Good Omens

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Title Good Omens

1st edition cover
Author Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Fantasy, Comedy novel
Publisher Gollancz (UK) / Workman (USA)
Released 1 May 1990
Media type Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages 288 pp
ISBN ISBN 0-575-04800-X

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990) is a fantasy novel written in collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

The book is a comedy and a somewhat parody of the 1976 film The Omen (as well as other books and films of the genre), concerning the birth of the son of Satan, the coming of the End Times and the attempts of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to avert them, having become accustomed to their comfortable postings in the human world. A subplot features the gathering of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse — War, Famine, Pollution (Pestilence having retired in 1936 following the invention of penicillin), and Death — the last of whom is characterised in a manner reminiscent of the personification of Death in Pratchett's Discworld novels and calls himself Azrael before his final exit.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
One of the many styles of the book
One of the many styles of the book

It is the coming of the End Times; the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgment will soon be cast on the human race. This comes as a bit of bad news to the angel Aziraphale (who was the angel of the Garden of Eden) and the demon Anthony Crowley (who was the serpent who tempted Eve to eat the apple), the respective representatives of God and Satan on Earth, as they've actually gotten quite used to living their cozy, comfortable lives and, in a perverse way, actually have taken a liking to humanity. As such, since they're both good friends (despite supposedly being polar opposites, representing Good and Evil as they do), they decide to work together and keep an eye on the Antichrist, destined to be the son of a prominent American diplomat stationed in Britain, and thus ensure he grows up in a way that means he can never decide simply between Good and Evil and, therefore, postpone the end of the world.

Unfortunately, Warlock, the child everyone thinks is the Anti-Christ is, in fact, a perfectly normal eleven year old boy. Owing to a bit of a switch-up at birth, the real Anti-Christ is in fact Adam Young, a charismatic and slightly otherworldly eleven-year-old who, despite being the harbinger of the Apocalypse, has lived a perfectly normal life as the son of typically English parents and, as a result, has no idea of his true powers. As Adam blissfully and naively uses his powers, the race is on to find him - the Four Horsemen (or, rather, Bikers, owing to their motorcycles) of the Apocalypse are assembled, and the incredibly accurate (yet so highly specific as to be useless) prophecies of Agnes Nutter, sixteenth century prophetess, are rapidly coming true...

Agnes Nutter was a witch in the 17th century and the only real prophet to have ever lived. She wrote a book called "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch" which was a collection of prophecies which did not sell very well because they were unspectacular and all were true. She in fact decided to publish it only to receive a free exemplar as the author. There is only one book left, which belongs to her descendant Anathema Device. Agnes was burnt at the stake by a mob (because that's what mobs did at that time). The burning caused her hometown to explode, as she had foreseen this and packed 80 pounds of gunpowder and 40 pounds of roofing nails into her coat.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Authorship

Speculation as regards which author wrote what has been rife for many years. In an attempt to put the issue to rest, Neil Gaiman has said: "We were both living in England when we wrote it. At an educated guess, although neither of us ever counted, Terry probably wrote around 60,000 "raw" and I wrote 45,000 "raw" words of Good Omens, with, on the whole, Terry taking more of the plot with Adam and the Them in, and me doing more of the stuff that was slightly more tangential to the story, except that broke down pretty quickly and when we got towards the end we swapped characters so that we'd both written everyone by the time it was done, but then we also rewrote and footnoted each others bits as we went along, and rolled up our sleeves to take the first draft to the second (quite a lot of words), and by the end of it, neither of us was entirely certain who had written what. It was indeed plotted in long daily phone calls, and we would post floppy disks (and this was back in 1988 when floppy disks really were pretty darn floppy) back and forth." [1]

[edit] Alterations between versions

The United States edition of Good Omens had numerous alterations to the text. The most significant of these is the addition of an extra 700 word section just before the end, dealing with what happened to the character of Warlock, the American diplomat's son who was swapped with Adam. [2]

The Dutch translation of Good Omens contains an ironic preface by the translator wherein he asserts that no extra footnotes were added to clarify matters that might be unclear to a modern audience - annotated with footnotes explaining omen and Crowley.

[edit] Translations

[edit] Later Works

[edit] Sequel

668 - The Neighbour of the Beast was slated as the title for a sequel to Good Omens, but after Neil Gaiman moved to the United States, Terry Pratchett expressed doubt that a sequel would be written. [2]

[edit] Film version

A film, directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned, but as of 2006 seems to have come to nothing. Funding was slow to appear and Gilliam moved on to other projects. The film has been removed from IMDB. Johnny Depp was originally cast as Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale. According to an interview in May 2006 at the Guardian Hay Festival, Gilliam is apparently still hoping to go ahead with the film.

As of 2002 Gilliam still hoped to make the film with its already completed script. [3]

The tedious history of this project and similar experiences with projected films of various of Gaiman's other works (including The Sandman series) have led to his cynical view of the Hollywood process, a view which occasionally surfaces in his weblog [4] and in some of his short fiction.

Terry Pratchett has had much the same issues with Hollywood 'suits', [5] but he too would love to see the film made.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/05/several-days-of-unposted-mailbag.html
  2. ^ a b Leo Breebaart and Mike Kew. Good Omens. The Annotated Pratchett File (version 9.0). Retrieved on February 28, 2007.
  3. ^ http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/gofact.htm
  4. ^ http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp
  5. ^ http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/words-from-the-master.html

[edit] External links

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