-Hazred's "Necronomicon" (see
note for p. 145), and Lovecraft uses the verse in several stories,
particularly in "The Call Of Cthulhu" and "The Nameless City".
In reality, I'm told the quote originated with the Victorian decadent
poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, but I have no definite reference on
this.
+ [p. 256] "''Twas beauty killed the beast,' said the Dean, who liked to
say things like that."
Last line of "King Kong", said under similar circumstances.
- [p. 266] Detritus hitting the gong in the underground theatre refers to
the Rank Organisation's man-with-the-gong trademark, which Rank used at
the start of each film just as Columbia used the Statue of Liberty and
MGM the roaring lion.
+ [p. 261] "'A fine mess you got me into.'"
See the note for p. 73 of "The Colour Of Magic".
+ [p. 271] "'And that includes you, Dozy!'"
One of the dwarfs in Disney's "Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs" was
called Sleepy, another was called Dopey.
- [p. 276] "'Uselessium, more like,' murmured Silverfish."
The paragraph where this quote occurs of course describes how Silverfish
discovers the Discworld equivalent of Uranium. In this light, it may be
interesting to recall that before he became a full-time writer Terry
Pratchett worked as press officer for nuclear power stations.
- As far as the giant statue is concerned, and the running gag about it
reminding everyone of their uncle Oswald or Osric etc.: the nickname
'Oscar' for the Academy Awards statuette supposedly originated with one
of the secretaries involved in the organisation saying that the statue
looked like her uncle Oscar.
Another anecdote says that it was a famous early movie star (Bette
Davis?) who made the quip that the statue's posterior looked like Oscar
Levant's buttocks. I am still waiting for more definite references on
this.
- I am not even going to *try* listing the correspondences between the
click names in "Moving Pictures" and their movie counterparts in our
world -- even I have better things to do, and most of them are not
particularly difficult to understand. If somebody else supplies me with a
nice, complete list, though...
REAPER MAN
- The title "Reaper Man" is a play on Alex Cox's 1984 cult movie "Repo
Man".
More accurately, "Repo Man" is a pun on 'reaper man', a very ancient name
for Death (compare also e.g. 'the grim reaper'). But apparently Terry has
said elsewhere (i.e. not on the net), that his 'Reaper Man' was indeed
meant as a pun on the movie-title (much to the chagrin of his publishers,
who would have probably preferred it if he had called it "Mort II").
- The 'Bill Door' sections of this novel have many parallels with classic
Westerns, e.g. "High Plains Drifter".
- If you liked the idea of the trolley life-form, you may also want to
check out a short story by Avram Davidson called "Or All The Sea With
Oysters". It's all about the life cycle of bicycles and their larval
stages: paperclips and coat hangers.
- [p. 9] Azrael is not a reference to Gargamel's cat in the Smurf cartoons.
Rather, both Azraels are references to the Islamic Angel of Death,
supposedly the very last creature to die, ever.
In the actual legend, Azrael is bound in chains thousands of miles long,
and possesses millions of eyes: one for every person that has ever lived
or ever will live. When a person dies, the eye in question closes
forever, and when Azrael goes blind it will be the end of the human race.
+ [p. 14] "The front gates of Nos 31, 7 and 34 Elm Street, Ankh Morpork."
Minor inconsistency: we are told the conversation between the pines lasts
seventeen years, so when the old one finally gets chopped down, its age
should have been 31751 years, not still 31734.
- [p. 16] "The pendulum is a blade that would have made Edgar Allan Poe
give it all up and start again as a stand-up comedian [...]"
Refers to Poe's famous story "The Pit And The Pendulum" in which a victim
of the inquisition is tied up beneath a giant descending, sweeping,
razor-sharp pendulum.
If you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of
this story on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
doc/literary/obi/Edgar.Allan.Poe in a file named
The.Pit.And.The.Pendulum.Z.
+ [p. 24] "'What I could do with right now is one of Mr Dibbler's famous
meat pies --' And then he died."
The attributed last words of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham were: "I think
I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies."
+ [p. 30] "'Anyway, you can't trust those voodoo gods. Never trust a god
who grins all the time and wears a top hat, that's my motto.'"
This god is Baron Samedi (or Saturday), the most important (and
best-known) voodoo god or loa. He is the God of the Dead, and is
traditionally associated with cross-roads.
For more information about Baron Samedi you should, of course, read
"Witches Abroad" (see also the note for p. 157 of that book).
- [p. 35] 'Senior Wrangler' is the title of the top maths graduate at
Cambridge University. Apparently, in maths, those who get firsts are
called Wranglers, seconds are senior optimes, and thirds are junior
optimes.
+ [p. 55] The address of the Fresh Start Club: "668 Elm Street".
Connects a reference to the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series of horror
movies with the tentative title for a "Good Omens" sequel: "668 -- The
Neighbour Of The Beast" (see the "Good Omens" note on that subject).
+ [p. 65] "Many songs have been written about the bustling metropolis,
[...]"
Ok, let's see.
'Ankh-Morpork! Ankh-Morpork! So good they named it Ankh-Morpork!' comes
from 'New York, New York' (see also the note for p. 130 of "Johnny And
The Dead"), and 'Carry Me Away From Old Ankh-Morpork' is 'Carry Me Back
To Old Virginia'.
But does anybody have any ideas about 'I Fear I'm Going Back to
Ankh-Morpork' and 'Ankh-Morpork Malady'?
+ [p. 69] "'Did it take long to get it looking like that?' 'About five
hundred years, I think.'"
Or, as Terry explains more poignantly in a "Sourcery" footnote (on p.
21): "You mows it and you rolls it for five hundred years and then a
bunch of bastards walks across it."
A few people thought these might have been references to a scene in one
of the Asterix comics, but this is another case of two authors both using
the same, older source.
As Terry explains: "The lawns line was I believe a comment made by a
University gardener to an American tourist years and years ago; it turns
up from time to time."
+ [p. 69] "'Isn't that one off Treacle Mine Road?'"
And on page 155 we learn that One-Man-Bucket was run over by a cart on
Treacle Street.
Terry says: "The 'official' map of Ankh-Morpork contains both Treacle
Street and Treacle Mine Road. My god, what I am *writing*? But the
inspiration, for all you out there doing their DW PhD, were the Treacle
Mines at Bisham, on the Thames."
While I was finishing up the final version of the APF, there was a most
interesting discussion about treacle on alt.fan.pratchett, which
unfortunately came too late for me to incorporate here. I will have to
leave you all in suspense until v7.0 of the APF.
+ [p. 72] "'A couple of'em had a bit of a tiff or something? Messing around
with golden apples or something?'"
In Greek mythology it was a golden apple that indirectly led to the
Trojan war and to the accompanying complete division of the divine
pantheon into two opposing camps.
+ [p. 79] "[...] honorary vestigial virgining [..]"
Pun on the Vestal virgins (priestesses of the goddess of the same name)
from Greek mythology. 'Vestigial' of course means "remaining or surviving
in a degenerate or imperfect condition or form".
- [p. 87] "Who is he going to call! *We're* the wizards around here."
A reference to the catchphrase "Who ya gonna call?!" from the movie
"Ghostbusters".
+ [p. 88] "Mr so-called Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents!'"
Send-up of the folk-story "The Pied Piper Of Hamelin".
If you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of
this fairy tale on the ftp site ftp.uu.net in the directory
doc/literary/obi/Fairy.Tales/Grimm in a file named
pied.piper.of.hamelin.txt.Z.
- [p. 94] "'Don't stand in the doorway, friend. Don't block up the hall.'"
This is an almost verbatim line from Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A
Changin'.
- [p. 94] "Or sporting a Glad To Be Grey badge"
'Glad To Be Gay' was the well-known slogan of the Gay Liberation
movement, a decade or so ago (as well as the title of an excellent Tom
Robinson song). In the late 80's, 'Glad To Be Grey' badges were actually
commercially available.
- [p. 95] The names of the Fresh Start Club members.
Count Notfaroutoe refers to Count Nosferatu, the working-class vampire
from Friedrich Murnaus classic 1922 movie "Nosferatu" (remade in 1979 by
Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski). 'Lupus' is Latin for wolf, so
'Lupine' means 'wolfish', similar to e.g. 'feline'. Finally, there exists
a mineral called ixiolite.
Note by the way that banshees are traditionally supposed to be female
creatures.
- [p. 97] "Every full moon I turn into a wolfman. The rest of the time I'm
just a ... wolf."
This interesting twist on the age-old werewolf idea has been thought of
and used by others a few times before. I'd particularly recommend 'What
Good is a Glass Dagger', an excellent short story by Larry Niven. (I
realise that merely by mentioning it here I may have spoilt it for you,
but I think the story is still very enjoyable, regardless).
- [p. 120] "I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE?"
Echoes p. 24 of "Mort", where Death says to Mort: "I DON'T KNOW ABOUT
YOU, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY".
- [p. 129] "LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES."
The game 'Exclusive Possessions' refers of course to Monopoly.
+ [p. 132] "On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim,
there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats
and live on nothing but prawns."
The continent referred to in this quote is Australia (which means that we
are talking here about the Wizards of Oz, right?), where there exists a
brand of beer called 'XXXX' (pronounced 'Four Ex'), produced by the
Castlemaine Tooheys brewery. A New Zealand correspondent tells me that
the reason the beer is called 'XXXX' is that if it had been called 'BEER'
the Australians wouldn't have been able to spell it. Ahem.
The corks around the pointy hats refer to the supposedly traditional
headwear of Australian Swagmen: Akubra hats with pieces of cork dangling
on strings around the wide rim in order to keep the flies off the
wearer's face. Needless to say that you can live a lifetime in Australia
and never get to actually see somebody who looks like this. Monty
Python's 'Philosophers' sketch is a good send-up of the stereotype.
The prawns find their origin in a series of Australian Tourism Commission
ads promoting Australia in America and Britain on 1980's television,
which featured Paul 'Crocodile Dundee' Hogan saying something along the
lines of: "Come on down here, and we'll throw another shrimp on the
barbie for you" ('barbie' = barbecue).
At the risk of boring you all to death with this, I must admit that I am
curious as to the exact wording of that Hogan ad. I have received
extraordinary amounts of mail about this annotation, and so far there
have seen seven different phrases mentioned, namely:
-- toss another shrimp on the barbie for you
-- throw another shrimp on the barbie
-- chuck another prawn on the barbie
-- slap a prawn on the barbie for you
-- shove a couple more prawns on the barbie
-- pop another prawn on the barbie for you
-- put another prawn on the barbie for you
So, can anybody tell me (a) whether the ad said 'shrimp' or 'prawn', (b)
whether the "for you" was actually part of the sentence or not, and (c)
whether these poor animals were in fact tossed, thrown, chucked, slapped,
shoved, popped, or simply put on the barbie?
Finally, an Australian correspondent tells me that "Don't come the raw
prawn with me, sport" is a local saying having a meaning somewhere in
between "Pull the other one, it's got bells on" and "Don't give me that
crap". Use this information at your own peril.
+ [p. 133] "'Everyone thought you were to do with taxes.' NO. NOT TAXES."
As the saying goes: there are only two certainties in life: death and
taxes. He's the other one.
- [p. 138] "[...] especially if they *do* let the younger wizards build
whatever that blasted thing is they keep wanting to build in the squash
court."
This is a reference to the fact that the first nuclear reactor, built by
Enrico Fermi, was indeed erected under a squash court.
Irrelevant, but interesting, is that for a long time Russian physicists,
misled by a poor translation, believed that Fermi's work was done in a
'pumpkin field'.
- [p. 153] "Behind him, the kettle boiled over and put the fire out.
Simnel fought his way through the steam."
The joke here is that Ned Simnel is trying to think of a new, better way
to power his Combination Harvester, when he is interrupted by the
"pointless distraction" of his kettle boiling over. This refers to our
world's anecdote about James Watt, who supposedly got his idea for
improving the steam engine when he watched the condensing steam from a
kettle on the boil.
(Note that contrary to popular belief, Watt *didn't* invent the steam
engine itself: what he did was have revolutionary new ideas (e.g. the use
of a condenser) on how to make the steam engine really (cost-)efficient,
practical and portable.)
For more information on steam engines, see also the note for p. 186 of
"Small Gods".
+ [p. 164] "'No, Not "with milk"', said Windle."
See the note for p. 243.
- [p. 179] "Remember -- wild, uncontrolled bursts..."
From the movie "Aliens": "Remember -- short, controlled bursts...". This
entire section is filled with action-movie references ('Yo!'), but
"Alien"/"Aliens" seems to have been a particularly fruitful source. Many
quotes and events have direct counterparts: "Yeah, but secreted from
what?", "No one touch *anything*", "It's coming from *everywhere*!", and
"We are *going*" are only a few examples, and of course there is the
matter of the Queen...
+ [p. 191] "The raven cleared its throat. Reg Shoe spun around. 'You say
one word,' he said, 'just one bloody *word*...'"
Edgar Allen Poe rears his head once more in a reference to his famous
poem, "The Raven", which is all about death, doom and gloom. In the poem,
the raven in question constantly repeats just a single word: "Nevermore".
If you have access to the Internet, then you're still out of luck as far
as this particular poem is concerned, because I haven't been able to find
an online version anywhere.
- [p. 215] "'Bonsai!'"
A typical Pratchettian mix-up of two different things: 'Banzai!' is the
Japanese war cry shouted by kamikaze pilots as they performed their
suicide runs. It means 'ten thousand years', and was originally an
honorary greeting used in front of the Emperor, whom the kamikazes were,
of course, dying for.
'Bonsai' is the art of growing very tiny potted trees shaped and stunted
into very particular growth patterns.
- [p. 226] "'I'm just going out,' he said. 'I may be some time.'"
A quote that Terry uses again in another, similar situation. See the
annotation for p. 170 of "Small Gods".
- [p. 226] The idea of a were-man and were-woman who fall in love, but
whose animal and human phases are out of sync with respect to each other
was the main plot element in the 1985 fantasy movie "Ladyhawke", starring
Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer.
+ [p. 230] "Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, [...]"
The Great Attractor is an astronomical theory that was actually given up
some time ago, but which is interesting enough to recount here.
Many years ago, astronomers observed that the nearby galaxies were all
rushing away from us to a more trendy part of the universe, or to be more
precise: a specific spot somewhere in the constellation Centaurus,
hundreds of millions of lightyears away. This was of course very puzzling
and therefore inconvenient to the astronomers, so they quickly invented a
theory to show that (a) Earth really is a wonderful place, and (b) there
must be something there that is pulling all these galaxies away. Hence:
the Great Attractor.
The weird thing is that for all practical purposes *there was nothing
there* -- the universe looked no different in the direction of the Great
Attractor than in any other direction; just galaxies scattered like dust.
Eventually somebody redid all the calculations, the theory was discarded,
and people created new theories (such as the Expanding Universe theory)
to account for the movements of the galaxies.
- [p. 231] "LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE
REAPER MAN?"
Some folks thought that this line sounded familiar and wondered if it was
a quote, but Terry has assured us that he made this one up all by
himself.
- [p. 232] "*YES*"
In the hardcover edition of "Reaper Man", this super-large word appears
on a left page, so that it takes the reader by surprise as she turns the
page. In the paperback edition this is not the case, thus spoiling the
effect a bit.
When questioned about this, Terry said: "Do you really think I'm some
kind of dumbo to miss that kind of opportunity? I wrote 400 extra words
to get it on a left-hand page in the hardcover -- then Corgi shuffled
people in the production department when it was going through and my
careful instructions disappeared into a black hole. Go on... tell me more
about comic timing..."
The American paperback edition, by the way, also gets it right.
- [p. 235] "To deliver a box of chocolates like this, dark strangers drop
from chairlifts and abseil down buildings."
A reference to a UK TV commercial for 'Milk Tray' chocolates, in which a
James Bond-like figure does death-defying stunts, only to leave a box of
chocolates in some place where a woman finds them at the end of the ad.
- [p. 235] "'DARK ENCHANTMENTS', he said."
A reference to a brand of chocolates called 'Black Magic'.
- [p. 237] "'Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last
week,' said the low priest."
Refers to the "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" movies, in which Indiana Jones
(with trademark whip) always steals stuff from sacred temples loaded with
spikes, big rolling balls, and nasty insects.
- [p. 238] "The priests heard the chink of a very large diamond being
lifted out of its socket."
This is the sequence where Death enters the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom
of Offler the Crocodile God and purloins the massive diamond called the
Tear of Offler from the statue therein.
On p. 109 of the "The Light Fantastic", however, Twoflower tells Bethan
the story of Cohen the Barbarian stealing this very same sacred diamond.
There are ways around this inconsistency, of course (the most reasonable
one seems to me the fact that there is no reason why we should assume
that all the stories told about Cohen are necessarily true).
- [p. 242] "'Let's see ... something like 'Corn be ripe, nuts be brown,
petticoats up ...' something.'"
This is a paraphrase or alternate version of an existing "ould Sussex
Folk Song", quoted in Spike Milligan's autobiography "Adolf Hitler: My
Part In His Downfall" as follows:
"Apples be ripe, nuts be brown,
Petticoats up, trousers down."
+ [p. 242] "'I take it you *do* dance, Mr Bill Door?' FAMED FOR IT, MISS
FLITWORTH."
Dancing with death is of course a metaphor as familiar as playing a game
of chess or Exclusive Possessions with Death.
- [p. 243] "'I know this one! It's the Quirmish bullfight dance! Oh-lay!'
'WITH MILK'?"
"Oh-lay!", a phonetic version of the Spanish cry "Ole!", sounds also the
same as the pronunciation of the French phrase "au lait" which means
"with milk", as in e.g. 'cafe au lait'.
- [p. 246] "'And who was that masked man?' They both looked around. There
was no one there."
Refers to the Lone Ranger.
+ [p. 248] "'Just me, your lordship,' said the watchman cheerfully.
'Turning up like a bad copper.'"
'Copper' is a British colloquialism for policemen (and presumably the
source for the shorter and more contemporary word 'cop'). But 'copper' is
also a somewhat archaic synonym for 'penny', which gives the link to the
saying: "turning up like a bad penny".
Hence also the old joke: 'What do you call a policeman's night shift
pay?' 'Copper nitrate'.
- [p. 249] "'You know,' said Windle, 'it's a wonderful afterlife.'"
"It's A Wonderful Life" is the title of Frank Capra's classic 1946 movie
about a special kind of undead (or rather: unliving) man.
WITCHES ABROAD
+ [p. 7] "'Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law.'"
Sinking to the ultimate depths of trivial annotating, I suppose I should
point out here, if only for completeness' sake, that (a) there is only
one single 'Boyle's law', which (b) says that if temperature is kept
constant, the volume and pressure of a gas are inversely related.
+ [p. 7] "Like finding that bloody butterfly whose flapping wings cause all
these storms we've been having lately [...]"
Rather literal interpretation of one of the most often-cited Chaos theory
examples, called the Butterfly effect: a butterfly flapping its wings can
cause a storm because in Chaos theory results are not proportional to
causes.
+ [p. 9] The three urban legends Terry mentions briefly in the footnote are
all quite well-known, and can be found in any decent collection of such
stories, but just in case not everyone is familiar with them:
The first story is about a family whose grandmother dies on vacation. In
order to avoid bureaucratic hassle they decide to strap her to the
roof-rack of the car, and cross the border back to their own country.
During a rest-room stop, somebody steals the car with grandmother and
all.
The second story is that of the people who return home after a night out,
and find their dog choking to death in front of the door. They race him
to the vet, who discovers that the dog is choking on a human finger he
must have bitten off a burglar.
The third story is that of a man and woman having sex in the back seat of
a car, when some serious accident happens and they become trapped. In
order to free them from their predicament, the car has to be cut open
with a torch, after which the woman supposedly comments: "My husband will
be furious, it was *his* car".
