Portal:Discworld
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Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by the British author Terry Pratchett set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which are in turn standing on the back of a giant turtle, the Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody or at least borrow ideas from J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and William Shakespeare, as well as myth, folklore and fairy tales, often using them for satirical parallels with current cultural, technological and scientific issues.
Since the first novel, The Colour of Magic (1983), the series has expanded, spawning several related books and maps, five short stories, cartoon and theatre adaptations and even music inspired by the series. The first live action screen adaptation for television (Hogfather) was broadcast over Christmas 2006. Another one for the cinema (The Wee Free Men) is currently in development.
Newly released Discworld books regularly top The Sunday Times bestsellers list, making Pratchett the UK's best-selling author in the 1990s. He has since been overtaken by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, but still holds the record for the most shoplifted books. Discworld novels have also won awards such as the Prometheus Award and the Carnegie Medal. In the BBC's Big Read, four Discworld books were in the top 100, and a total of fourteen in the top 200.
Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs is a corporal in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, first appearing in the novel Guards! Guards!.
Nobby Nobbs is the kind of person who joins the army to loot corpses. It is said that there's a field-marshall's baton in every footman's knapsack; Nobby's Army kit generally consists of two warehouses, complete with said batons, other armies' uniforms, golden teeth, other petty valuables and several kilos of boots, some of them still occupied. Despite his kleptomania, he is honest about the big things (at least, the ones too big to steal) and is described as someone that you can trust with your life, although you'd be daft to trust him with half a dollar. Sgt Colon also remarked in Jingo that he had heard of places where the generals looked at which side's uniform Nobby wore at the moment to learn the situation of the battle.
He is described as untidy, smelly, and despite being human, about the same height as a dwarf, and carrying a certificate signed by the Patrician to prove that he's a human being. The text of this note can states that on the balance of probability, he is a human being. A running joke is the inability of others to believe this, despite — or even because of — the evidence. In fact, in Hogfather, even Death himself was unable to discern Nobby's species. He always seems to have a cigarette butt about him, normally stowed behind his ear, which has been described as a nicotine graveyard. Cigarettes quickly become butts in his presence, and stay as such for an apparently infinite amount of time.
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| Unseen University coat-of-arms |
The Unseen University (UU) is a school of wizardry in the Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork, staffed by a faculty composed of mostly indolent and inept old wizards. The official motto of UU is "Nunc Id Vides, Nunc Ne Vides", loosely translated as "Now you see it, now you don't". The unofficial motto is "η β π," or "Eta Beta Pi." (Eat A Better Pie). The university's name is a pun on the real-world Invisible College.
The coat of arms is a livre des sortilèges, attaché en cuivre, sur un chapeau pointu, on a field, azure. (That is: a book of magic spells, with copper clasps, over a pointed hat, on a blue background.) As usually rendered, the coat bears a strong resemblance to the coat of arms of the University of Oxford.
The University is centred around the 800-foot Tower of Art, out of which it grew; any further attempt at grasping its geography is close to pointless. Due to the high levels of background magic in the vicinity, a typical map of UU vaguely resembles an exploding chrysanthemum and is usually only valid for a day or so. This is also the cause of the various physical and biological anomalies that plague it. In some rooms the direction of gravity moves around as a day passes, and some rooms contain other rooms which contain the room you started with (especially problematic for a conga line). The University's gargoyles have taken on a life of their own (not that this is anything unusual for Discworld gargoyles in general), and both a colony of ants in the main university buildings and a flock of ravens roosting in the Tower of Art show unnatural intelligence and, for the ravens, an ability to speak. The fabric of the University is said to absorb knowledge, since all students enter university knowing absolutely everything, and leave admitting they know very little.
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- ' Witches usually wear black, but as far as she could tell the only reason that witches wore black because they'd always worn black. This did not seem a good enough reason, so she tended to wear blue or green. '
-- Wintersmith - 'Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo.'
-- Lord Vetinari, Jingo - It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.
-- The Colour of Magic - 'Dead?' said Rincewind, In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.
-- The Light Fantastic - It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
-- Equal Rites
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The story is the first since Carpe Jugulum to feature the Nac Mac Feegle, or Pictsies, six inch tall blue-painted red-haired fairies, who, according to their own history, rebelled against the wicked rule of the (or possibly "a") Queen of the Fairies, and were therefore exiled from Fairyland. According to everyone else (including the Nac Mac Feegle themselves if they forget this story) they were kicked out for causing fights and being drunk at two in the afternoon. They speak what can only be described as some sort of variation on the Scots language, usually Glaswegian (examples include "Waily, waily, waily!", "Crivens!", and "They can tak' oour lives but they cannae tak' oour troousers!"), and have an innate fear of writing and lawyers - in the presence of whom their swords glow blue. They are warriors, hunters, and foragers; Nac Mac Feegle foraging consists of taking anything that isn't nailed down (if it is nailed down, they will take the nails as well), up to and including quite large cows if enough foragers can be gathered to do the lifting (given their strength, one for each hoof). If one were to see a sheep rise off the ground six inches and move backward rapidly, four Feegles are sure to be responsible. Among the warriors of each clan is a gonnagle, or war-poet, whose job is to create terrible poetry as a form of offensive weapon. A well-trained gonnagle can even make the enemy's ears explode and is equipped with "mousepipes" (bagpipes made from mouseskin, often with the ears still attached).
| Preceded by None |
1st Tiffany Aching Story Published in 2003 |
Succeeded by A Hat Full of Sky |
| Discworld reading order | Full article |
Libertina: The Goddess of the Sea, Apple Pie, Certain Types of Ice Cream and Short Lengths of String
- ...that The Wee Free Men is the only Discworld book in which Death (right) does not appear?
- ...that The Luggage is made of sapient pearwood, an almost extinct tree whose wood is impervious to magic?
- ...that Special Sheep Liniment should on no account ever be given to sheep?
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