+ [p. 9] "She had called upon Mister Safe Way, Lady Bon Anna, Hotaloga
Andrews and Stride Wide Man."
Terry says: "I needed some good names that sounded genuinely voodoo.
Now, one of the names of one of the classic gods is Carrefour. It's also
the name of a supermarket chain in my part of the world, and I used to
grin every time I drove past. Hence, by DW logic, Safeway. Bon Anna I'm
pretty sure is a genuine voodoo goddess. The other two are entirely made
up but out of, er, the right sort of verbal components."
+ [p. 11] "Desiderata Hollow was making her will."
'Desiderata' literally means: "things missing and felt to be needed".
'Desiderata' is also a popular prose poem, written by Max Ehrman in 1927.
It is full of advice about life and how to deal with it. [ This advice is
presumably along the lines of the Discworld Desiderata's list of items,
but I have not read the poem myself, so I cannot say for sure. ]
+ [p. 15] "'Mr Chert the troll down at the sawmill does a very good deal on
coffins [...]'"
This confirms the unwritten rule that says all Discworld trolls must have
mineral names: 'chert' is a dark-coloured, flintlike quartz.
+ [p. 16] "Her name was Lady Lilith de Tempscire, [...]"
Tempscire is actually a French transliteration of Weatherwax.
+ [p. 17] "[...] at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny
Weatherwax's famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment."
In Victorian times, children's chests were often smeared with a large
helping of goose grease in order to keep out the cold.
Channel swimmers also used goose grease as well. Perhaps they still do...
+ [p. 22] "'Tempers Fuggit. Means that was then and this is now,' said
Nanny."
Well -- almost. The actual Latin phrase is "tempus fugit": "time flies".
- [p. 26] "'You can't get the wood,' she said."
This was Henry Crun's standard excuse for not actually building anything
he'd invented, in the Goon Show.
+ [p. 29] "The author, Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler, had an address in Ankh
Morpork."
This is yet another incarnation of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Ankhian
entrepreneur we learn much more about in "Moving Pictures", and who also
appears in "Small Gods" as the Omnian businessman Dhblah.
Also, the name is a direct reference to Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, who was
one of our world's more successful psychic hoaxers: actually named Cyril
Hoskin, and son of a Devon plumber, Lobsang Rampa claimed to be a Tibetan
monk with paranormal powers. He wrote the best-selling 1956 book "The
Third Eye" which, even though Rampa was exposed as a fraud by "Time"
Magazine in 1958, is still being printed and sold as the real thing 30
years later. Rich, gullible people like actress Shirley MacLaine still
pay money to have their 'third eye' opened up by contemporary Rampa
equivalents.
When questioned about the name, Terry answered: "I know all kindsa
Tibetan names... Kelsang, Jambel, Tsong, Tenzin, Tupten (drops Tibetan
reference book on foot)... but Lobsang is, thanks to Mr Rampa, probably
the best known."
+ [p. 34] "'Shut up. Anyway, she's non compost mental,' said Granny."
"Non compis mentis" is a Latin phrase meaning "not of sound mind".
+ [p. 37] "'Anno Domini, I said.'"
Anno Domini of course means 'year of our Lord' (as in 1993 AD). Why
Magrat would think this an appropriate thing to say to Granny is quite
beyond me, except perhaps that the phrase vaguely has something to do
with the passing of time.
- [p. 41] "No one ran up them wearing dirndls and singing. They were not
nice mountains."
Refers to the opening scene of "The Sound Of Music", where Julie Andrews
does just that: running up the mountains, and singing, and wearing
dirndls (if you want to know just what a dirndl is, go see the movie).
- [p. 42] The section dealing with dwarfs (and in fact, almost *everything*
Terry writes about dwarfs) is a parody of Tolkien's dwarves.
In particular, compare the witches' musings on mine entries and invisible
runes to Tolkien's scenes outside Moria. Dwarf bread is a direct
reference to Tolkien's 'cram', the dwarvish travel bread. And as the
witches leave the dwarfs, they have an encounter with a wretched creature
mumbling something about his birthday...
- [p. 42] "The witches flew along a maze of twisty little canyons, all
alike."
This refers back to a message that appeared in one of the earliest
computer adventure games ever, Crowther & Woods' classic "ADVENT", now
known as "Colossal Cave".
+ [p. 43] "[...] and spake thusly: 'Open up, you little sods!'"
In Tolkien's "The Lord Of The Rings" there is a famous scene outside the
dwarvish mines of Moria, where invisible runes written on the door (and
revealed by the wizard Gandalf) give our heroes the clue as to how to get
the door to open, namely by saying the word 'friend'.
Personally, I like Nanny Ogg's way better.
+ [p. 45] "[...] if more trolls stopped wearing suits and walking upright,
and went back to living under bridges [...]"
See the note for p. 140 of "Lords And Ladies".
+ [p. 45] "It's often said that eskimos have fifty words for snow. This is
not true."
In fact, the situation regarding eskimos and snow is pretty much the same
as the one Terry subsequently describes for dwarfs and rocks: eskimos
have many different words for different *kinds* of snow and ice.
+ [p. 51] "'[...] whenever I deals with dwarfs, the phrase 'Duck's Arse'
swims across my mind.'"
From the phrase "tight as a duck's arse", implying excessive meanness.
- [p. 59] "'Der flabberghast,' muttered Nanny. 'What's that?' said Magrat.
'It's foreign for bat.'
Well no, it isn't, actually. The German word for bat is 'Fledermaus', as
in Mozart's famous opera "Die Fledermaus". 'Flabberghast' seems to derive
more from the plain English 'flabbergasted' (meaning: astonished beyond
belief). Similarly, 'die flabbergast' apparently was a Mozart-spoofing
sketch that Dudley Moore did in "Beyond The Fringe".
- [p. 75] The names the witches are considering for themselves are puns on
existing airline companies or their acronyms. Nanny Ogg starts to say
"Virgin Airlines", but is rudely interrupted by a gust of wind.
+ [p. 78] "'Magrat says she will write a book called Travelling on One
Dollar a Day, and it's always the same dollar.'"
Refers to the famous traveller's guide originally titled "Europe On Five
Dollars A Day".
- [p. 79] "What does cojones mean?"
'Cojones' is Spanish for balls. The whole 'Thing with the Bulls' section
spoofs the annual bull running festival of Pamplona in our world. Ernest
Hemingway was very impressed with this macho activity, and used the word
'cojones' to describe the bravery displayed by the young men
participating in the event.
- [p. 83] "''S called the Vieux River.' 'Yes?' 'Know what that means?'
'No.' 'The Old (Masculine) River,' said Nanny. 'Yes?' 'Words have sex in
foreign parts,' said Nanny hopefully."
The Mississippi River is often known as 'Old Man River', for instance in
Paul Robeson's classic song from the 1936 Kern/Hammerstein musical "Show
Boat". Near the mouth of the Mississippi lies New Orleans, on which Genua
seems to be largely based. And then there are the riverboats, with the
gamblers...
- [p. 84] "[...] Samedi Nuit Mort, the last night of carnivale, [...]"
Samedi Nuit Mort = Saturday Night Dead, a pun on the television comedy
show "Saturday Night Live".
+ [p. 84] "[...] she wants to make it a Magic Kingdom, a Happy and Peaseful
place [...]"
The most famous part of the Walt Disney World theme park in Orlando,
Florida, is officially called the 'Magic Kingdom'.
+ [p. 85] "'That means Fat Lunchtime,' said Nanny Ogg, international
linguist.
Actually, 'Mardi Gras' means Fat Tuesday. I have no idea where Nanny got
the idea for 'Lunchtime'. Perhaps it's just because of her natural
preoccupation with food.
+ [p. 98] "'I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like... well...
Bubble and Squeak, or... or... 'Spotted Dick,' said Nanny absently.
Americans might be amazed to learn that Bubble and Squeak, Spotted Dick,
and Toad-in-the-Hole (which is mentioned a few lines further down) are
all actually the names of existing British delicatessen.
Nanny Ogg is correct in identifying Toad-in-the-Hole as a sausage
embedded in a sort of tart filled with pancake batter.
Bubble and Squeak is more or less left over vegetables (potato, onion and
cabbage appear to be favourite ingredients among alt.fan.pratchett
readers) fried up together in lard.
Spotted Dick is a suet-sponge pudding with currants or sultanas in it.
+ [p. 99] "Even Magrat knew about Black Aliss."
In Terry Pratchett's universe Black Aliss is obviously the evil witch of
*all* fairy tales. The stories referred to here are "Sleeping Beauty",
"Rumpelstiltskin" and "Hansel And Gretel", all of which are available as
on-line versions (see the note for p. 34 of "The Colour Of Magic").
+ [p. 117] "'[..] there's been other odd things happening in this forest.'"
Magrat then goes on to describe more or less what happened in the fairy
tales of "Goldilocks And The Three Bears" and the "Three Little Pigs".
+ [p. 118] "'[...] some ole enchantress in history who lived on an island
and turned shipwrecked sailors into pigs.'"
For once, Nanny Ogg *doesn't* mix up two or more real-world tales, but
gets the story (almost) right: Circe was the name of the sorceress from
the "Odyssey" who lived on the island Aeaea, and turned Ulysses'
shipmates into pigs when they landed (but didn't shipwreck) there.
+ [p. 119] "[...] around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble."
In the jargon of American military planners, Defcon 2 (for "Defence
Condition 2") is the highest-level peacetime alert. Defcon 1 would be
nuclear war.
+ [p. 120] "'Oh? It's all wishing on stars and fairy dust, is it?'"
Fairly standard magic-related concepts, but perhaps it should be noted
that wishing on stars is done in Disney's "Pinocchio", while fairy dust
features heavily in Disney's "Peter Pan".
+ [p. 120] "'[...] and no one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a
fire.'"
I feel that in "Witches Abroad" Terry was experimenting much more than
usual with the literary device of foreshadowing. This is only one of the
many instances in the book where something is said that means nothing to
the reader first time around, but which suddenly becomes very significant
when you notice it during a re-read, and you already know what is going
to happen later.
- [p. 122] The farmhouse landing on Nanny Ogg, and the subsequent events
involving dwarfs looking for ruby-coloured boots are references to "The
Wizard Of Oz".
- [p. 123] "'You know, Greebo,' she said. "I don't think we're in Lancre.'
Dorothy to her dog in "The Wizard Of Oz": "Toto, I don't think we're in
Kansas anymore."
+ [p. 130] "'[...] that girl with the long pigtails in a tower [...]
Rumplestiltzel or someone.'"
The girl with the long hair is Rapunzel from the famous fairy tale of the
same name. 'Rumpelstiltskin' is a different, unrelated fairy tale
involving a dwarf spinning gold out of straw.
- [p. 134] "Not a Ronald in sight."
Terry says: "Yep... direct use of existing East London rhyming slang
there (Richard the Third = turd)."
+ [p. 139] "'That's 'cos you're a wet hen, Magrat Garlick,' said Granny."
When questioned about the phrase, Terry explained: "Perfectly good
British slang. A 'wet hen' is bedraggled, sad and useless. Probably not
as useless as a big girl's blouse, though, and better off than a lame
duck."
+ [p. 153] "'This is Legba, a dark and dangerous spirit,' said Mrs Gogol."
Legba is the Voodoo god of the cross-roads, where the Above meets the
Below. He is "on both sides of the mirror". He leans on a stick, and
another of his symbols is the macoutte (straw sack). Chickens are
sacrificed to him by twisting their neck till they are dead.
+ [p. 154] "So he said 'Get me an alligator sandwich -- and make it
quick!'"
It is obvious that Granny is trying to tell a joke here -- and failing
miserably. The problem was that quite a few readers (including yours
truly) were having trouble figuring out what that joke was supposed to be
in the first place.
People started asking about the Alligator Joke so frequently on
alt.fan.pratchett, that eventually Terry himself posted the following
"definitive explanation of the alligator joke":
"It is (I hope) obvious that Granny Weatherwax has absolutely no sense of
humour but she has, as it were, heard about it. She has no grasp of how
or why jokes work -- she's one of those people who say "And then what
happened?" after you've told them the punchline. She can vaguely remember
the one-liner "Give me an alligator sandwich -- and make it snappy!" but
since she's got no idea of why it's even mildly amusing she gets
confused... all that she can remember is that apparently the man wants it
quickly."
When conversation on the net then turned to the origins of the joke, he
followed up with:
"As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I first came across the joke in an
ancient US comedy routine -- Durante or someone like him. It sounds
burlesque."
See the note for p. 195 of "Mort" for another type of meta-joke based on
the alligator joke.
- [p. 155] Emberella --> Embers; Cinderella --> Cinders...
+ [p. 157] "'I am called Saturday.' 'Man Saturday, eh?' said Nanny Ogg.
Nanny is thinking of Man Friday as in Robinson Crusoe's native friend.
But Saturday is of course none other than Baron Samedi (Samedi =
Saturday), the Voodoo keeper of cemeteries and lord of zombies. He
appears as a skeleton wearing a top hat and a black cane.
+ [p. 172] "Nanny Ogg waved the jug again. 'Up your eye!' she said. 'Mud in
your bottom!'"
The two traditional English toasts being mixed up here are "bottoms up"
and "here's mud in your eye".
+ [p. 174] "[...] Nanny Ogg and the coachmen were getting along, as she put
it, like a maison en flambe."
See the note for p. 284 of "Guards! Guards!"
- [p. 201] "'...my name is Colonel Moutarde...'"
'Moutarde' is French for 'mustard'. Colonel Mustard was the name of one
of the players cum characters in the board game "Clue" (or "Cluedo").
+ [p. 201] "'This is [...] Sir, Roger de Coverley.'"
'Sir Roger de Coverley' is apparently the title of a folk dance.
- [p. 201] Casanunda, "the world's greatest lover", refers to our world's
Casanova. Notice that Casanova is often roughly pronounced as 'Casanover'
(emphasis on the 'over'), and that Casanunda is a dwarf...
Actually, Casanunda is lying, because we later find out he's only the
world's *second* greatest lover. But this should not surprise us, since
yet even later (in "Lords And Ladies") we also find out that he is an
Outrageous Liar.
- [p. 207] "Nanny Ogg's voyages on the sea of intersexual dalliance had
gone rather further than twice around the lighthouse, [...]"
A popular way of staving off boredom at typical British seaside holiday
resorts is to take a trip in a small boat, which will often journey out
as far as the local lighthouse and circumnavigate it. Hence the above
colloquialism, implying that Nanny's experiences were not limited to the
inshore waters of male/female relationships.
- [p. 218] "The maiden, the mother and the crone."
Traditionally, the wiccan goddess (see "Equal Rites" note) is viewed as
the triple entity maiden/mother/crone, and our witches indeed echo this
model. Neil Gaiman uses the triple goddess quite often in his "Sandman"
series.
+ [p. 219] "Mrs Gogol's hut travelled on four large duck feet, which were
now rising out of the swamp."
Baba Yaga is a witch in Russian folklore, who had a hut that stood on
chicken feet. I don't know whether that hut could walk, as well. (Neil
Gaiman seemed to think it could however: Baba Yaga and a walking hut
figure in Book 3 of his excellent "Books Of Magic".)
One of Moussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition" ('House on hen's legs')
also refers back to Baba Yaga, by way of another Russian's painting of
said fairy tale hut.
+ [p. 222] "'Well, maybe I'm only No. 2,' said Casanunda. 'But I try
harder.'"
This was the catchphrase from a well-known ad campaign by a car rental
firm, I think it was Hertz, with Budget being the implied number 1. [Does
anybody have a definite reference on this?]
+ [p. 233] "'Another banana dak'ry, mahatma coat, chopchop.'"
Mahatma Cote = Indian Cloakroom attendant. The name was actually thought
up by W. C. Fields. He used it as a pen name for at least one of the
movies that he wrote and starred in. It was in tribute to the great
author/drinker P. G. Wodehouse.
Also, the Banana Daiquiri is Terry's favourite drink.
+ [p. 241] "'[...] what was that Tsortean bloke who could only be wounded
if you hit 'im in the right place?'"
Nanny is thinking of the Discworld version of Achilles, who was
invincible except for a small spot on his heel.
- [p. 252] "Nanny kicked her red boots together idly. 'Well, I suppose
there's no place like home,' she said".
Another "Wizard Of Oz" reference (kicking her boots together three times
and saying a similar sentence invokes the spell that transports Dorothy
home from Oz).
+ [p. 252] "But they went the long way, and saw the elephant."
Several people were immediately reminded of Fritz Leiber's Hugo award
winning novelette "Gonna Roll The Bones", which ends: "Then he turned and
headed straight for home, but he took the long way, around the world."
Terry has said there is no conscious connection, however.
Also, "to have seen the elephant" is British military slang dating back
to the 19th century, and means to have taken part in one's first battle.
SMALL GODS
- [p. 8] The name 'Brutha' is of course pronounced as a jive-ified
'brother'.
- [p. 9] Brother Nhumrod's name is not only an obvious pun on the man's
sexual problems, but also refers to the Biblical Nimrod who was "a mighty
hunter before the Lord" (Genesis 10:8).
+ [p. 10] "Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said."
This is a reference to the Jesuit saying: "Give me a boy up to the age of
seven and I will give you a Catholic". They boasted that they could
convert anyone if they just started early enough.
+ [p. 12] "[...] and torturers, and Vestigial Virgins..."
See the note for p. 79 of "Reaper Man".
- [p. 12] The Cenobiarch.
This title is presumably derived from 'arch' (as in -bishop) and
'cenobite'. A cenobite is a "member of a religious order following a
communal way of life".
+ [p. 15] "You Don't Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It
Helps!!!"
Refers to those lame stickers and signs in offices and work areas all
over the world that say: "You don't have to be insane to work here but it
helps!".
In "Eric" a similar slogan is pasted on the door to the Discworld Hell
("You don't have to be 'Damned' to work here...").
- [p. 23] "De Chelonian Mobile [...] The Turtle Moves."
This whole theory parodies Galileo Galilei's struggle to get his theory
of a moving earth (around the sun, that is) accepted by the Christian
Church.
+ [p. 49] Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
Possibly refers to Lyndon B. Johnson's evaluation of Gerald Ford: "So
dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time".
+ [p. 60] Below it, the doors of the Great Temple, each one made of forty
tons of gilded bronze, opened by the breath (it was said) of the Great
God Himself, swung open ponderously and -- and this was the holy part --
silently.
The doors of a temple in Alexandria were opened by a steam engine
designed by the Greek philosopher Hero. With similar legends surrounding
it.
This is a myth, however. Hero *did* invent a steam "engine", but it was
merely a small sphere that rotated due to steam pressure (history's
earliest executive toy?) There is no evidence that he ever used the
invention for any real work (e.g. opening doors).
+ [p. 64] "'And -- that other one. The *eminence grease*.'"
Eminence gris = "grey eminence", as in "shadowy power".
+ [p. 67] "Give me that old-time religion..."
This is the title to a song, originally belonging to the evangelist
revival camp meeting category, which has the chorus:
"Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Cos it's good enough for me."
It has been taken up by the SF filk community ('filk' = folk singing, but
with funny or parodying lyrics), which has added verses like:
"Let's sing praise to Aphrodite
She may seem a little flighty,
but she wears a green gauze nighty,
And she's good enough for me."
+ [p. 79] "There was Sergeant Simony, a muscular young man [...]"
'Simony' is the religious crime of selling benefices. Since Terry doesn't
refer to or joke about this second meaning at all in the rest of the
book, I had left this annotation out of previous versions of the APF, but
people kept writing me about it, so this time I've put it in for
completeness' sake.
+ [p. 83] "'Three years before the shell.'"
The phrase "x years before the mast" was used by sailors to indicate the
length of time they've been in their profession. Common seamen slept in
the forward part of the ship, i.e. before the main mast on sailing ships.
Officers slept in the after part of the ship where they could get easy
access to the tiller.
- [p. 85] Terry Pratchett translates the book title "Ego-Video Liber
Deorum" here as "Gods: A Spotter's Guide".
Actually, the dog Latin translates more literally to "The I-Spy Book Of
Gods". I-Spy books are little books for children with lists of things to
look out for. When you see one of these things you tick a box and get
some points. When you get enough points you can send off for a badge.
They have titles like "The I-Spy Book Of Birds" and "The I-Spy Book Of
Cars".
+ [p. 85] "Or, to put it another way the existence of a badly put-together
watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker."
This whole section is parodying the creationist argument that complex
creatures such as those which exist in the world could only be the
product of deliberate design and hence must have been created by a
Supreme Being rather than by a blind process such as evolution.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins provided a counter-argument in his
book "The Blind Watchmaker".
+ [p. 87] "It was worse than women aboard. It was worse than albatrosses."
Both women and albatrosses are traditionally considered bad luck on a
ship. For a classic example of the latter, just recall Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's poem "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner".
+ [p. 92] "[...] the priests of Ur-Gilash [...]"
The name is a composite of several ancient names. The Epic of Gilgamesh
is an ancient Babylonian tale which contains some interesting parallels
to contemporary Biblical stories. Gil-Galash was ruler of one of the
Euphrates civilisations. And Ur was, of course, a Babylonian city, as
well as a prefix signifying "primal" or "original".
+ [p. 101] Legibus's entrance incorporates some concepts borrowed from
several legends of famous philosophers.
Archimedes was the one who jumped out of the bath and ran naked down the
street shouting 'Eureka!' after he'd discovered the principle of fluid
displacement. He also said "Give me but a place to stand and a long
enough lever, and I can move the world", a quote that Terry repeatedly
uses in different forms. The "Number Nine pot and some string, please"
probably refers to the ancient method of calculating the curvature of the
Earth's surface as done by Eratosthenes of Cyrene. The drawing of
triangles vaguely recalls Pythagoras.
+ [p. 103] "[...] putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place
to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships [...]"
Legend has it that Archimedes did just this in the defence of the city of
Syracuse in 213 BC.
+ [p. 103] "'[...] some intricate device that demonstrated the principles
of leverage by incidentally hurling balls of burning sulphur two miles.'"
This is a description of the "Ballista", another weapon supposedly
invented by Archimedes.
- [p. 110] "[...] if Xeno the Ephebian said, 'All Ephebians are liars --'"
This is the famous Liar paradox, originally involving Epimenides the
Cretan.
+ [p. 111] "'That's right,' he said. 'We're philosophers. We think,
therefore we am.'"
Play on Descartes' famous philosophical pronouncement "Cogito, ergo sum"
-- "I think, therefore I am".
+ [p. 112] "'Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the all-time
greats,' said Xeno."
Federal Express (or FedEx) is an overnight shipping courier service.
- [p. 112] A running gag in the book is the penguin associated with Patina,
the Goddess of Wisdom. This refers to Minerva or Pallas Athena (*Pal*-las
A-*thena*, get it, get it?), who was the Roman/Greek goddess of wisdom,
and whose symbol was an owl.
+ [p. 115] The name Didactylos translates as 'Two-fingers'.
The British equivalent of "giving someone the finger" consists of
extending two fingers upwards, palm facing the gesturer, in a kind of
rotated 'V for Victory' sign.
The origin of this rude gesture is supposed to date back to the battle of
Agincourt. In those days the French used to cut the index and middle
fingers off the right hands of any British archers they happened to
catch, in order to render them useless for further shooting should they
e.g. ever manage to escape and rejoin their army.
When the English finally won the battle (largely thanks to their
longbowmen) the gesture quickly evolved from a Frenchmen-ridiculing "look
what I still got" statement into a more general rudeness, which actually
has only caught on in England again over the last decade or so.
Unfortunately, this story, charming as it may be (and for that reason I'm
not about to delete it from this file) turns out to be completely
incorrect, as explained by Desmond Morris in his book "Manwatching".
There is no evidence that the French systematically de-fingered English
archers -- they just executed them, whenever they could lay their hands
on them that is, which wasn't too often, since Agincourt was in fact a
roaring defeat for the French.
- [p. 118] "Candidates for the Tyrantship were elected by the placing of
black or white balls in various urns, thus giving rise to a well-known
comment about politics."
That comment probably being: "It's all a load of balls".
- [p. 121] "Nil Illegitimo Carborundum" is dog Latin for "Don't let the
bastards grind you down".
- [p. 122] Urn's name is a reference to the old joke:
Question: "What's a Greek urn?"
Answer: "About $2,50 an hour!"
Or, as the "Goon Show" put it:
-- "What's a Greek urn?"
-- "It's a vase made by Greeks for storing liquid."
-- "I wasn't expecting that answer."
-- "Neither were quite a few smart-alec listeners."
- [p. 128] "'Worried, eh? Feeling a bit Avis Domestica? Cluck-cluck?'"
Actually, the Latin name for 'chicken' is "Gallus Domesticus" -- even
though 'avis' by itself does mean 'bird'.
+ [p. 129] "He caught a glimpse of a circle of damp sand, covered with
geometrical figures. Om was sitting in the middle of them."
The whole scene with Om drawing shapes in the sand is a reference to the
computer programming language Logo, in which figures are drawn by a
turtle-shaped cursor ('turtle graphics'). In fact, it was also possible
to get a real 'turtle': a little robot attached to a Logo machine by a
long cable which would walk around on a big sheet of paper.
- [p. 130] "'Ah,' said Didactylos. 'Ambi-sinister?' 'What?' 'He means
incompetent with both hands,' said Om."
Ambidextrous means able to use both hands equally well. 'dextr-' is the
prefix meaning "right" as in "right hand". 'Sinistr-' is the prefix
meaning "left". Hence: ambisinister = having two left hands.
+ [p. 131] "The Library of Ephebe was -- before it burned down -- the
second biggest on the Disc."
Refers of course to our world's Alexandrian Library. Brewer tells us that
this Library was supposed to have contained 700,000 volumes. It was burnt
and partially consumed in 391, but when the city fell into the hands of
the calif Omar, in 642, the Arabs found books sufficient to "heat the
baths of the city for six months".
Legend has it that Omar ordered the Library torched because all the books
in it either agreed with the Koran, and were therefore superfluous; or
else disagreed with the Koran, and were therefore heretical, but this is
probably just apocryphal.
+ [p. 131] "[...] a whole gallery of unwritten books [...]"
Actually, there *is* another library where such unwritten books are
stored: in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comics, Lucien's library also contains
books that have never been written. In "Sandman #22", for instance, we
see Lucien filing "Alice's Journey Beyond The Moon" by Lewis Carroll
alongside "The Lost Road" by J. R. R. Tolkien and "The Man Who Was
October" by G. K. Chesterton.
All libraries are connected through L-Space anyway, aren't they?
- [p. 132] Aristocrates = Aristotle + Socrates + aristocratic.
+ [p. 133] "Art was not permitted in Omnia."
The comment about no art and pictures being allowed in Om resonates with
similar prohibitions in various real world religions, ranging from the
Muslims to the Amish.
- [p. 138] Didactylos carrying a lantern and living in a barrel are
references to Diogenes, the famous philosopher who is reputed to have
done the same.
+ [p. 150] "'Ah gentlemen,' said Didactylos. 'Pray don't disturb my
circles.'"
Legend has it that when Syracuse was eventually taken the Roman soldiers
entered Archimedes' house as he was trying to solve a geometrical
problem. He had just been drawing some figures on the floor of his house
when the soldiers entered. "Gentlemen, pray don't disturb my circles,"
Archimedes is reported to have said to the soldiers, one of whom then
drew his sword and slew him on the spot.
+ [p. 150] "'You don't belong to the Quisition,' said the Corporal. 'No.
But I know a man who does,' said Brutha."
In the UK there were a series of adverts for the AA (Automobile
Association) where people were in various dire motoring trouble. They
were asked by a passenger (say) if they knew how to get out of it. They
replied either: "No. But I know a man who can." or "No. But I know a man
who does." It's now very much part of English idiom.
+ [p. 161] "'Tell him you can't recall!'"
"I can't recall" was the mantra of the White House officials during the
investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s.
- [p. 162] "'Life in this world,' he said, 'is, as it were, a sojourn in a
cave.'"
This paragraph is a very loose parody of a famous Socratic dialogue in
Plato's "Republic", Book VII. I quote (and edit down a wee bit) from
"Labyrinths Of Reason" by William Poundstone, p. 203:
"Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth
open toward the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been
from childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot
move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from
turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a
distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way,
like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over
which they show the puppets.
[...] and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another,
which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? [...] And of the
objects which are being carried in like manner they would see only the
shadows? [...] And if they were able to converse with one another, would
they not suppose they were naming what was actually before them? [...] To
them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the
images."
- [p. 162] "Go on, do Deformed Rabbit ...it's my favourite."
Reference to the art of making shadow animals with your hands, as
described on p. 36 of "Moving Pictures": "'Mainly my uncle did 'Deformed
Rabbit'', said Victor. 'He wasn't very good at it, you see.'"
+ [p. 162] "'And the wrong sort of ash', said Vorbis."
The story goes that British Rail was having difficulty one winter getting
trains to run on time, which they blamed on the snow. They were then
quizzed as to why their snow-ploughs couldn't deal with the problem. They
replied that it was "the wrong sort of snow", a phrase that has now
entered the English idiom.
In defence of British Rail it should be pointed out that their remark
wasn't as silly as it seems at first sight: what happened was that fine,
dry, powdery snow blew inside the traction motor cooling slots and,
melting, caused the motors to arc over. It simply is very rare for
British snow to be cold and dry enough to do this, hence the "wrong sort
of snow" comment which the press, seeking as usual for any excuse to make
fun of British Rail, leapt upon with great glee.
- [p. 166] Didactylos' anecdote about the royal road to learning parodies a
similar one told about Aristotle and Alexander the Great.
- [p. 170] "'I'm just going out,' said Brutha. 'I may be some time.'"
Brutha here repeats the last words of Captain Oates, who walked out in a
blizzard on Scott's unsuccessful Antarctic expedition, in order to try
and save food for the remaining expedition members. He was never seen
again. It didn't work.
+ [p. 182] "'Got to have a whole parcel of worshippers to live on Nob
Hill.'"
Nob Hill is an affluent section of San Francisco (which in turn got its
name from 'nob', a British term of derision for upper-class people,
especially those who are a little ostentatious with their wealth).
- [p. 186] "'Something that'd open the valve if there was too much steam. I
think I could do something with a pair of revolving balls.'"
Urn's steam engines are more or less identical to the ones that were
described by Archimedes and used in ancient Ephebe, eh, I mean Greece.
These engines also used copper spheres as heating vessels, and these
spheres did, in fact, have a regrettable tendency to explode, which is
what limited their use until some bright person thought of adding
overpressure relief valves.
These steam engines never really caught on, because of various practical
problems and the greater cost-effectiveness of slave-power. See also the
James Watt annotation for p. 153 of "Reaper Man".
+ [p. 208] "'My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, [...]'"
The hero of Gene Wolfe's science fiction novel "Book Of The New Sun" is
called Severian. Like Brutha, Severian has a problem with forgetting
things.
The name of St. Ungulant's sidekick Angus resonates with the name of a
chain of steak houses, which may in turn be related to the fact that an
'ungulate' is a hoofed mammal.
+ [p. 220] "'A nod's as good as a poke with a sharp stick to a deaf camel,
as they say.'"
A reference to the famous Monty Python line 'A nod's as good as a wink to
a blind bat', spoken by Eric Idle in the 'Nudge, nudge' sketch.
+ [p. 230] "'What've you got? He's got an army! You've got an army? How
many divisions have you got?'"
As the Allies in World War II were planning the landing in Italy, they
had frequent meetings to discuss methods and consequences. On one of
these meetings, Churchill made a reference to what the Pope would think
about all this. To which Stalin replied, "The pope? How many divisions
does he have?".
- [p. 232] "I don't know what effect it's going to have on the enemy, he
thought, but it scares the hells out of me."
Paraphrases a comment made by the Duke of Wellington immediately before
the Battle of Waterloo, about his own troops, in particular about the
Highland regiments (large, hairy, kilts, bagpipes, etc.).
+ [p. 234] "Bishops move diagonally."
Reference to chess moves.
- [p. 241] "It was a million-to-one chance, with any luck."
Refers back to a running gag in "Guards! Guards!", but one that Terry
used as early as "Equal Rites": million-to-one chances come up nine times
out of ten, on the average.
- [p. 244] "When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts
and minds will follow."
'Testiculos' does not *quite* translate as 'full attention'.
The original form of the quote originates with Chuck Colson, one of
Richard Nixon's Watergate henchmen.
+ [p. 248] "[...] two pounds of tortoise, travelling at three metres a
second, hit him between the eyes."
Brewer tells us that in 456 BC Aeschylus, "the most sublime of the Greek
tragic poets", was "killed by a tortoise thrown by an eagle (to break the
shell) against his bald head, which it mistook for a stone".
+ [p. 252] "'Right. Right. That's all I'm looking for. Just trying to make
ends hummus.'"
Hummus is a meat substitute.
- [p. 255] Could the name Fasta Benj possibly be derived from 'Faster, Ben
Johnson'?
- [p. 270] "REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES
MOVE."
Refers back to a joke on p. 12 of "Sourcery", where we are told that
Death dreads playing symbolic last chess games because "he could never
remember how the knight was supposed to move".
- There is a rumour going round that there was to be a crucifixion scene at
the end of this book but that the publishers made Terry take it out. To
quote Terry on this: "Crucifiction in "Small Gods": this is a familiar
thing to me, a DW 'fact' that's gone through several retellings.
Nothing's been taken out of "Small Gods", or put in, and there was no
pressure to do either."
+ [p. ???] Religious songs.
Terry once volunteered an annotation: "This probably is a good time to
raise the 'lonesome valley/lonesome desert' lines from "Small Gods", with
apologies to you who, because of finance, heel-dragging by publishers or
because you threw all that tea in the harbour, haven't read it yet. Yes,
I know variants of the song have turned up on various
folk/country/spiritual albums over the last forty years, but some
American friends tracked variations of it back to the last century and
the anonymous mists of folk Christianity. So I used it, like everyone
else has done. Like 'Lord of the Dance', it's one of those songs that
transcend a specific religion -- and also a very attractive use of
language."
Unfortunately, *I cannot find this anywhere*. If anybody knows where
these 'lonesome valley/lonesome desert' lines occur, please let me know.
LORDS AND LADIES
+ [p. 5] "[...] young Magrat, she of the [...] tendency to be soppy about
raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens."
One of the best songs from "The Sound Of Music" is called 'My Favourite
Things' (it's the song Maria sings for the Von Trapp children when they
are all frightened of the thunderstorm). The opening verse goes:
"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens,
Brown paper packages, tied up with string,
These are a few of my favourite things."
The Von Trapp children would probably have murdered Magrat if she had
been their governess.
- [p. 5] "[...] to face down the Godmother (who had made Destiny an offer
it couldn't refuse)."
Usually it is of course the God*father* who makes people offers they
can't refuse.
- [p. 11] "But that was a long time ago, in the past [footnote: Which is
another country]"
The opening words of "The Go-between", a 1950 book by L. P. Hartley: "The
past is a foreign country; they do things differently there".
+ [p. 11] "And besides, the bitch is... ...older."
This is another Christopher Marlowe quote, from "The Jew Of Malta" (act
IV, scene i):
Barnadine: "Thou hast committed --"
Barabas: "Fornication? But that was in another country;
and besides, the wench is dead."
- [p. 16] "This was the octarine grass country."
A reference to (Kentucky) bluegrass country.
- [p. 16] "Then, [...] the young corn lay down. In a circle."
An explanation of the Crop Circle phenomenon might be in order here.
Crop Circles are circular patches of flattened crops which have appeared
in fields of cereals in the South and West of England over the last few
years. There is no firm evidence pointing to their cause: this has been
taken by certain parties as a prima facie proof that they are of course
caused by either alien spacecraft or by some supernatural intelligence,
possibly in an attempt to communicate.
In recent years, circle systems have become increasingly elaborate, most
notably in the case of a circle in the shape of the Mandelbrot Set, and
another system which is shown on the cover of the recent Led Zeppelin
compilation album, which seems to indicate that whoever's up there they
probably have long hair and say 'Wow!' and 'Yeah!' a lot. A number of
staged circle-forging challenges in the summer of '92 have demonstrated
both how easy it is to produce an impressive circle by mundane, not to
say frivolous methods, and also the surprisingly poor ability of
'cereologists' to distinguish what they describe as a "genuine" circle
from one "merely made by hoaxers".
Anyone with a burning desire to believe in paranormal explanations is
invited to post to the newsgroup sci.skeptic an article asserting
essentially "I believe that crop circles are produced by UFO's/Sun
Spots/The Conservative Government/The Easter Bunny" and see how far they
get....
+ [p. 19] "Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause
of housework in other people."
Over on alt.fan.pratchett it was postulated that this sounded a bit too
much like a quote not to be a quote (annotation-hunters can get downright
paranoid at times), but it took us a while to figure out where it
originated, although in retrospect we could have used Occam's razor and
looked it up in Shakespeare immediately. In "King Henry IV", act I, scene
ii, Falstaff says:
"I am not only witty in myself,
but the cause that wit is in other men."
- [p. 21] "Some people are born to kingship. Some achieve kingship, or at
least Arch-Generalissimo-Father-of-His-Countryship. But Verence had
kingship thrust upon him."
The original quote is (as usual) by William Shakespeare, from "Twelfth
Night" (act II, scene v), where Malvolio reads in a letter (which he
thinks was written to him by his mistress):
"In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness:
some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon 'em."
+ [p. 21] "Now he was inspecting a complicated piece of equipment. It had a
pair of shafts for a horse, and the rest of it looked like a cartful of
windmills. [...] 'It's a patent crop rotator,' said Verence."
The patent crop rotator is an agricultural tool that might not figure
very prominently in your day-to-day conversation (possibly since no such
machine exists: crop rotation means growing different things in a field
in successive years) but British comedy writers are apparently fascinated
by it. Several people wrote to tell me that the cult TV comedy series
"The Young Ones" also used the patent crop rotator in their episode
"Bambi".
When Neil (the hippy) is testing Rick (the nerd) on medieval history, the
following dialogue ensues:
Rick: 'Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more
widespread after... um... 1172?'
Neil: 'John.'
Rick: 'John? Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more
widespread after John?'
Neil: '...Lloyd invented the patent crop rotator.'
- [p. 22] "'I asked Boggi's in Ankh-Morpork to send up their best
dress-maker [...]'"
Boggi's = Gucci's.
- [p. 29] "[...] it was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle
than upgrade an old slow one [...]"
Think CPU's and MHz.
- [p. 30] "I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. Death
grinned hopefully."
In Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" we find the character Autolycus ("a
Rogue"), saying in act IV, scene ii:
"My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under
Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."
+ [p. 50] "One of them was known as Herne the Hunted. He was the god of the
chase and the hunt. More or less."
Herne the Hun*ter* is a spectral hunter of medieval legend, said to
originally have been a keeper in Windsor Forest. Herne appears in many
stories, varying from Shakespeare (who else) to the fairly recent ITV
television series "Robin of Sherwood" (starring Jason "son of" Connery).
When alt.fan.pratchett readers mistakenly assumed that the reference
*originated* from this series, Terry cautioned: "Be careful when
reference spotting... Herne the Hunter certainly did turn up in the Robin
of Sherwood series and on an album by "Let's breathe romantically to
music" group Clannad, but any passing pagan will tell you he goes back a
lot, lot further than that."
Herne the Hunter also appears himself in "Lords And Ladies". Here is some
relevant information condensed from the book "The Western Way" by John
and Caitlin Matthews:
"Herne the Hunter/ Cernunnos is God of green and growing things;
huntsman, spirit of earth, birth and masculinity. Often pictured seated
cross-legged with antlers on his brow, he is [...] tutelary deity of many
modern witch covens."
+ [p. 57] The names of the would-be junior witches.
Two of the names resonate with the names used in "Good Omens": Agnes Nitt
is similar to Agnes Nutter, and Amanita DeVice is similar to Anathema
Device.
In fact, both names are based on the names of the so-called Lancashire
Witches. The deeds of this group on and around Pendle Hill were the
subject of probably England's most famous 17th century witchhunt and
trials. The story is described in some fictional detail in a little-known
book called, surprise, "The Lancashire Witches", written at the end of
the nineteenth century in Manchester by William Harrison Ainsworth.
Interestingly enough, Ainsworth also wrote a book called "Windsor Castle"
in which Herne the Hunter appears as a major theme (see previous note).
- [p. 62] The names of the "new directions".
'East of the Sun, West of the Moon': a fairly well-known phrase used
amongst other by Tolkien in a poem, by Theodore Roosevelt as the title
for a book on hunting, and by pop-group A-ha as an album title. It
originally is the title of an old Scandinavian fairy tale, and can be
found in a book by Kay Nielsen, titled "East Of The Sun And West Of The
Moon -- Old Tales From The North". Terry has confirmed that this book was
his source for the phrase.
'Behind the North Wind': from the title of a book by George McDonald: "At
The Back Of The North Wind", the term itself being a translation of
"Hyperborea".
'At the Back Of Beyond': an idiom, perhaps originating from Sir Walter
Scott's "The Antiquary": "Whirled them to the back o' beyont".
'There and Back Again': The sub-title of Tolkien's "The Hobbit".
'Beyond the Fields We Know': from Lord Dunsany's novel "The King Of
Elfland's Daughter", where "the fields we know" refers to our world, as
opposed to Elfland, which lies 'beyond'.
- [p. 63] "'You know, ooh-jar boards and cards [...] and paddlin' with the
occult.'"
An Ouija board is a well-known means of communicating with the dead.
It's a board with letters and symbols on it, and the spirits supposedly
move a glass over it and spell out messages.
+ [p. 76] "'Kings are a bit magical, mind. They can cure dandruff and
that.'"
Well, for one thing kings can cure dandruff by permanently removing
people's heads from their shoulders, but I think that what Terry is
probably referring to here is the folk-superstition that says that a
King's touch can cure scrofula (also known as the King's Evil), which is
a tubercular infection of the lymphatic glands.
A similar type of legend also occurs in Tolkien's "The Lord Of The
Rings".
- [p. 78] "'And why's there got to be a lion in it?' said Baker the
weaver."
Because the play-within-a-play performed by the rude mechanicals in "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" (act I, Scene ii) features a lion in a starring
role, of course.
The Morris Men's discussions on plays and lions reminded one of my
sources of the play written by Moominpapa in "Moominsummer Madness" by
Tove Jansson. When asked about it, Terry said that although he has read
the Moomin books, the lion dialogue not connected with them.
- [p. 78] "'Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting *donkeys* in a
play!'"
"A Midsummer Night's Dream", by that mediocre hack-writer William S., is
an example of a play that *has* a donkey in it. Or to be absolutely
precise, a character magically cursed with a donkey's head.
+ [p. 79] "The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking.
This had a lot to do with the new bright collar around his neck with the
word "PONGO" on it. Someone was going to suffer for this."
The taxonomic name for orang-utans is 'Pongo pygmaeus'.
- [p. 86] "[...] universes swoop and spiral around one another like [...]
a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble."
Terry writes: "Can it be that this is forgotten? Yossarian -- the 'hero'
of "Catch-22" -- was the bomber pilot who flew to the target twisting and
jinking in an effort to avoid the flak -- as opposed to the Ivy League
types who just flew nice and straight..."
+ [p. 97] "[...] five flavours, known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex
appeal', and 'peppermint'."
The flavours of resons are a satire of the somewhat odd naming scheme
modern physicists have chosen for the different known quarks, namely:
'up', 'down', 'strange', 'charm', and 'beauty' (in order of discovery and
increasing mass).
Since theoretical physicists don't like odd numbers they have postulated
the existence of a sixth quark -- 'truth'. 'Truth' has not actually been
found yet ("so it must be damn massive" adds my correspondent, who I am
going to assume knows what he is talking about, since I sure as heck
don't), but it is almost universally accepted as being "existent but not
yet observed".
The beauty and truth quarks are often called 'bottom' and 'top'
respectively. In earlier times (and sometimes even now), the strange
quark was indeed called 'sideways'.
- [p. 125] "'Good morrow, brothers, and wherehap do we whist this merry
day?' said Carter the baker."
It is impossible to list all the ways in which the sections about the
Lancre Morris Men and the play they are performing parodies the
play-within-a-play that occurs in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The only
way to get full enjoyment here is to just go out and read Shakespeare.
While you're at it, pay particular attention to the names and occupations
of both Terry's and William's 'Rude Mechanicals'.
- [p. 126] "'Yeah, everyone knows 'tis your delight on a shining night',
said Thatcher the carter."
It is relevant that Thatcher is making this remark to Carpenter the
poacher, because it is a line from the chorus of an English folk song
called 'The Lincolnshire Poacher':
"When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire
Full well I served my master for more than seven year'
'Til I took up to poaching, as you shall quickly hear
Oh 'tis my delight on a shining night
In the season of the year!"
- [p. 126] The three paths leading from the cross-roads in the woods are
variously described as being "all thorns and briars", "all winding", and
the last (which the Lancre Morris Men decide to take) as "Ferns grew
thickly alongside it".
This echoes the poem and folk song 'Thomas the Rhymer', about a man who
was kidnapped by the Queen of the Elves. The following quote is from folk
group Steeleye Span's lyrics which may vary from the actual poem:
"Don't you see yon narrow narrow road,
so thick beset with thorns and briars...
Don't you see yon broad broad road...
Don't you see yon bonny bonny road, that lies across the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland..."
- [p. 128] "'But it ain't April!', neighbours told themselves [...]"
Inconsistency time! On p. 135 of "Witches Abroad", Granny responds to
Nanny Ogg's intention of taking a bath with the words "My word, doesn't
autumn roll around quickly".
In subsequent discussions on the net it was postulated that Nanny's bath
habits could well be explained by taking into account the fact that the
Discworld has eight seasons (see first footnote in "The Colour Of
Magic"), which might result in e.g. two autumns a year.
Personally, I tend to agree with Terry, who has once said: "There are
*no* inconsistencies in the Discworld books; occasionally, however, there
are alternate pasts".
- [p. 138] "It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot, [...]"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a well-known poem called "The Lady Of
Shalott" (see also e.g. Agatha Christie's "The Mirror Crack'd"). A
shallot (double l, single t), however, is a small green onion.
- [p. 138] "[...] fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and "Twurp's
Peerage" [...]"
"Burke's Peerage" is a book that lists the hereditary titled nobility of
the British Realm (the Peers of the Realm, hence the title of the book).
It contains biographical facts such as when they were born, what title(s)
they hold, who they're married to, children, relationships to other
peers, etc. For example, under 'Westminster, Duke of' it will give
details of when the title was created, who has held it and who holds it
now.
Also, 'twerp' and 'berk' (also spelt as 'burk') are both terms of abuse,
with 'twerp' being relatively innocent, but with 'berk' coming from the
Cockney rhyming slang for 'Berkshire Hunt', meaning 'cunt'.
+ [p. 140] "Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the
word 'billygoat' to a troll."
This sentence used to have me completely stumped, until I discovered
(with the help of the ever helpful alt.fan.pratchett correspondents) that
this refers to a well-known British fairy tale of Norwegian origin called
'The Three Billygoats Gruff'.
That tale tells the story of three billygoat brothers who try to cross a
bridge guarded by, you guessed it, a mean troll who wants to eat them.
Luckily, that troll wasn't very smart either, so the goats were able to
outwit him by passing him one by one, each saying "Don't eat me, just
wait for my brother who's much bigger and fatter than I am".
- [p. 178] "Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen
University by a former Archchancellor's hat, [...]"
Refers back to certain events described more fully in "Sourcery".
- [p. 180] "Jane's All The World Siege Weapons"
"Jane's" is a well known series of books/catalogues for military
equipment of all sorts and types. There is a Jane's for aeroplanes, for
boats, etc.
- [p. 199] "[...] in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious."
This is a reference to the well-known 'Schroedinger's cat' quantum theory
thought-experiment in which a cat in a box is probabilistically killed,
leaving it in a superposition of being alive and being dead until the box
is opened and the wavefunction collapsed.
- [p. 205] "'This girl had her fiance stolen by the Queen of Elves and she
didn't hang around whining, [...]'"
Another reference to the 'Thomas the Rhymer' folk song. See the note for
p. 126.
- [p. 205] "'I'll be back.'"
Catchphrase used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in (almost) all his movies.
- [p. 207] "Ancient fragments chimed together now in Magrat's head."
The six lines given make up three different poems. From "The Fairies", by
Irish poet William Allingham (1850):
"Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen
We dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men"
From a traditional Cornish or Scottish (the references disagree as to
which of the two it actually is) prayer:
"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties
and things that go bump in the night
Good Lord deliver us"
And finally from a traditional school girls' skipping rhyme:
"My mother said I never should
Play with the fairies in the wood
If I did, she would say
You naughty girl to disobey
Your hair won't grow, your shoes won't shine
You naughty little girl, you shan't be mine!"
- [p. 210] "'Have you seen Weaver?' 'No, but I saw Carter and Thatcher.'"
Think about it for a minute.
- [p. 216] "[...] the only other one ever flying around here is Mr Ixolite
the banshee, and he's very good about slipping us a note under the door
when he's going to be about."
If you haven't read "Reaper Man" yet, you may not realise that the reason
why Mr Ixolite slips notes under the door is that he is the only banshee
in the world with a speech impediment.
- [p. 221] "'Hiho, hiho --'"
See the note for p. 73 of "Moving Pictures".
- [p. 222] "'It's some old king and his warriors [...] supposed to wake up
for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.'"
Another one of Terry's famous Mixed Legends along the lines of the
princess and the pea fairy tale in "Mort".
The wolf bit is straight from Norse mythology. The wolf Fenris, one of
Loki's monster children, will one day break free from his chains and eat
the sun. This is one of the signs that the Goetterdaemmerung or Ragnarok
has begun, and at this point the frost giants <Who presumably have
*still* not returned the Gods' lawnmower> will cross the Rainbow Bridge
and fight the final battle with the gods of Asgard and the heroes who
have died and gone to Valhalla. See the last part of Richard Wagner's
Ring cycle for details.
The sleeping king is one of the oldest and deepest folk-myths of western
culture, some versions of the popular legend even have King Arthur and
his warriors sleeping on the island of Angelsea. For more information,
see e.g. the section about the Fisher King in Frazer's "The Golden
Bough", Jessie Weston's "From Ritual To Romance" and all the stuff that
this leads into, such as Elliot's "The Wasteland" and David Lodge's
"Small World".
- [p. 227] "Queen Ynci wouldn't have obeyed..."
The ancient warrior queen Ynci is modelled on Boadicea (who led a British
rebellion against the Romans). Boadicea's husband was the ruler of a
tribe called the Iceni, which is almost Ynci backwards.
- [p. 236] "'I've got five years' worth of "Bows And Ammo", Mum,' said
Shawn.
In our world there is a magazine "Guns And Ammo"; this appears to be the
Discworld equivalent.
+ [p. 236] Shawn's speech.
Shawn's speech is immediately recognisable to many Englishmen as a direct
parody of the 'St. Crispin's Day' speech in Shakespeare's "King Henry V"
(act IV, scene iii). Most of the things Shawn says (even up to the part
about people hiding under the bed, more or less) have direct counterparts
in Shakespeare's words.
+ [p. 236] "[...] imitate the action of the Lancre Reciprocating Fox and
stiffen some sinews while leaving them flexible enough [...]"
And this one is from the even more famous 'Once more unto the breach'
speech, also from "King Henry V":
"Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews,
summon up the blood."
- [p. 245] "'Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?'"
One of the fairies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is called Peasblossom.
In itself this is not very interesting, but it is directly relevant when
you consider the point Granny is trying to make to the Elf Queen.
- [p. 252] "The King held out a hand, and said something. Only Magrat heard
it. Something about meeting by moonlight, she said later."
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (act II, scene ii), Oberon, King of the
Fairies, says to Titania, Queen of the Fairies (with whom he has a kind
of love/hate relationship): "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania".
- [p. 261] "'Go ahead, [...] bake my quiche.'"
Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" again, another satire of the line which
also inspired "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC" in "Guards! Guards!" (see annotation
there).
+ [p. 264] "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian
ones. They are not all that subtle."
Definitely a Tolkien reference this time. See the note for p. 183 of
"Mort".
There is a version frequently seen on the net in people's .signatures,
which I am sure will have Terry's full approval. It runs: "Do not meddle
in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your
computer".
- [p. 274] "[...] he called it "The Taming Of The Vole" [...]"
Shakespeare again, of course. A vole is a small animal, somewhat similar
to a shrew.
- [p. 275] "And from the empty hillside, only the silence of the elves."
An allusion to (but not a direct quote from, as far as I can tell) "The
Silence Of The Lambs".
- A very big inconsistency in Discworld continuity occurs when Esme
Weatherwax and Archchancellor Ridcully meet again, and there seems to be
no notable age-discrepancy.
Yet in "Wyrd Sisters" we are told that time was stopped for everyone in
Lancre (including the witches) for twenty years, so Ridcully should
therefore now be twenty years older than Esme...
MEN AT ARMS
+ "Men At Arms" is the title of the next Discworld novel, the hardcover
version of which will be published in the UK in November of this year,
which means that the paperback version will presumably arrive a year
later, and that Americans will get to see a USA edition sometime during
the late 22nd century.
Since the book doesn't exist yet, I can hardly list any annotations for
it, but what I *can* do is quote a few of the articles Terry posted to
the net, in which he showed us glimpses of the plot and characters
involved in the novel. Each paragraph quoted below comes from a different
article, hence the lack of coherency and the slight duplication:
"The next DW book will probably be a sequel to "Guards! Guards!",
containing [...] Captain Vimes' wedding day, the assassination of the
Patrician, and Carrot learning a thing or two..."
""Men At Arms" is a 'sort of' sequel to "Guards! Guards!". The Night
Watch is now a bit larger thanks to affirmative action hiring procedures
-- Detritus the troll and Cuddy the dwarf are among the newcomers. The
main story concerns the invention by Leonard of Quirm, certified genius
and painter of the famous Mona Ogg, of a rifle -- and its subsequent
theft and use. With a full cast of AM characters, including Gaspode."
"The plot of "Men At Arms", out in November, is a police procedural about
the discovery of various people with holes in them and a smell of
fireworks in the air..."
"(20,000 words now and I still haven't used all the Twin Peaks gags...)"
"THIS is the story alluded to last year -- which will include an
assassination attempt on the Patrician (was it fired from the Tower of
Art, or the Library building...?)"
"Heat affects trolls brains, as I have said. That's why they slow down in
daylight. In "Men At Arms" Detritus is accidentally frozen and becomes a
temporary genius as the conductivity of his brain increases. Their brains
are also natural Eproms -- it takes a lot of repetition to get a troll to
understand something, but presumably they'd only forget if you unscrewed
the top of their skulls and exposed them to strong UV."
And finally, to get back to the subject of annotations and reference
hunting:
"You wait until "Men At Arms"... there the references are *nested*..."
THE ONE HE'S WRITING *RIGHT NOW*
+ And then there's of course the Discworld novel *after* "Men At Arms",
which Terry is currently in the process of writing.
He hasn't let us know much about it (in fact, last we heard was that he
doesn't even have a title for it himself), but there was this one article
he posted...:
"Er... it just so happens that the current book is about, er, popular
music on the Discworld."
"I won't tell you what it is... let's just say that there's a run of
guitars in Ankh-Morpork, the Dean has painted his bedroom black, and the
Librarian has blown up the mighty organ of Unseen University while
searching for a good riff.
And I *think* it's going to include the Discworld version of James Dean.
Although it's hard to die in the wreckage of a burning horse."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Other Annotations
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOOD OMENS
+ The weird blue/red neon thingy surrounding the '666' on the cover of the
UK hardcover version of "Good Omens" is actually a map of the M25 London
orbital motorway, mentioned in the text as "evidence for the hidden hand
of Satan in the affairs of Man".
If you have Internet access, you can get a copy of the "Good Omens" cover
(in the CompuServe GIF format) from the Pratchett Archives (see Chapter
5), in the /pub/pratchett/gifs directory.
+ [p. vii] "[...] the angel, whose name was Aziraphale."
On the subject of the correct pronunciation of the name, Terry says:
"It *should* be Azz-ear-raf-AE-el, but we got into the habit of
pronouncing it Azz-ear-raf-ail, so I guess that's the right way now."
And about the name's origin:
"It was made up but... er... from real ingredients. [The name] Aziraphale
could be shoved in a list of 'real' angels and would fit right in..."
+ [p. 1] "Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published "Annales Veteris Et
Novi Testamenti" in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth
were created in 4004 BC."
This is true in spirit, but almost completely wrong in nit-picking
detail, which leads me to conclude that Terry and Neil used sloppy
secondary sources for their research.
The man's name was spelled Ussher, the book's name was actually "Annales
Veteris Testamenti" ("Annals of the *Old* Testament"), it was published
in 1650, and it was Ussher himself who pinpointed the time of creation at
noon, October 23, 4004 BC -- not nine o'clock in the morning.
For a fascinating explanation of why it is really very unfair of us to
ridicule Ussher's findings, I refer the interested reader to the essay
'Fall in the House of Ussher' by Stephen Jay Gould, which appeared in his
excellent collection "Eight Little Piggies".
- [p. 3] "[...] he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon
were".
The Queen song 'Killer Queen' contains the line: "She keeps the Moet et
Chandon in a pretty cabinet". Freddie Mercury's pronunciation is indeed
such that, if you don't already *know* what he's singing, this part of
the lyrics can be extremely puzzling.
- [p. 8] "...I will not let you go (let him go)..."
This sentence, and the 'scaramouche' line a few paragraphs before, are
taken from Queen's legendary song 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. This line is
misquoted though. The actual song goes: "*We* will not let you go (let
him go)".
+ [p. 15] "He'd seen a Ken Russell film once. There had been nuns in it."
This might have been, for instance, the 1971 film "The Devils", a study
of a French nunnery that had supposedly turned to Satanism.
+ [p. 26] "And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually
named from errors in typesetting."
There have been many Infamous Bibles, and all of the ones mentioned in
this paragraph, except for the "Charing Cross Bible" and the "Buggre Alle
This Bible", actually did exist.
As usual, it is Brewer who has all the relevant information. The
"Unrighteous Bible" and the "Wicked Bible" are as Terry and Neil describe
them. In addition, there is:
"Discharge Bible": An edition printed in 1806 containing "discharge" for
"charge" in 1 Tim. v 21: "I discharge thee before God [...] that thou
observe these things [...]".
"Treacle Bible": A popular name for the Bishops' Bible, 1568 because in
it, Jer. viii 22 reads "Is there no treacle in Gilead" instead of "Is
there no balm in Gilead".
"Standing Fishes Bible": An edition of 1806 in which Ezek. xlvii 10
reads: "And it shall come to pass that the fishes [instead of: fishers]
shall stand upon it."
Also mentioned by Brewer are the "Ears To Ear Bible", the "Rosin Bible"
and the "Rebecca's Camels Bible".
- [p. 28] The three lost Shakespeare plays.
"The Trapping Of The Mouse" refers to Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap"
(which has now been running for more than 42 consecutive years in
London), who in turn named her play after the play-within-a-play that
occurs in... "Hamlet".
"Golde Diggers Of 1589" refers to the series of movie musicals with
similar names made in 1933, 1935 and 1937.
"The Comedie Of Robin Hoode, Or The Forest Of Sherwoode" is not directly
traceable to something modern, even though a few years after "Good Omens"
was written a number of Robin Hood movies were to hit the screen (the
Kevin Costner one being the most successful).
+ [p. 40] "'What a delightful child,' she said. 'He'll be wanting a little
tricycle soon.'"
The 'mother' in the 1976 horror movie "The Omen" (which is all about the
Antichrist being raised in a normal household) was forced by little
Damien over the edge of an upstairs railing with his tricycle.
- [p. 40] The nursery rhyme Nanny Astoreth sings to Warlock:
"Oh, the grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And crushed all the nations of the world and brought them
under the rule of Satan our master."
is a parody of the English original:
"The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up they were up.
And when they were down they were down.
And when they were only half way up
They were neither up nor down."
Accompanied (in some versions) by fingers marching up the small child as
appropriate and stopping to tickle for the last line.
+ [p. 42] "The message had come during "Cheers", one of Crowley's favourite
television programmes. Woody the barman had [...]"
In the American edition of "Good Omens", this scene was changed to refer
to the series "The Golden Girls" and the character Rose. (The effect
remains the same).
Nobody knows the reason for this change, since both are American sitcoms
anyway. Speaking personally, I think Crowley is definitely a "Cheers"
person, and would *not* have liked "The Golden Girls" at all.
+ [p. 43] "He had attended a class in the 1870s run by John Maskelyne
[...]"
John Maskelyne was a 19th century stage magician who specialised in
sleight-of-hand illusions. He is fondly remembered in the illusionist
community as a mentor to aspiring young magicians. He also gained some
notoriety for exposing fraudulent spiritualists.
- [p. 46] "'I-should-be-so-lucky, -lucky-lucky-lucky-lucky,'"
This is the chorus to Kylie Minogue's break-through hit 'I should be so
lucky':
"I should be so lucky
Lucky lucky lucky
I should be so lucky in love"
Notice that this is yet another misquote: there are only *four*
successive 'lucky's, not five.
+ [p. 46] The scenes of Adam growing up in Tadfield are an affectionate
parody of the "Just William" books by Richmal Crompton.
They are a series of books about William Brown (age 11) and his gang of
Outlaws: Ginger, Douglas and Henry. The Johnsonites in "Good Omens"
parallel the Laneites in "Just William", Hubert Lane being a similarly
lugubrious podgy kid.
- [p. 52] 'Another One Bites The Dust', 'We Are The Champions', 'I Want To
Break Free' and 'Fat-Bottomed Girls' are all songs by Queen (see the note
for p. 3).
Queen fans have pointed out that at the time "Good Omens" was released,
there was no (or at least no easily available) Queen greatest hits album
that actually contained all of these songs. A recently released double
album has remedied this situation.
+ [p. 72] ""The Nice And Accurate Prophecies" made the "Hitler Diaries"
look like, well, a bunch of forgeries."
"Stern" magazine published a series of Hitler's diaries in the mid-80s
which, in fact, turned out to be forgeries.
+ [p. 75] "[...] Elvis was taken by Space Aliens in 1976 because he was too
good for this world."
Actually, Elvis dies in 1977, so perhaps these Space Aliens left a
doppelgaenger? Neil and Terry are certainly aware of the correct year,
because later on (p. 177, during the video trivia game scene) there is a
reference to both Bing Crosby and Marc Bolan dying in 1976. But in fact,
both died in 1977 as well.
- [p. 98] "Sable signed for it, his real name -- one word, seven letters.
Sounds like examine."
But, as many alert readers have noticed, the word 'famine' only has six
letters. Terry says: "Oh, yeah. The famous seven-lettered six letter
name. [...] It's like this. In the original MS, it was six letters,
because we can both count. And it was six letters in the Gollancz
hardcover. And six letters in the Workman US hardcover. And became seven
in the Corgi edition. No-one knows why."
+ [p. 99] "'An' there was this man called Charles Fort,' he said. 'He could
make it rain fish and frogs and stuff.'"
Charles Fort was a man who made a career in the first half of this
century out of attacking established scientific convictions and
practitioners, mostly by collecting and publishing book after book of
scientifically unexplainable occurrences and phenomena such as, indeed,
accounts of rains of fish, etc.
Although Fort and his Fortean Society cheerfully collected and proposed
vast numbers of crackpot theories, Charles Fort was by no means a
crackpot himself. He just wanted to attack and needle the scientific
establishment using every possible means at his disposal.
For more information about Fort I refer the reader to Martin Gardner's
wonderful book "Fads And Fallacies In The Name Of Science" (1957), or to
the Fortean Society's newspaper 'The Fortean Times', still being
published in both UK and US today.
+ [p. 104] "[...] eight other people [...] two of them [...] and one of the
other six [...]"
Or at least, that's what it says in my hardcover version and in the
American trade paperback. In the English paperback, however, the quote
says "one of the other *five*" (italics mine), which is of course rather
confusing, since two plus five usually equals seven, not eight.
Terry says: "[...] we got the *numbers* right -- I checked the original
MS. This is another manifestation of the strange numbers glitch (remember
*famine*, the seven letter word?)"
See the note for p. 98 for the 'famine' glitch Terry refers to.
+ [p. 107] "[...] people called Grasshopper, little old men sitting on
mountains, other people learning kung-fu in ancient temples [...]"
David Carradine's character Kwai-Chang Caine was given the nickname
'Grasshopper' by his mentor, Master Po, in the television series "Kung
Fu".
Incidentally, the head of the Shaolin monastery where Caine studied was
Chen Ming Kan, and the subsidiary monks were the masters Shun, Teh, Yuen,
Wong, Sun and, already mentioned, Po.
If you are the kind of person who enjoys learning this type of
mindboggling trivia, then *run*, don't walk to your bookstore, and buy
the "Straight Dope" books by Cecil Adams. Your life will be vastly
enriched. There is even a Pratchett connection as well: Terry uses the
"Straight Dope" books as reference works.
- [p. 112] "Newt [...] blushed crimson as he performed the obligatory
nipple-count on page three".
American readers should be aware that some English tabloid papers
traditionally showed a photo of a topless girl on page three, although I
am told these days only "The Sun" still follows this practice.
+ [p. 113] "'Women wi' too many arms.'"
Refers to the Hindu goddess Vishnu. Two lines further down there is a
reference to Baron Saturday, who is of course our old friend Baron Samedi
(see the note for p. 157 of "Witches Abroad".
+ [p. 116] "[...] the closest she'd been to Babylon was Torremolinos."
Torremolinos is a resort on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, which in
the past was very popular with the more down-market sort of British
holiday-maker. In US terms, imagine Atlantic City/Las Vegas. Take it down
market a bit. A bit more. No, a bit more than that. There. That's
beginning to get close to Torremolinos. The town has in recent years made
a great effort to change its image and attract a better class of tourist
but whether this has worked remains doubtful.
- [p. 126] "Newt's car was a Wasabi."
'Wasabi' is, in fact, a kind of horseradish used in sushi.
- [p. 127] "[...] the world's only surviving Wasabi agent in Nigirizushi,
Japan."
And 'Nigirizushi' *is* a kind of sushi.
- [p. 152] "The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, [...]"
'Kappamaki' is a Japanese cucumber roll.
+ [p. 157] "'There doesn't have to be any of that business with one third
of the seas turning to blood or anything,' said Aziraphale happily."
To the few particularly befuddled or atheistic readers out there who at
this point of the book still aren't quite sure what is going on, I can
only give the advice to take a closer look at Chapter 6 of the biblical
Book of Revelation.
- [p. 158] "Hi. This is Anthony Crowley. Uh. I --"
Up to this point in the novel, we have only been told that Crowley's
first name begins with an 'A', leading to the false expectation that his
name might be Aleister Crowley, as in the famous British mystic,
theosophist, black-arts practitioner and "most evil man on Earth".
+ [p. 179] "'Ere, I seen you before,' he said. 'You was on the cover of
that Blue Oyster Cult album."
This would be "Some Enchanted Evening" (1978), the Blue Oyster Cult's
second live album. Death painted by T. R. Shorr.
- [p. 180] The name Citron Deux-Chevaux refers to the Citroen 2CV, or
deux-chevaux as it is commonly called in Europe ("chevaux" means horses
-- 'CV' has a (very loose) connection with horsepower).
+ [p. 182] "'Just phone 0800-CASH and pledge your donation now.'"
A transatlantic amalgamation of British and American telephone number
formats.
- [p. 184] "...All we need is, Radio Gaga... sang Freddie Mercury."
Terry and Neil definitely seem to have trouble rendering songs correctly.
According to my source (I can't *stand* the bloody song myself) the line
that does appear in the song goes: "All we *hear* is, Radio Gaga".
+ [p. 189] "[...] formerly Curl Up and Dye, [...]"
People have noticed that this name also occurs in the "Blues Brothers"
movie, but Terry assures us that the names goes back much further than
that, and that there in fact at one time actually existed a hair dresser
named like this.
- [p. 191] "Sprechen Sie Deutsch" and "Parlez-vous Francais" are German and
French respectively for "do you speak German/French", but "Wo bu hui
jiang zhongwen" is Chinese for "I can't speak Chinese".
Terry says: "The bit of Chinese was Neil's. I said, "Are you sure it
means 'Do you speak Chinese?'" He said yes. I should argue?"
- [p. 203] "'Heigh ho,' said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway."
This refers to an old British topical song about the Italian opera-singer
Antonio Rolli, well-known in London during the Regency. The song was
called 'A Frog He Would-a Wooing Go', and the chorus has the lines:
"With a rolypoly, gammon and spinach,
Heigh ho, said Anthony Rowley."
This was intended to be a highly amusing satire on the way Italian people
speak. It has only survived to this day as a children's rhyme because of
its references to talking animals, and despite a totally confusing
chorus.
- [p. 203] "What she really wanted to be was an internationally glamorous
jet-setter, but she didn't have the O-levels."
This has to do with the British education system. After the 8th grade you
decide how many two-year O- (Ordinary) level courses you are going to
take (each with an exam at the end). Most non-minimum wage jobs ask for
at least 5 O-levels, people in college usually have 7 or 8. After your
O-levels you can either leave school or go on for A- (Advanced) level
courses, which take another 2-3 years.
These days, O-levels are no longer a part of the British education
system, having been replaced a few years back by the GCSE (General
Certificate of Secondary Education). A-levels still exist.
- [p. 248] Dick Turpin is the name of a famous British highwayman. Hence
the joke about Newt's car being called 'Dick Turpin': "'Because
everywhere I go, I hold up traffic,' he mumbled wretchedly."
- [p. 262] "They went to the Ritz again [...]. And, [...] for the first
time ever, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square."
From the song "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square":
"That certain night, the night we met
There was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square"
- [p. 262] The "Necrotelecomnicom" appears in the Discworld books as the
"Book Of Talking To The Dead", i.e. the Phone book of the Dead, as a
parallel to the more accessible Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead.
There is also the famous "Necronomicon" that appears in the Cthulhu
Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. (see also the p. 145 annotation for "Moving
Pictures")
- [p. 262] The "Malleus Maleficarum" is the name of an existing 15th
century guidebook for witch-hunters, written by Heinrich Kramer and
Joseph Sprenger (one a Dominican Inquisitor, the other the Major of
Cologne), two high-ranking officials of the Catholic church. This book
apparently became Europe's first best-seller after the invention of the
printing press, and the (early 20th century) English translation of this
book, "The Hammer Of Witches", is still in print today.
- [p. 262] "Liber Fulvarum Paginarum"
A dog Latin title that translates to "Book Of Yellow Pages"...
This book also appears in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" comics, where it is
used to summon Death (although the colourist didn't get the joke and
simply coloured the pages brown). Terry says:
"Liber Paginarum Fulvarum is a kind of shared gag. It's in the dedication
of "Equal Rites", too. Although I think we've got the shade of yellow
wrong -- I think there's another Latin word for a kind of yellow which is
closer to the Yellow Pages colour."
The other Latin word for yellow Terry is thinking of may possibly be
'xanthos', even though that's a Greek word.
- [p. 267] "And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot... no,
imagine a trainer, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; [...]"
From George Orwell's "1984": "If you want to imagine the future, imagine
a boot stamping on a human face forever". A 'trainer' is what the British
call a 'sneaker', but I rather hope that much was clear from context.
- [p. 268] "Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield."
From W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming":
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
- According to Terry, the U. S. edition of "Good Omens" has about 700 extra
words in it, because: "The Workman editor wanted... how can I put this...
some things explained more carefully."
- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman did have the title "668 -- The Neighbour
Of The Beast" on hand for a "Good Omens" sequel, but since Neil Gaiman
lives in the US now, Terry says: "I can't see it ever being written".
There are many documented occurrences of this joke in other contexts, by
the way (including a recently released actual novel with this name), some
of them predating "Good Omens". Terry again points out that it's only to
be expected since the joke is so obvious.
- There is a British KitKat chocolate bar TV commercial that predates "Good
Omens", and which involves an angel and a devil who are just starting
their respective coffee breaks. Both exit from separate elevators, the
angel accompanied by several pure-white animals, while the devil turns
back into his elevator and screams, in a British accent, "Shut up!" to
whatever demons are causing a ruckus behind him.
If you are now thinking that this is an extremely unlikely, farfetched
annotation -- well, so did I, until Terry Pratchett himself gave us the
following piece of information (when some folks were having further
discussions on how old this ad exactly was):
"I'm pretty sure [this ad] started about the same time as "Good Omens",
because:
One night I was sitting there typing away when I looked up and there the
angel and the devil were, having a teabreak (it's not really a
particularly "Good Omens" idea, but I know why people like it...) And I
thought, hey, great...
And about half an hour later there was an ad (some UK viewers might
remember it) for an insurance company which showed a businessman with
wide angel wings walking down the street...
And then, just when I was doing the bit where Crowley muses that people
are much better than demons at thinking up horrible things to do to one
another, I switched on the radio; there was a performance of "The
Tempest", and someone said "Hell is empty and all the devils are here".
It was a weird evening, really."
- People have been wondering (a) where the back cover photograph of "Good
Omens" was taken, and (b) which one of them is Terry Pratchett.
Terry provides the answer to both questions: "In Kensal Green Cemetery,
one frosty January day. Since white clothes tend to be thinner than dark
clothes, I had to be stood in front of a blowlamp between shots."
Kensal Green Cemetery can be found in West London, fairly near to
Wormwood Scrubs Prison. It is one of the seven or so cemeteries built
around the edge of central London in the nineteenth century to cope with
the large cholera outbreaks. They are large purpose-built efforts, and
are full of the glorious stonemasonry that the Victorians indulged in to
glorify themselves.
The photograph of Terry and Neil appears on the back of the UK hardcover,
and in black and white on the inside of the Corgi paperback. If you have
Internet access, you can get a copy of the photograph (in the CompuServe
GIF format) from the Pratchett Archives (see Chapter 5), in the
/pub/pratchett/gifs directory.
STRATA
- The whole book is, in a very general way, modelled on Larry Niven's
classic "Ringworld" novel: a group of differently-raced beings explore an
improbable, artificial world and try to find its mysterious builders.
+ The cover of the Corgi paperback is one of the few places where Josh
Kirby actually makes a genuine error (or at least one that can't be
explained away as artistic licence): Kin Arad is supposed to be a *black*
woman.
- [p. 107] "'Cape illud, fracturor', [...]"
Dog Latin which roughly translates to "Take this, buster".
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
Just as "Strata" borrows from Larry Niven, so does "The Dark Side Of The
Sun" pay homage to the famous SF-writer Isaac Asimov.
- [p. 27] The robot Isaac is obviously modelled on Asimov's well-known
positronic robots (and less obviously inspired by a similar robot that
appears in Robert Sheckley's "Dimension Of Miracles"). Isaac [the robot]
follows a more extended version of Asimov's equally famous 'Three Laws of
Robotics' though: on p. 53: "'[...] Eleventh Law of Robotics, Clause C,
As Amended,' said the robot firmly."
- [p. 133] "It was a skit [...] written in early Greek style. [...]
Chorus: 'Brekekekex, co-ax, co-axial'"
The play being performed is an updated version of Old Attic Comedy, as
written by the poet Aristophanes. This section specifically parodies
Aristophanes' "The Frogs", in which a chorus of (logically enough) frogs
sings an onomatopoeic song involving the lyric: "Brekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax".
TRUCKERS
+ The drawing of the old nome Torrit (the one holding the Thing) in Josh
Kirby's cover for this book is actually a caricature of Terry Pratchett
himself.
+ [p. 47] "[...] the long argument they'd had about the chicken boxes with
the pictures of the old man with the big whiskers on them."
Refers to Colonel Sanders, symbol for the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain of
fast-food chicken restaurants.
+ [p. 55] "'Life, but not as we know it.'"
Refers to another cliche "Star Trek" phrase, also parodied in the "Star
Trekkin'" song by The Firm (see the note for p. 78 of "Johnny And The
Dead").
+ [p. 58] "'Um. It was my idea of what an Outsider would look like, you
see,' said Dorcas.
This whole scene immediately made me think of the American pulp science
fiction magazines, which would often feature elaborate drawings
depicting, for example, what a Martian might 'scientifically' look like.
In fact, I have in my possession a 1965 issue of "Fantastic Stories",
featuring on the cover a reprint of a 1939 painting by Frank R. Paul
called 'The Man from Mars', with an accompanying explanation that Dorcas'
description of the Outsiders is almost an exact equivalent of. This
Martian has, for instance, disk-shaped suction feet (because of Mars'
lesser gravity), very big ears (because of the thin atmosphere making it
harder to catch sounds), white fur and retractable eyes because of the
extreme cold, etc. etc.
+ [p. 103] The Store will be closed down and replaced by "an Arnco Super
Saverstore in the Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall".
The Neil Armstrong Shopping Mall is also prominently featured as the
place where Johnny and his friends hang out in the 'Johnny' books, thus
establishing firmly that the Nomes and Johnny inhabit the same universe
(see also the not for p. 191).
+ [p. 130] "'Breaker Break Good Buddy. Smoky. Double Egg And Chips And
Beans. Yorkiebar. Truckers.'"
A 'Yorkie Bar' is a brand of chocolate bar sold in England. Very chunky,
like one of the thick Hershey bars: Solid Chocolate. Due to a series of
adverts depicting a truck driver carrying on through the night, etc.
etc., all because he has his chunky milk chocolate to hand, the words
'Yorkie Bar' instantly summon up 'Long Distance Lorry Driver' to any
Briton.
+ [p. 154] "'Amazing things, levers. Give me a lever long enough, and a
firm enough place to stand, and I could move the Store.'"
Another reference to the famous Archimedes quote. See the note for p. 101
of "Small Gods".
+ [p. 171] "He recalled the picture of Gulliver. [...] it would be nice to
think that nomes could agree on something long enough to be like the
little people in the book..."
If it's been a while since you actually read Swift, the rather bitter
irony of Masklin's musings may escape you. The point being that the
Lilliputters in "Gulliver's Travels" were anything but capable of
"agreeing on something long enough"; in fact they were waging a
generation-spanning civil war with each other over the burning question
of whether one should open one's egg at breakfast at the pointy end or at
the flatter end.
Eventually, the 'little-endian'/'big-endian' feud carried over into the
world of computing as well, where it refers to the order in which bytes
in multi-byte numbers should be stored, most-significant first (big
endian) or least-significant first (little endian).
+ [p. 191] "'-- Anyone seeing the vehicle should contact Grimethorpe police
on --'"
Minor inconsistency: by the time we get to the second book in the Nome
trilogy, the place of action has been retconned from Grimethorpe to
Blackbury (which is the place where Johnny lives, see the annotation for
p. 103).
A possible explanation might be that there *is* a real place called
Grimethorpe.
DIGGERS
- In the Corgi paperback editions I have, "Diggers" and "Wings" are
subtitled "The Second [respectively Third] Book Of The Nomes".
Apparently, in the first edition(s), the trilogy was called "The
Bromeliad" (and the last two books accordingly subtitled).
This refers to the central theme of the frogs living in a bromeliad, but
is also a pun on "The Belgariad", a well-known fantasy series by David
Eddings. And of course both names of course have their origin in Homer's
"Iliad".
This subtitle was dropped from the British editions, because the editor
didn't like it. In the US, there were no objections, so to this day US
editions of the Nome trilogy are subtitled "The Bromeliad".
- People have commented on the similarity between the Nome trilogy and
other childrens stories involving "little people". In particular, the
question has arisen a few times whether Terry was inspired by the
"Borrowers" books.
Terry answers: "I know about the "Borrowers", and read one of the books
in my teens, but I disliked them; they seemed unreal, with no historical
background, and it seemed odd that they lived this cosy family life more
or less without any supporting 'civilisation'. The nomes are communal,
and have to think in terms of nomekind. No. Any influence at all is from
Swift, in this case."
"I'll pass on whether Truckers is funnier than the Borrowers, but I'll
defend them as being *more serious* than the Borrowers. It depends on how
you define 'serious'."
- The American version of the Nome trilogy is not word-for-word the same as
the original one.
Terry says: "The Truckers trilogy has a fair amount of changes of a
'pavement = sidewalk' nature which is understandable in a book which
should be accessible to kids. They also excised the word 'damn' so's not
to get banned in Alabama, which is a shame because I've always wanted to
be banned in Alabama, ever since I first heard of the place."
- [p. 60] "iii. And the Mark of the Dragon was on it. iv. And the Mark was
Jekub."
'Jekub' was the Nomes' attempted pronunciation of JCB, the name of a
well-known manufacturer of tractors, diggers, and the like, whose logo of
course appears on all its products. Jekub, incidentally, appears to be a
thing called a 'back-hoe loader'. In the American version of the Nomes
trilogy 'JCB' was changed to 'CAT', standing for 'Caterpillar'.
+ [p. 82] "'We shall fight them in the lane. We shall fight them at the
gates. We shall fight them in the quarry. And we shall never surrender.'"
Paraphrases one of Winston Churchill's famous WW II speeches. Possibly
the easiest way to get to hear the original version is to listen to
Supertramp's 'Fool's Overture'.
- [p. 142] "'Jcb? Jekub? It's got no vowels in it. What sort of name is
that?'"
This is a play on 'YHWH', the classical Hebrew spelling of Yahweh, i.e.
Jehovah.
WINGS
- [p. 135] "'The other humans around it are trying to explain to it what a
planet is' 'Doesn't it know?' 'Many humans don't. Mistervicepresident is
one of them.'"
I don't think anybody in the Western world would not have caught this
reference to Dan Quayle, but let's face it: in twenty years people will
still be reading Terry Pratchett, and hopefully this APF -- but who'll
remember Misterexvicepresident?
+ [p. 150] "The humans below tried shining coloured lights at it, and
playing tunes at it, and eventually just speaking to it in every language
known to humans."
Refers to the climactic scene of Steven Spielberg's science fiction movie
"Close Encounters Of The Third Kind", where contact with the aliens is
indeed established by shining lights at and playing tunes to their
spaceship.
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND
In order to fully appreciate this novel it may not be necessary, but
I think it will greatly add to your enjoyment and understanding, if you
have seen at least one of the "Alien" movies, and have played at least
one computer shoot-em-up arcade game.
- [p. 13] "My dad brought me back 'Alabama Smith and the Jewels of Fate'
from the States."
Puns on the movie title "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom". Alabama
and Indiana are both American states.
- [p. 19] "Hey, I really need a computer because that way I can play
'Megasteroids'."
'Asteroids' is the name of an ancient, very famous computer game.
- [p. 27] Johnny's nickname for his friend: 'MC Spanner', spoofs our
world's pop-rap star 'MC Hammer' (a spanner is a wrench, and also
(colloquially) equates as a mild insult to the American English 'dork').
- [p. 40] This is not really an annotation, because I think it is highly
improbable that there is an actual link here, but the idea of Terry's
'Cereal Killers' immediately reminded me of the short science fiction
stories by Philip K. Dick. Not any particular one, but just the whole
idea of something horrible masquerading as something ridiculously
innocent appears again and again in Dick's slightly paranoid oeuvre.
- [p. 42] "'I saw this film once, right, where there were these computer
games and if you were really good the aliens came and got you and you had
to fly a spaceship and fight a whole bad alien fleet,' said Bigmac."
Bigmac is describing the 1984 science fiction movie "The Last
Starfighter" here (starring Lance Guest and Robert Preston).
As a movie this was decidedly a so-so experience (you can take my word
for it, I have seen it), but it deserves credit for one major
achievement: after the box-office disaster of "Tron" it was the first
Hollywood film to make extensive use of computer-generated animation.
And since "The Last Starfighter" was not a commercial failure, it
effectively opened the road again for further use of computer graphics in
movies.
- [p. 109] "What's your game name?' 'Sigourney -- *you're laughing!*'"
Sigourney Weaver is the actress who plays the heroine in all three
"Alien" movies.
- [p. 118] "On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say 'Um'"
The now famous slogan used in the advertising campaigns for the first
"Alien" movie was: "In Space, No-one Can Hear You Scream".
- [p. 133] "'I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a
spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked,' said
Johnny reproachfully. 'Doubtless it had a map,' said the Captain."
The movie Johnny refers to is, of course, "Alien".
+ [p. 147] "'Is there anything I can do?' [...] 'I don't know,' she said.
'Is there *anything* you can do?'"
The same dialogue occurs between Ripley and Sergeant Apone in the film
"Aliens".
- [p. 158] "'You're thinking: He'll be in there somewhere, hiding.'"
In "Alien", the alien creature eventually hid itself in the escape
capsule Sigourney Weaver tried to get away in at the end.
- [p. 162] "'If we find a cat I'm going to kick it!'"
In "Alien", Sigourney goes *back* into the mother ship because she did
not want to leave the cat behind.
JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
+ [p. 10] "'Singing "Here we go, here we go, here we go"?' said Johnny.
'And "Viva a spanner"?'"
For "here we go, here we go", see the note for p. 76 of "Guards!
Guards!".
'Viva a spanner' is Johnny's version of the song 'Viva Espana', an early
70s hit which appeared at about the time that many Brits were first going
on package tours to Spain (see also the note for p. 116 of "Good Omens").
+ [p. 12] "'He said the Council sold it to some big company for fivepence
because it was costing so much to keep it going.'"
The right-wing Westminster council, headed by Lady Shirley Porter sold
three cemeteries for 15p a couple of years ago, giving the same
reasoning.
+ [p. 19] "'I was referring,' said his grandfather, 'to William Stickers.'"
Refers to the posters forbidding flyposting reading "bill stickers will
be prosecuted". These quickly attracted the graffito "Bill Stickers is
Innocent" (and similar). William Stickers is obviously this much-harassed
individual.
+ [p. 19] "'No-one visits most of the graves now, except old Mrs Tachyon,
and she's barmy.'"
A tachyon is a hypothetical faster-than-light quantum particle, which has
not been proven to actually exist.
+ [p. 22] "The last thing to go was the finger, still demonstrating its
total disbelief in life after death."
See the Cheshire Cat note for p. 142 of "Wyrd Sisters".
+ [p. 25] "[...] a skinny kid with short hair and flat feet and asthma who
had difficulty even *walking* in Doc Martens, [...]"
Doc Martens (fully: 'Doctor Marten's patent Air-Wair boots and shoes',
with 'The Original Doctor Marten's Air Cushion Sole. OIL FAT ACID PETROL
ALKALI RESISTANT') are one of the most popular and fashionable footwear
in Britain among the younger generation. Once associated with skin-heads
and fascists they are now simply standard issue for almost anyone in the
UK between the age of 16 and 30.
+ [p. 26] "'I saw this film once, about a man with X-ray eyes,' said
Bigmac."
There are of course dozens of films that this description could apply to
(starting with "Superman", for instance), but the best candidate would
appear to be the 1963 Roger Corman movie "X -- The Man With X-Ray Eyes",
starring Ray Milland.
+ [p. 27] "'After "Cobbers",' said Bigmac."
"Cobbers" is obviously modelled on the Australian soap opera "Neighbours"
and its cousins.
+ [p. 28] "[...] the Joshua N'Clement block rated a lot higher on the
*Aaargh* scale than any cemetery. At least the dead didn't mug you."
A combination of Che Guevara, Joshua N'Komo, and the word 'inclement'.
+ [p. 37] "Like Dead Man's Hand at parties."
One of those party games known under a dozen different names, but which
usually consists of people passing various items to each other behind
their backs. The idea is to throw in some really weird stuff and gross
people out through their imaginations.
+ [p. 38] "'His head'll spin round in a minute!'"
A reference to the 1973 horror movie "The Exorcist", starring Linda
Blair, which actually turned out to be a watchable movie, rather to my
surprise. For a good laugh, I recommend instead that you try to get a
hold of either its 1977 sequel "The Exorcist II", or alternatively (for a
bit of more intentional humour) of that one Saturday Night Live sketch
with Richard Pryor ("the *bed* is *on* my *foot*!"). But I digress.
+ [p. 39] "'The lady in the hat is Mrs Sylvia Liberty,' he whispered."
Sylvia Pankhurst was a famous suffragette (in fact it was something of a
family trade), but it was Emily Davidson who threw herself under the
horse.
+ [p. 41] "'I saw this film,' gabbled Wobbler, 'where these houses were
built on an old graveyard and someone dug a swimming pool and all the
skeletons came out and tried to strangle people --'"
This movie is of course the famous 1982 movie "Poltergeist".
+ [p. 45] "'[...] the messages from God he heard when he played Cliff
Richard records backwards --'"
This may need some explaining for people who are (a) not into rock music
or religious fundamentalism, and (b) not European and therefore not in
the possession of the slightest idea as to who Cliff Richard is.
To begin with, it is a particularly obnoxious popular myth that heavy
metal groups (or any popular performer, for that matter) hide Satanic or
suicide-inducing or otherwise demoralising messages in their songs. This
is done by a technique known as 'backwards masking', which means the
message can only be revealed by playing the music backwards (although the
subliminal effect is supposedly in full effect when our innocent children
listen to these songs the right way round).
Needless to say that this is all an incredible load of nonsense: most
supposedly Satanic messages exist only in people's fevered imaginations,
and even if there *were* such messages there isn't a single shred of
evidence as to their effectiveness.
To finally arrive at the main idea behind this annotation: Cliff Richard
is a perpetually youthful-looking, squeaky-clean British pop singer,
who's been around since the sixties and is still hugely popular today,
even though (or perhaps even more so because) he found religion in the
seventies. Consequently, any backwards messages in *his* music, will most
definitely not be Satanic, but rather the opposite.
+ [p. 46] "Grandad was watching "Video Whoopsy"."
Although obviously meant as an equivalent to shows like "America's
Funniest Home Video's", this is not the name of any existing show (the
British version is called "You've Been Framed"). The word 'whoopsy' was
popularised by the 70s UK sitcom "Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em" as a
euphemism for excrement, as in "The cat's done a whoopsy on the carpet".
+ [p. 54] "*WHEEEsssh* ... we built this city on ... *ssshshhh* [...]
scaramouche, can you ... *shssssss* ..."
The "we built this city" fragment is from the 1985 hit song 'We Built
This City' by the group Starship.
The "scaramouche" line is, of course, from Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
(see also the note for p. 8 of "Good Omens").
+ [p. 61] "'Who *is* Shakespeare's Sister and why is she singing on the
wireless?'"
Shakespear's Sister is a 90's female duo (one of which is a former
Bananarama member, as well as the wife of Dave Stewart from 'Eurythmics'
fame -- but I digress), who were hugely popular in the UK in the early
90s (and a bit less popular in the rest of the world, I'm afraid) with
hits like 'Stay' and 'Hello (Turn Your Radio On)'. Shakespear's Sister
have split up recently.
British comediennes French and Saunders did a parody of Shakespear's
Sister, called Dickens' Daughter, which has to be seen to be believed.
+ [p. 63] "'You have to have three A-levels.'"
See the note for p. 203 of "Good Omens".
+ [p. 67] "*The People's Shroud is Deepest Black*"
As opposed to the People's Flag, which is Deepest Red, according to 'The
Internationale', which is indeed "the song of the downtrodden masses"
(see p. 79), as used by many socialist and communist parties.
+ [p. 68] "'Ghosts don't phone up radio stations!' 'I saw this film once
where they came out of the telephone,' said Bigmac, [...]"
Refers to the 1986 movie "Poltergeist II", starring JoBeth Williams and
Craig T. Nelson.
+ [p. 78] "'It's worse than that. I'm dead, Jim.'"
Refers to the "Star Trek"-associated catch phrase "It's worse than that,
he's dead Jim."
The phrase "He's dead, Jim" was a classic line from the television
series, spoken by Dr McCoy to Captain Kirk, in at least five different
episodes (if you must know: 'The Enemy Within' (about a dog), 'The
Changeling' (about Scotty), 'Wolf in the Fold' (about Hengist), 'Spectre
of the Gun' (about Chekov), and 'Is There in Truth no Beauty?' (about
Marvick)), and there are numerous near-miss instances where he said
something similar, such as "The man is dead, Jim" or "He's dead,
Captain". (This information courtesy of the newsgroup
rec.arts.startrek.misc.)
The "It's worse than that" part of the quote did not originate with "Star
Trek" itself, but with the 1987 song 'Star Trekkin'', by The Firm, which
was a huge novelty hit set to a simple 'London Bridge is falling down'
tune, and featuring lyrics along the lines of:
"It's life Jim but not as we know it
not as we know it, not as we know it
It's life Jim but not as we know it
Not as we know it Captain
It's worse than that he's dead Jim
Dead Jim, dead Jim
It's worse than that he's dead Jim
Dead Jim, dead!"
+ [p. 113] "'Wasn't there an Elm Street down by Beech Lane?' [...]
'Freddie. Now that's a NICE name.'"
Refers to the main character of the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series of
horror movies.
+ [p. 122] "[...] he'd never been able to remember all that 'Foxtrot Tango
Piper' business [...]"
Since 'Foxtrot Tango Piper' spells FTP, this *may* be a reference to the
computer world's File Transfer Protocol, which is a protocol (and also
the name for the associated types of client software) used to transfer
files between different machines. FTP is a very important means of data
exchange on the Internet (see e.g. the section on the Pratchett Archives
in Chapter 5 of this file), and is also well-known for being rather
confusing to the beginner. Cries along the lines of "I can't seem to get
the hang of this FTP business" are often heard on the net.
In the real world, the actual word used to denote the letter 'p' is
'Papa', by the way.
+ [p. 123] "'These aliens landed and replaced everyone in the town with
giant vegetables.'"
Refers to the 1978 movie "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", starring
Donald Sutherland.
+ [p. 130] "'New York, New York.' 'Why did they name it twice?' 'Well, they
ARE Americans.'"
A reference to the Sinatra song 'New York, New York', which starts out:
"New York, New York,
So good they named it twice."
See also the note for p. 65 of "Reaper Man".
+ [p. 146] "'Met Hannibal Lecter in a dark alley, did it?' said Yo-less."
A reference to the cannibalistic, eh, hero of the 1991 movie "The Silence
Of The Lambs".
+ [p. 152] "'Body snatchers!' said Wobbler. 'Burke 'n Head!' said Bigmac."
Burke and Hare were a famous pair of 'resurrectionists' who operated in
Edinburgh in the 19th century. Basically, they dug up fresh bodies from
graveyards, in order to supply surgeons with material for anatomical
dissections. Edinburgh University is not very proud of its association
with this trade, especially since eventually, when demand outstripped
supply, so to speak, Burke and Hare went a bit overboard and started
creating their own supply of fresh, dead bodies.
Also, Birkenhead is a town in Merseyside (the Liverpool area).
+ [p. 158] "'Good Work, Fumbling Four! And They All Went Home For Tea And
Cakes.'"
There was a series of children's books starring the Famous Five who
managed to repeatedly avert crimes, capture gangs and generally have a
Jolly Good Time.
THE CARPET PEOPLE
+ [p. 110] "'For me, all possibilities are real. I live them all. [...]
Otherwise they never could have happened.'"
Another one of Terry's quantum references. What Culaina describes here is
a particular interpretation of quantum theory, namely that each quantum
event causes time to split up into distinct possibilities ("the trousers
of time"). The idea that certain events can only happen if they are
directly observed is one of the best-known concepts in quantum mechanics.
THE UNADULTERATED CAT
+ [p. 7] "The Campaign for Real Cats is against fizzy keg cats."
Parodies the aims and objectives of the Campaign for Real Ale, a British
organisation dedicated to the preservation and promotion of traditional
beer-making in the face of the threat from mass-produced
'love-in-a-canoe' fizzy keg beer foisted on an unsuspecting public by the
large national breweries.
+ [p. 18] "[...] good home in this case means anyone who doesn't actually
arrive in a van marked J. Torquemada and Sons, Furriers."
Tomas de Torquemada, Spanish inquisitor-general notorious for his
cruelty. He was largely responsible for the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain around 1492.
+ [p. 28] "Or perhaps there is now a Lorry cat undreamed of by T. S.
Eliot."
T. S. Eliot, 20th century poet and critic. He wrote the book "Old
Possum's Book Of Practical Cats", which the musical "Cats" was based on.
+ [p. 28] "[...] growing fat on Yorkie bars."
See the note for p. 130 of "Truckers".
+ [p. 35] "You need a word with a cutting edge. *Zut!* is pretty good."
'Zut' is also a French exclamation, meaning, more or less, "drop dead".
+ [p. 44] "[...] sitting proudly beside a miniature rodent Somme on the
doorstep."
The Somme is a river in the north of France, which has been the scene of
some extremely heavy fighting in both World Wars. In 1916 for instance, a
French/British offensive pushed back the German lines there, at very
heavy cost to both sides.
+ [p. 73] "It's bluetits and milk-bottle tops all over again, I tell you."
Refers to a well-known evolution-in-action anecdote concerning a
particular species of birds which collectively, over a period of time,
learned how to open milk-bottles that the milkman left on the doorsteps
each morning in a certain English rural area.
+ [p. 84] "[...] the price of celery is eternal vigilance."
Undoubtedly a paraphrase of a familiar quote...
+ [p. 86] "a garden that looks like an MoD installation,"
MoD = Ministry of Defence.
+ [p. 92] "Owing to an unexplained occurrence of Lamarckian heredity [...]"
Lamarck was a contemporary of Darwin who became the symbol for what was
for a long time a very strong rival of Darwin's own Natural Selection as
an explanation for the mechanism of evolution. According to Lamarckism
(simplification alert!), changes acquired by an individual of a species
can immediately be inherited by the next generation, thus accounting for
evolution. Lamarckism has by now completely disappeared as a serious
evolutionary theory, in favour of modified versions of natural selection.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Thoughts and Themes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TURTLE MOVES!
It was already mentioned in one of the annotations: on alt.fan.pratchett
there will at any given moment in time be at least one discussion ongoing
about some aspect of the Discworld considered as a physical object. What
does it look like? Where did it come from? Does it rotate? What do
constellations look like for the people living on it? Where are the
continents located? Is there a map of Ankh-Morpork? What are the names of
the Elephants <Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, just in case
anyone'd forgotten>? Is Great A'Tuin male or female? That sort of thing.
Summarising these discussions is useless: nobody agrees on anything,
anyway, and besides: half the fun is in the discussion itself -- who cares
if these issues ever get properly 'resolved'. Nevertheless, I think it will
be in the spirit of this annotation file, and of interest to the readers,
if I reproduce here some of the things Terry Pratchett *himself* has said
on the various subjects, at those times when he chose to enter the
discussion.
To start with some history: many people think the appearance of the
Discworld as described in the novels was an invention of Terry's. This is
not really the case: in Hindu mythology, for instance, we find the idea of
a lotus flower growing out of Vishnu's navel. Swimming in a pool in the
lotus flower is the world turtle, on whose back stand four elephants facing
in the four compass directions. On their backs is balanced the flat,
disc-shaped world. See also Josh Kirby's magnificent drawing of the
Discworld in the illustrated version of "Eric".
Terry: "The myth that the world is flat and goes through space on the
back of a turtle is, with variations, found on every continent. An
African fan has just sent me a Bantu legend, which however does not
include the character of N'Rincewind."
Next up are the various questions concerning (a) exactly how the Discworld
looks, and (b) how it interacts with other celestial objects. Some relevant
quotes from Terry (as before, quotation marks (" ") indicate the beginning
and ending of quotes from different Usenet articles):
"The elephants face outwards. The spinning of the Disc does not harm the
elephants because that's how the universe is arranged."
"I've got some drawings I did of the Discworld at the start and I've
always thought of it like this:
The *shell* of the turtle is slightly smaller than the world, but the
flippers and head and tail are all visible from the Rim, looking down --
as Rincewind does in "The Colour Of Magic"."
"The Discworld revolves. The sun and moon orbit it as well. This enables
the Disc to have seasons. And the DW 'universe' -- turtle, world, sun,
moon -- moves slowly through our own universe."
"Where is the sun at noon? There are two answers.
A) It's directly over the centre of the Disc;
B) It's in a small cafe."
On the subject of constellations and what they would look like (see also
the file discworld-constellations in directory pub/pratchett/misc of the
Pratchett Archives):
"GA must move fairly fast -- in "The Light Fantastic" a star goes from a
point to a sun (I assume GA halted somewhere in the temperate orbits) in
a few weeks. I've always thought that Discworld astrology would largely
consist of research; we already know the character traits, what we're
trying to find is *what the new constellations are*, as the turtle moves.
And of course some particular constellations might have very distinct and
peculiar characteristics that are never repeated. Some constellations,
facing in front and behind, would change very little. The ones 'to the
side' would change a lot. Bear in mind also that the sun revolves around
the disc and the disc revolves slowly, so that every group of stars in
the sky would have a chance to be a constellation for birth date
purposes. In short, we need hundreds and hundreds of constellation names
-- good job there's Usenet, eh?"
Finally, on the less cosmic subject of planetary maps (for more information
about the Innovations comics and the Clarecraft models mentioned below,
read the alt.fan.pratchett Frequently Asked Questions file, available in
the file /pub/pratchett/misc/faq in the Pratchett Archives):
"The map of the Discworld in the Innovations comic is just an artist's
squiggle. The surface of the Discworld in the Clarecraft model is...
er... rather amazingly close to my idea, although the vertical dimension
is hugely exaggerated. And Stephen Briggs, having just sent off the
'definitive' map of Ankh-Morpork, has said that he can deduce a map of
the Disc. Fans have also sent me fairly accurate maps. Once you work out
that the Circle Sea is rather similar to the Med, but with Ephebe and
Tsort and Omnia and Djelibeybi (and Hersheba, one of these days) all on
the 'north African' coast, Klatch being 'vaguely Arabic' and Howondaland
being 'vaguely African' it's easy.
But all maps are valid."
"I've never thought that any parts of Discworld corresponded exactly to
places on Earth. Lancre is 'generic Western Europe/US rural', for example
-- not the Ozarks, not the North of England, but maybe with something of
each.
The Sto Plains are 'vaguely Central European'; Klatch, Ephebe, Tsort,
etc, are all 'vaguely Southern European/North African'.
Genua was designed to be a 'Magic Kingdom' but in a New Orleans setting
-- I hope the voodoo, cooking etc. made that reasonably obvious. Genua
and the other countries mentioned in "Witches Abroad" are all on the
other side of the Ramtops, which more or less bisect the continent.
As far as the Ankh-Morpork map is concerned, we've decided to get it
right *at a point in time*. In any case, it's a developing city; the city
of "Guards! Guards!" has evolved some way from the one in "The Colour Of
Magic"."
SONG...
The one song that all Discworld fans will be familiar with, is of course
Nanny Ogg's favourite ballad: 'The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All'
(see also the note for p. 36 of "Wyrd Sisters").
I will start this section with the complete text to the song that might
have been the prototype for the hedgehog-song -- except that it wasn't. It
can be found in Michael Green's book "Why Was He Born So Beautiful And
Other Rugby Songs" (1967, Sphere UK), it is called 'The Sexual Life of the
Camel', it probably dates back to the 1920s/30s, and it goes:
"The carnal desires of the camel
Are stranger than anyone thinks,
For this passionate but perverted mammal
has designs on the hole of the Sphinx,
But this deep and alluring depression
Is oft clogged by the sands of the Nile,
Which accounts for the camel's expression
And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile.
In the process of Syphilization
From the anthropoid ape down to man
It is generally held that the Navy
Has buggered whatever it can.
Yet recent extensive researches
By Darwin and Huxley and Ball
Conclusively prove that the hedgehog
Has never been buggered at all.
And further researches at Oxford
Have incontrovertibly shown
That comparative safety on shipboard
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
But, why haven't they done it at Spithead,
As they've done it at Harvard and Yale
And also at Oxford and Cambridge
By shaving the spines off its tail!"
The annoying thing about the hedgehog song is of course that Terry only
leaks us bits and pieces of it, but certainly never enough material to
deduce a complete text from. So alt.fan.pratchett readers decided to write
their *own* version of the song, which is currently at version 1.4 and
available from the Pratchett Archives in the file
/pub/pratchett/misc/hedgehog-song.
The first version of the song was written and posted by Matthew Crosby (who
tried to incorporate all the lines mentioned in the Discworld novels),
after which the text was streamlined and many verses were added by other
readers of the newsgroup. Currently we have thirteen verses, which makes
the song a bit too long to include here in its entirety.
Nevertheless, I thought it would be fun to show what we've some up with, so
I have compromised and chosen for my own favourite verses:
"Bestiality sure is a fun thing to do
But I have to say this as a warning to you:
With almost all animals, you can have ball
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
CHORUS:
The spines on his back are too sharp for a man
They'll give you a pain in the worst place they can
The result I think you'll find will appall:
The hedgehog can never be buggered at all!
Mounting a horse can often be fun
An elephant too; though he weighs half a ton
Even a mouse (though his hole is quite small)
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
A fish is refreshing, although a bit wet
And a cat or a dog can be more than a pet
Even a giraffe (despite being so tall)
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
You can ravish a sloth but it would take all night
With a shark it is faster, but the darned beast might bite
We already mentioned the horse, you may recall
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
For prosimian fun, you can bugger a lemur
To bolster your name as a pervert and schemer
The lemurs cry "Frink!" as a coy mating call
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all."
Finally, we come to the old drinking song mentioned in the note for p. 82
of "Eric": 'The Ball of Kerrymuir'. This song can, coincidentally enough,
also be found in Michael Green's "Why Was He Born So Beautiful And Other
Rugby Songs". That version appears to have the dirty words replaced by rows
of asterixes -- a rather useless form of editorial restraint, since in this
particular case it means there are more asterixes than normal alphabetic
characters left in the song. Enter alt.fan.pratchett correspondent Tony
D'Arcy, who was kind enough to fax me an uncensored copy of the song. 'The
Ball of Kerrymuir' has 43 verses, a small subset of which I now reproduce
for your reading pleasure, just to give you a feel for the song. From here
on down this section of the APF is rated X.
"Oh the Ball, the Ball of Kerrymuir,
Where your wife and my wife,
Were a-doing on the floor.
CHORUS:
Balls to your partner,
Arse against the wall.
If you never get fucked on a Saturday night
You'll never be fucked at all.
There was fucking in the kitchen
And fucking in the halls
You couldn't hear the music for
The clanging of the balls.
Now Farmer Giles was there,
His sickle in his hand,
And every time he swung around
He circumcised the band.
Jock McVenning he was there
A-looking for a fuck,
But every cunt was occupied
And he was out of luck.
The village doctor he was there
He had his bag of tricks,
And in between the dances,
He was sterilising pricks.
And when the ball was over,
Everyone confessed:
They all enjoyed the dancing,
but the fucking was the best."
...AND DANCE
When you mention 'Discworld' and 'dance' in the same breath, you can only
be talking about one thing: Morris Dancing, a subject that most non-Brits
will be almost completely in the dark about. Brewer has this to say on the
subject:
*Morris Dance*: brought to England in the reign of Edward III, when John of
Gaunt returned from Spain. In the dance, bells were jingled, and staves or
swords clashed. It was a military dance of the Moors or Moriscos, in which
five men and a boy engaged; the boy wore a 'morione' or head-piece, and was
called "Mad Morion".
Which is interesting, but doesn't really explain anything in a 20th century
context. Luckily, a newsgroup like alt.fan.pratchett attracts contemporary
Morris Dancers like flies, and for the rest of this section I will give the
floor to Rich Holmes. By the way: Rich wrote this text before the release
of "Lords And Ladies", which is a Discworld novel that features Morris
Dancing even more prominently then previous novels. In due time, I'm sure
this section will be suitably updated. Over to Rich:
-- Morris Dancing --
"Strata", "Guards! Guards!" and "Reaper Man"
All three of these books refer to morris dancing. (In "Strata", Kin
remembers seeing robots do a morris dance and, later, hums an "old
robot-Morris tune, 'Mrs. Widgery's Lodger'." In "Guards! Guards!" Nobby
turns out to be a folk dancer in his spare time; morris isn't mentioned by
name, but bells and hankies are cited. "Reaper Man" begins with a page or
so about the universality of morris dancing -- 'Mrs. Widgery's Lodger' is
mentioned again -- and late in the book the "other dance" is described.)
All this may be lost on the typical American reader. Picture, then, six men
in white shirts and trousers, decorated with ribbons, wearing bells on
their legs, in a two-by-three formation -- the men, not the bells. To a
tune played on fiddle or squeezebox, they dance up and down, back and
forth, gesturing with big white handkerchiefs in their hands -- or, maybe,
clashing yard-long willow sticks with one another. That's morris dancing,
as it was done in the late 19th century in the Cotswolds region of England.
It's also done these days, throughout the English-speaking world (though in
America it's not exactly an everyday sight), these days by women's teams
and mixed teams as well. As for where it came from, and when, and what it
all means, no one really knows. Its roots seem to go back to the European
continent sometime in or before the 15th century. Similar, possibly related
dances were and are found in Europe and even as far away as India. For a
while in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was commonly claimed by
folklorists to be the remnant of a pre-Christian fertility rite performed
by a male priesthood; there's really no hard evidence to support (or
refute) such a theory, though.
None of which stops people from doing it. It used to be the case -- maybe
still is -- that morris dancing was taught in English schools as part of
physical education, thus leaving most English people with about the same
kind of impression as we Americans mostly have of square dancing, somewhere
between amusement and nausea. Enough have not been soured on the whole
thing, however, to staff (reportedly) several hundred morris teams in
England as well as 170 or so in the US and God knows how many in Australia,
New Zealand, Hong Kong, and other odd places.
Terry Pratchett tells us he's "never waved a hankie in anger" nor knows any
morris dancers personally, but that he finds the morris dance kind of
fascinating.
Those interested can contact either Tom Keays (libhtk@suvm.acs.syr.edu) or
Rich Holmes (rsholmes@suhep.phy.syr.edu) about the Morris Dancing
Discussion List. You knew there was an ulterior motive here, didn't you?
WORDS FROM THE MASTER
Here are a number of excerpts from articles by Terry Pratchett that I think
fall under the heading of 'annotations' but which are either not associated
with one particular novel, or else so long they would break the flow of the
regular annotations.
Quotation marks (" ") indicate the beginning and ending of quotes from
different Usenet articles. For further clarity I am putting my own
editorial text in square brackets ([ ]) for the rest of this section.
- On the lack of chapters in the Discworld novels
"DW books don't have chapters because, well, I just never got into the
habit of chapters. I'm not sure why they should exist (except maybe in
children's books, to allow the parent to say "I'll read to the end of the
chapter and then you must go to sleep."). Films don't have chapters.
Besides, I think they interfere with the shape of the story. Use a
bookmark is my advice."
- On Discworld language use
"A certain amount of DW slang comes from Palari or Polari, the fairground
/ underworld / theatre 'secret language' (which seems to have a lot of
roots in old Italian). UK readers with long memories might recall the
pair of gay actors 'Julian and Sandy', in the old Round the Horne radio
show in the Sixties and Seventies (innocent times, innocent times); they
spoke almost pure Palari."
- Why don't you use a Macintosh for your writing?
"In fact I type so fluently that I can't deal with a mouse. My mother
paid for me to have touch-typing lessons when I was 13, and they took.
Hah! I can just see a DW book written with voice-recognition software!
Especially in this cat-ridden house! 'That's Ankh-Morpork, you bloody
stupid machine! GET OFF THE TURNTABLE!' As to goshwowness -- well, it
seems now that a 50mhz 486 is what you need if you're not going to have
silicon kicked in your face on the beach. But... Macs do interest me...
it's just that I associate them with manipulation rather than input."
- Where are all these references to science, physics in particular, coming
from?
"How much physics do I know? How do I know that? I don't know about the
stuff I don't know. I've no formal training but I've spent a lot of time
around scientists of one sort of another, and I'm a great believer in
osmotic knowledge."
[ People on the net (who tend to have a university or technical
background) are often impressed by Terry's many references to the
physical sciences in his novels ("Oh wow, you can really tell he used to
work for a nuclear power plant!" is an often-heard cry), but frankly I
think they are underestimating the non-university audience out there.
Most of the things Terry mentions in passing (e.g. Big Bang, quarks,
wave/particle duality) are covered in high school physics classes (or at
least in Holland they are), and surely everybody who does not
deliberately turn away from anything scientific in content will have seen
references in newspapers, on tv or in magazines to things like quantum
particles or the "Trousers of Time"? ]
- How do you write?
"How do I write? God, this is embarrassing. Look, I just do it. It's
pictures in the head and memories and thinking about things and it all
comes together. It's something I do."
"1) Watch everything, read everything, and especially read outside your
subject -- you should be importing, not recycling.
2) Use a wordprocessor... why do I feel this is not unnecessary advice
here? It makes everything mutable. It's better for the ego. And you can
play games when all else fails.
3) Write. For more than three years I wrote more 400 words every day. I
mean, every calendar day. If for some reason, in those pre-portable days,
I couldn't get to a keyboard, I wrote hard the previous night and caught
up the following day, and if it ever seemed that it was easy to do the
average I upped the average. I also did a hell of a lot of editing
afterwards but the point was there *was* something there to edit. I had a
more than full-time job as well. I hate to say this, but most of the
successful (well, okay... *rich*) authors I know seem to put
'application' around the top of the list of How-to-do-its. Tough but
true."
"Application? Well, it means... application. The single-minded ability to
knuckle down and get on with it, as they say in Unseen University
library."
+ The advantages of having a background in journalism
"Yes, Dave Gemmell and Neil Gaiman were both journalists. So was Bob
Shaw. So was I. It's good training because:
1) any tendency to writers' block is burned out of you within a few
weeks of starting work by unsympathetic news editors;
2) you very quickly learn the direct link between writing and
eating;
3) you pick up a style of sorts;
4) you get to hang around in interesting places;
5) you learn to take editing in your stride, and tend to be
reliable about deadlines;
6) you end up with an ability to think at the keyboard and reduce
the world to yourself and the work in hand -- you have to do
this to survive in a world of ringing telephones and shouting
sub-editors.
None of this makes you talented or *good*, but it does help you make the
best of what you've got."
- On the use of dog Latin:
"People in the UK, even in public (i.e., private) schools, don't assume
that "everyone knows Latin". Latin is barely taught anywhere anymore --
it certainly wasn't taught to me. But dog Latin *isn't* Latin, except by
accident. It's simply made-up, vaguely Latin-sounding phrases, as in Nil
Illegitimo Carborundum. 'Fabricati Diem, Punc' is total nonsense in Latin
[no doubt there are readers out there who could construct the correct
phrase that might have fallen from the lips of Dirty Hadrian]."
- On the writing of "Good Omens":
"Neil and I had known each other since early 1985. Doing it was our idea,
not a publisher's deal."
"I think this is an honest account of the process of writing "Good
Omens". It was fairly easy to keep track because of the way we sent discs
to one another, and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I
can say that I wrote a bit over two thirds of "Good Omens". However, we
were on the phone to each other every day, at least once. If you have an
idea during a brainstorming session with another guy, whose idea is it?
One guy goes and writes 2,000 words after thirty minutes on the phone,
what exactly is the process that's happening?
I did most of the physical writing because:
1) I had to. Neil had to keep Sandman going -- I could take time
off from the DW;
2) One person has to be overall editor, and do all the stitching
and filling and slicing and, as I've said before, it was me by
agreement -- if it had been a graphic novel, it would have been
Neil taking the chair for exactly the same reasons it was me for
a novel;
3) I'm a selfish bastard and tried to write ahead to get to the
good bits before Neil.
Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four
Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever -- by the end,
large sections were being done by a composite creature called
Terryandneil, whoever was actually hitting the keys. By agreement, I am
allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and
utterly mine. And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots.
Neil's had a major influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending. In
the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally
and did it for fun and wouldn't do it again for a big clock."
"Yes, the maggot reversal was by me, with a gun to Neil's head (although
he understood the reasons, it's just that he likes maggots). There
couldn't be blood on Adam's hands, even blood spilled by third parties.
No-one should die because he was alive."
- On rumours that Neil Gaiman claims to have come up with some of the ideas
in "Reaper Man", most notably the title and the Death storyline.
"To the best of my recollection the Reaper Man title was suggested by
Faith Brooker at Gollancz (although I can't swear to this). But I know,
and have gone on record about this, that the central idea of Reaper Man
actually came from reading a fan letter from a lady who wrote "Death is
my favourite character -- he can be my knight on a white charger any day
of the week". The lady concerned can be produced to the court, m'lud.
Listening intelligently while a fellow author talks about an upcoming
book isn't the same as 'suggesting the storyline and some other bits' and
in fairness to Neil I doubt that he put it quite like that -- this sounds
like something which has picked up a bit of spin in the telling. We've
known each other for a long time, we share a similar conceptual universe
-- we'd both agree happily that he has the darker end of it -- and we've
often talked about what we're working on and tried out stuff on one
another. And that's it, really."
+ How big is his publisher's influence on what gets written?
"Question was: do the publishers force me to write DW books? (the subtext
being, we'd like you to do other stuff). And the answer is, no, you can't
work like that. It works the other way round -- I say I'm planning two
more, they say, fine, here's a contract. The DW is sufficiently big and
vague that it can cover "Small Gods" and "Eric", so I've got a wide field
to work in. But... I'll say here again... the days of twice-yearly DW
books have probably gone. I'm still planning to write them regularly, in
fact publishing schedules might end up bringing out two in a year, but I
want to do other stuff as well. The fact is that each DW book sells more
than the one before, and the backlist sales keep on rising. I don't write
DW *because* of this, but it suggests that there's a readership out
there. I can't imagine how anyone can be *forced* to write a book."
+ On the joint copyright notice in his novels.
[ All Terry's novels are "copyright Terry and Lyn Pratchett", and people
on the net were wondering about the reasons for it. ]
"There's nothing... er... legally tricky about it. Lyn and I are a legal
partnership. So we hold the copyright jointly. There are some very small
and quite legit tax advantages in the partnership deal, but just as
important is the value of the copyrights and all kinds of legal
complexities to do with them. You just wouldn't want to know about it...
But, yes, all the writing is done by me."
+ On the various Discworld covers
"No, Kirby's Nanny Ogg is pretty good. And he's getting better (...he's
getting better...) at someone who looks about right for Magrat. But he
hasn't really got a clue about Granny. The artist who does the American
book club editions -- can't recall his name -- does not, I think, do good
*covers*, but he makes a very good job of getting the characters right.
They're not *my* idea of the characters, but they're certain based
squarely on the plot. His Granny on the cover of Equal Rites was
notable."
"The next UK paperback reprint of TCOM (they do a couple a year) will not
have a Kirby cover. This is an experiment -- there's been feedback to me
and to Transworld that suggests there are a large number of potential DW
readers out there who think they don't like fantasy and don't get past
the Kirby covers."
[ Scans of both the original Josh Kirby cover and of the new cover by
Stephen Player are available from the Pratchett Archives in the directory
/pub/pratchett/gifs. ]
+ On American editions of his books
"I'm also nervy about 'translating' things into American. ("Friends,
Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears = Yo, muthers,
y'knowwhatI'msayin?") I've seen what even intelligent, well-travelled
American writers think is normal British conversation ("I say, good
show!") and I'd hate to be guilty of that sort of thing in reverse."
"As far as "Johnny and the Dead" and "Only You Can Save Mankind" are
concerned: well, I dunno. It was bad enough having to translate Truckers
into American, and then it was published so badly by Dell in hardcover we
took the paperback rights away from them (which we are looking to sell
now). And the two more recent books are very British, or at least
European -- I can just imagine the dog's breakfast an US editor would
make of them. My agent's got 'em, but I'm not that keen to sell."
+ On reference books
"I've got Brewer's, of course <See the note for p. 117 of "The Colour Of
Magic">, and if I need an instant reference it's a handy book. He also
did a "Reader's Companion" which is even better. But Ebenezer is only the
tip of an iceberg of similar books, of which the Victorians were very
fond."
"Whenever I go to the States I always return with my luggage stuffed with
Panati's and "Straight Dope" books <See the note for p. 107 of "Good
Omens"> (I've seen the "Straight Dope" books here, but never seen an
imported Panati (they've got titles like "Extraordinary Origins of
Everyday Things")). I'm afraid I spend money like water in American book
shops; I dunno, they just seem more inviting. The oddest book shop I've
been in is Win Bundy's Singing Wind Book Ranch..."
+ Likes and Dislikes
"I *hated* the Alice books."
"May I also add that the film "The Return Of Captain Invincible", which
is a series of bad moments pasted together with great songs and a budget
of fourpence, is also a regularly-viewed video in the Pratchett
household. And David Byrne's "True Stories" also. Flame me if you wish.
I laugh with scorn at threats."
"These are modern authors whose books I will automatically buy knowing
that life is going to get that little bit richer:
George McDonald Fraser (The Flashman books)
Carl Hiassen (still to get well known over here)
Donald Westlake (a pro)
Joseph Wambaugh
Tom Robbins
But I read more and more non-fiction, biographies and stuff these days."
+ Is there any truth to the rumour that you and Neil Gaiman had a fall-out
over the "Good Omens" film project?
"Me and Neil... oh gawd. Yes, it's true to say we didn't agree over the
way the film should be going. But that's about it. There's no flying
daggers -- at least, I haven't thrown any and none have hit me."
+ Speaking of movies, what happened to the plans for a movie based on
"Mort"?
"A production company was put together and there was US and Scandinavian
and European involvement, and I wrote a couple of script drafts which
went down well and everything was looking fine and then the US people
said "Hey, we've been doing market research in Power Cable, Nebraska, and
other centres of culture, and the Death/skeleton bit doesn't work for us,
it's a bit of a downer, we have a prarm with it, so lose the skeleton".
The rest of the consortium said, did you read the script? The Americans
said: sure, we LOVE it, it's GREAT, it's HIGH CONCEPT. Just lose the
Death angle, guys.
Whereupon, I'm happy to say, they were told to keep on with the
medication and come back in a hundred years.
Currently, since the amount of money available for making movies in
Europe is about sixpence, the consortium is looking for some more
intelligent Americans in the film business. This may prove difficult.
It could have been worse. I've heard what "Good Omens" was looking like
by the time Sovereign's option mercifully ran out -- set in America, no
Four Horsemen... oh god."
+ If movies are too expensive, how about some more Discworld television
adaptations?
"There's some approaches. There's *always* some approaches. But too often
they're from people who want to do a 'funny fantasy' and paste the
Discworld label on it. I have to repeat the old mantra: Discworld isn't
internally funny to the people who live there -- there's no baseball
playing frogs. And too often the approach is [sub-text] "I bet a humble
print author like you would be overjoyed to be on REAL TELEVISION, eh?"
They get what Nanny Ogg calls the derriere velocitie PDQ, I can tell
you."
+ Annotations and References
"If I put a reference in a book I try to pick one that a generally
well-read (well-viewed, well-listened) person has a sporting chance of
picking up; I call this 'white knowledge', the sort of stuff that fills
up your brain without you really knowing where it came from. Enough
people would've read Leiber, say, to pick up a generalised reference to
Fafhrd, etc., and even more people would have some knowledge of Tolkien
-- but I wouldn't rely on people having read a specific story."
"I like doing this kind of thing. There are a number of passages in the
books which are 'enhanced' if you know where the echoes are coming from
but which are still, I hope, funny in their own right."
"Sometimes I... well... I just write stuff which hasn't been pinched from
ANYONE (shuffles feet, looks embarrassed...)."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Editorial Comments
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT'S NEW IN THIS VERSION?
Although the APF v6.0 is much, much larger than the previous version was
(see the Statistics section below), there have not been any really
fundamental changes to the document -- it's just like v5.0 was, only more
so.
There have been many minor changes though, which taken together should
still have the effect of a whopping overall improvement on the readability
and usefulness of the APF -- or at least so I hope. Some of the changes you
may be interested in knowing about:
1) The entire APF has now been thoroughly spell-checked. This was
something I already attempted to do for v5.0, but eventually omitted
because it was such a huge pain: all the weird Discworld words and names
made the spell checker stop at nearly every sentence in the file. It just
took too long.
The result was that APF v5.0 contained *way* too many stupid typos and
spelling errors. So this time I gritted my teeth, and carefully went
through the entire document. It took me over an hour, but at least I am now
reasonably certain that there will only be a couple of those kinds of
errors left, at most.
While I was at it, I have also attempted to make the entire APF adhere to
British, instead of mixed US/UK spelling -- that should also help give a
more consistent feel to the text.
Finally, I took the step of recruiting beta-readers, who went over the file
before the public release, and who made many useful suggestions and
corrected many remaining mistakes. If there are now any errors left in the
APF, blame them, not me. <Ok, Ok -- just kidding>
2) Many small textual improvements: I have tried to comprehensively
cross-reference the annotations to each other where appropriate. All of the
movie references are now better documented, mentioning at least the year
the movie was released, as well as in most cases either the director or the
principal actor(s). Most of the quotes from songs and books have now been
personally checked for accuracy. Many grammatical and style errors were
fixed (English isn't my first language and sometimes it really shows), and
the punctuation was made more uniform throughout the document. I have
included, wherever appropriate, pointers to online texts (e.g. Shakespeare,
Edgar Allan Poe, fairy tales) that are available for people connected to
the Internet. Finally, I have included much more material from Terry's
articles to the net than ever before.
3) The LaTeX typeset version of the APF has been vastly improved in layout
and general coolness: dynamic headers and footers, footnotes, and the
addition of various kinds of accents and umlauts are only some of the
changes. The APF is now so huge that the ASCII version is not really
readable anymore (I know I said that last time as well, but this time I
*mean* it). If there is even the remotest possibility for you to get your
hands on a PostScript printer and 58 sheets of paper, then please consider
printing out the typeset version of the APF -- I think I can guarantee that
you will not be disappointed. See the section about the Pratchett Archives
for further details.
STATISTICS
Please allow me the indulgence of a short section on my favourite subject:
trivial statistics. The APF v6.0 boasts a total of no less than 313 new or
non-trivially expanded annotations. With these results, we get the
following APF Growth Chart data points:
APF v1.4 had 14 entries, 160 lines and was 5 Kb large.
APF v2.0 had 78 entries, 631 lines, and was 28 Kb large.
APF v3.0 had 133 entries, 1071 lines, and was 49 Kb large.
APF v4.0 had 198 entries, 1702 lines, and was 79 Kb large.
APF v5.0 had 336 entries, 3340 lines, and was 148 Kb large.
APF v6.0 has 622 entries, 6611 lines, and is 296 Kb large.
Keep it up folks, keep it up...
TO ANNOTATE OR NOT TO ANNOTATE
In previous versions of the APF nearly every annotation that I received was
quickly incorporated into the next version of the file, and everybody was
happy.
For the current version, however, I rejected literally dozens of
annotations, most of which are not so very different from ones that *did*
make it into the APF, and I am a bit apprehensive that people might take
offence at this (particularly since I suspect they will not see the method
to my madness) and will stop making an effort to supply me with
annotations.
Now for one thing, quite a few annotations didn't make it into this version
of the APF because I simply couldn't place them. People send me annotations
that are keyed to the page numbers in their books, which more often than
not are not the same editions I use. As a result, I can sometimes spend a
*lot* of time searching for a particular sentence or scene, and in many
cases I just can't find it at all.
Another reason why annotations may be rejected is because I couldn't
confirm the reference. Sometimes I'll include references that are simply so
cool, or so authoritative-sounding, that even though I don't know anything
about the subject myself, I feel they will enhance the file. Often,
however, I receive minor annotations that are rather vague and
non-specific, which I do not wish to include without some further
confirmation. This confirmation can for instance consist of someone else
mailing me the same annotation, or of me delving into encyclopaedias or
dictionaries and checking things myself.
All the remaining non-entries were rejected because I thought they were
either too implausible or too obvious. Now *please* note, that as soon as I
start getting the same annotation from two or more sources, than I will (in
nearly all cases) accept it for the APF, regardless of what I may think
about it myself.
However. When I have received a particular annotation from one source only,
I'm going to make what is basically a very subjective judgement call -- and
as long as I'm editor of the file I'm afraid you'll have to live with that.
If an obscure annotation strikes me as implausible or just not very
interesting, then it's out. If I think there's a remote chance it will be
valid, or if I just *like* it, than it's in. If a trivial annotation is
just like many others already in the file, than it will usually be in (I am
a stickler for consistency), unless I'm bored, in which case I simply want
to get on with the fun stuff, and I leave it out. Sic Biscuitas
Desintegrat, as they say.
The important point I want to get across here is that all these annotations
are not rejected 'forever' but merely filed away for future reference.
They will in all probability be used in new versions of the APF, or as soon
as more information becomes available to me -- generally only a question of
time.
So what *do* I base my judgement calls on, you may rightfully ask? The
answer is of course that I don't really know, and that it usually just
depends on my mood anyway. One important tip I can share with you is the
following:
I do *not* like explaining English puns or words. As soon as another
language is involved -- fine ("with milk?"). As soon as some weird old
British saying is parodied -- cool ("good fences"). As soon as some guy's
name is punned upon -- ok ("whittle"). As soon as it is obvious that many
readers are simply not getting it ("echognomics") -- no problem. But as a
basic heuristic I am assuming that everybody who is able to read Terry
Pratchett's books has enough command of the English language to understand
puns, and enough sense to use a dictionary if she encounters an unfamiliar
word. I will not explain why "Witches Abroad" or "Equal Rites" are funny
titles.
The same goes for translating Nanny Ogg's "fractured Esperanto" which I
will only do where I think it warrants explaining.
Etcetera.
THE APF IN LATEX, POSTSCRIPT AND OTHER TYPESET FORMATS
The APF v5.0 marked the first appearance of the typeset version of the APF,
which turned out to be a huge success, much to my satisfaction, since I put
considerable effort into it. The LaTeX/PostScript version of APF v6.0 has
been much improved over v5.0, and as I said before: I strongly urge you to
check it out.
The typeset version is generated automatically from the plain text version
using a number of special-purpose software filters. A key property of these
filters is that they are independent of the target language, which means
that it will be possible for me to generate typeset commands for a number
of different formats, not just for LaTeX.
I had hoped to have some concrete examples finished in time for this
release (most notably I wanted a version in the Macintosh/NeXT RTF format,
and a version with WordPerfect control codes), but that was not to be.
Maybe next time. I will keep you posted.
CREDITS
People who write articles to alt.fan.pratchett or who e-mail me on the
subject of annotations have by now learned to live with one thing: for the
APF I will freely quote (i.e.: steal) from everybody, without explicit
permission or credit.
It's not only that I think long lists of 'contributor names' would be a
bother to maintain (we're literally talking about hundreds of names here),
would make the APF even larger, and would be completely uninteresting to
anybody except the contributors themselves; but doing it my way also allows
me to edit, change, and mutilate the texts as I see fit without worrying
about folks going "but that's not what I said!".
(The only exception to this rule, by the way, is the material I quote from
Terry Pratchett himself: I *never* edit or change any of that, apart from
choosing a selection in the first place, fixing typos or obvious mistakes,
and adapting punctuation to confirm to the rest of the APF. In other words:
What You See Is What He Said.)
Another rule that applies throughout the APF is that whenever you see the
pronoun 'I' in an annotation, than it will *always* be me, the editor
speaking (unless explicitly noted otherwise, e.g. in Terry's quotes).
Anyway, apart from all the folks who contributed annotations, there are
still lots of people who have gone out of their way to help me get the APF
into its current form, and thanking them is certainly something that I
don't mind spending a few paragraphs on. So here is the APF Hall Of Fame:
Nathan Torkington, for maintaining the Terry Pratchett Bibliography and the
Frequently Asked Questions list. The idea for the APF can be traced back
directly to his FAQ.
Sander Plomp, for making his logs of the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup
available to me, and for coming up with the idea of making a LaTeX version
of the APF (as well as helping me out with some technical details).
My beta-readers: Tim 'Quetzal' Pickett, Nathan Torkington, and
Andy Holyer.
Trent Fisher, who answered all my Perl questions, and who wrote me a
formatting script that has made creating the typeset APF versions take
hours less time than it used to do.
David Jones, who answered all my LaTeX questions, and who sent crucial new
style files my way.
Andy "&." Holyer, for his help with the Summary, for finding me a copy of
Brewer's, and for being an all around fountain of inspiration. He wrote
most of the funny annotations, too.
Rui Madeira, for converting the APF to the AmigaGuide hypertext format.
And last, but not least: Terry Pratchett, for giving us something to
annotate in the first place; for giving me permission to use quotes from
his articles in the APF; and for having to put up with increasing numbers
of fans who, because of the APF, have begun to think he is incapable of
writing anything truly original. They should know better.
THE PRATCHETT ARCHIVES
You have now finished reading this file. You understand that this file is
updated fairly regularly, and you are wondering: was this the most recent
version of the APF? And if not, where do I find the latest release? And
where can I get this LaTeX/PostScript version?
The answers to all these questions can be found at the Terry Pratchett
Archives, which is an Internet archive site run by yours truly, and
accessible both through e-mail and ftp.
The Pratchett Archives contain not only the most recent APF files, but also
a host of other Pratchett-related material that might be of interest to
fans. For example:
-- The Pratchett Quote File (PQF) which is a collection of over 400
one-liners, catchphrases, general quotes, pieces of dialogue, and
running gags, all culled from Terry's novels and other writings.
-- The latest versions of the alt.fan.pratchett Frequently Asked Questions
list (FAQ) and the Terry Pratchett Bibliography, both maintained by
Nathan Torkington.
-- Andrew Millard's comprehensive set of rules for playing the Cripple Mr
Onion card game.
-- The alt.fan.pratchett version of the Hedgehog Song, as well as the
alt.fan.pratchett Discworld Constellation file, an attempt at collective
creative astronomy.
-- Many scanned pictures and images: photo's, ads, book covers, etc.
In order to get your hands on these goodies, the best thing you can do is
use ftp. The relevant Internet addresses are:
Mother site:
ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl, in the directory /pub/pratchett
In America:
theory.lcs.mit.edu, in the directory /pub/pratchett, or
rincewind.mech.virginia.edu, in the directory /pub/pratchett
In Australia:
ftp.uts.edu.au, in the directory /Mirror/Pratchett
The American and Australian sites are mirror sites that contain exactly the
same material as the Dutch mother site, but which should give a better
performance for non-European netters.
The next best thing is contacting the Pratchett Archives Mail Server: just
send some e-mail to:
pratchett-server @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl
with in the body the text
send help
index
and you're all set to go. But do me a favour, and please read the help
file, especially the section about the 'limit' command.
Whether you ftp or e-mail, always be sure to look at the README files in
the various directories first.
Finally, there is now a 'read-only' mailing list for the Pratchett
Archives, to which I will post occasional messages about updates to the
Archives, or about new APF and PQF versions, etc.
In order to subscribe to this list, just send some e-mail to
pratchett-announce-request @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl
with the subject "subscribe".
Of course, if all you care about is the APF, or if you do not have easy
access to ftp or e-mail, you can always read the Usenet newsgroup
alt.fan.pratchett. The APF 'belongs' to this group, and I always post the
latest version there whenever it is released. This applies *only* to the
ASCII version of the file though, and it has the disadvantage of giving you
a chunked-up file. Some of the other files in the archives are also
occasionally posted to the Net, but that is more the exception than the
rule.
DISTRIBUTING THE APF
It's really very simple: I have by now spent a very considerable amount of
time trying to make this file a useful resource for fans of Terry
Pratchett's work, and I would just be delighted to see the APF reach as
many of those fans as possible, period.
So feel free to distribute the APF among your friends, to mail copies to
your colleagues, or to put it up on bulletin boards, archive sites or
whatever other advanced means of communication you have available to you.
All I ask is that you (a) only distribute the APF for free, and in its
entirety (for obvious reasons, I should hope), and (b) *let me know* if you
put it up for permanent retrieval somewhere, e.g. a bulletin board or
archive site, so that I can keep you personally informed of new versions as
they get released. Don't you just hate those archive sites that store
outdated versions of files?
THE NEXT VERSION OF THE APF
Once, in a very distant past, it was my intention to update and post the
APF regularly, at periodical intervals. For the first few months of its
existence, when updating the APF simply meant spending one or two evenings
at home behind the computer, this was certainly not an unworkable scheme.
But then I kept getting more and more annotation e-mail, the traffic on
alt.fan.pratchett increased, I got the idea for a typeset version, Terry
continued to release new books, real life work kept intruding (a question
of priorities, I know, but still, those thesis advisors can be so
*unreasonable* sometimes) -- and pretty soon there was no way that I could
keep up the pretence of regularity. So I didn't, and there was a six month
gap between v5.0 and v6.0. So sorry.
To be sure, there *will* be an APF v7.0 (or v6.1 -- that depends on how
many new annotations you people send me...), but certainly not before next
year. I do hope, however, that with v6.0 I have given you all something
substantial enough to last you until then.
See you in '94.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
;;; And now some information for my editor. Pay no attention...
;;; Local Variables:
;;; mode:indented-text
;;; fill-column:75
;;; End:
Reference in New Issue View Git Blame Copy Permalink