by Craig Cabell
(Eric)
People don’t change much during life. If we look at the subjects that Pratchett selected for his A levels, we can see where his interests and talents lay. He then used them well. He completed his A level in English after leaving school, which stood him in good stead for the Bucks Free Press and onwards in his writing career. He kept his hand in with art, illustrating The Carpet People and taking on other freelance work. Then there is his interest in history, which he has drawn on in his novels, two early examples in the Discworld series being Pyramids and Eric.
‘“We did it at school, the wooden horse, everything!”’
(Eric)
And at the same time there’s that sense of humour, from the corny:
‘“There’s a door,” he whispered.
“Where does it go?”
“It stays where it is, I think,” said Rincewind.’
(Eric)
to the hysterical:
‘“Come on. Let’s run away.”
“Where to?”
… “Don’t worry about to,” he said. “In my experience that always takes care of itself. The important word is away.”’
(Eric)
Let us progress to Eric (1990), the ninth Discworld novel, as it is an interesting play on the 16th-century German legend of Faust.
Faustus means ‘auspicious’ or ‘lucky’ in Latin, so it’s no surprise that when Eric, a 14-year-old counterpart to the ancient scholar, calls up a demon to give him worldly pleasures he gets Rincewind, the luckiest wizard on the Disc. Rincewind escapes the catacombs of the netherworld and Death once more, and of course Luggage follows, along with another strong dose of chaos and derring-do.
For long-term readers of the Discworld series, this fourth outing for the wizard is a welcome treat, and a departure from the growing number of witches appearing in the series. For me, Rincewind was the perfect guide to the Discworld. The spontaneity summoned up by the character creates an anarchy of the fantasy genre – i.e. a happy return to the reason why the Discworld was created in the first place. Any time Rincewind finds himself in a story, there is a comfortable flow like an ice-skating gold medalist finding perfect form again. So we return to a recurring Pratchett theme: God, creation, and the end of time. At the click of two fingers, Rincewind and Eric find themselves in utter darkness at the end of forever, and it is here that Pratchett queries the Big Bang theory, the ‘gentle methods of Continuous Creation’ and the shape of ‘matter’ (which includes the physical manifestation of old Kate Bush records!).
Discworld stories that jump around a lot, such as The Colour of Magic and Eric, have a thread in as much as they find an ultimate conclusion, proof that the chaos they have endured had a meaning, because the chaos somehow changed things for the better. It suggests that there is an order to the universe and if we truly understood it, there would be less chaos in our own lives. But if we did understand it, there would be a big upheaval in religious belief – because the existence of God would be proved.
Despite the never-ending string of gods in the Discworld series, Pratchett never rams down our throats his belief that God doesn’t exist. Instead he speculates about the what ifs and what elses if not God? When Rincewind and Eric witness the birth of the universe, they don’t meet the creator, they meet a creator, one of many beings that contributed to creation.
Pratchett doesn’t believe that humans have got all the God stuff right. He gently lets you into his perception, emanating the moral teaching of the children’s nursery story of ‘The Sun and the Wind’ (the wind blows fiercely to get what it wants, while the sun shines down its warming rays gently to coax the uninitiated). Although Pratchett’s beliefs about religion are a major part of his life, he doesn’t tarnish his stories with scathing comments; his sense of humour counters any chance of that.
There are lovely pieces in Mort (the fourth Discworld novel) that discuss human life. Questions such as: Why do humans put cherries on sticks and put them in drinks? Why do humans go to the lengths of putting their food in pastry before cooking it – surely life’s too short? Why does the sun come out during the day? Why do teeth fit together so perfectly? All of these questions show an ability to stand back and look at the absurdity of the universe – our own personal universe, our own lives. It’s the same mentality that made David Tennant’s Doctor Who shake his head with a big broad grin and lovingly say ‘humans’, when seeing us enjoy the self-inflicted complications of our everyday lives. There is nothing derogatory in all of this. Pratchett isn’t providing any answers – he’s just stating that there is more going on in this wide universe than we credit, mainly because we largely take things for granted and complicate the detail.
As a species we complicate our lives with niff-naff and trivia – so much so that we don’t see the lowly boy (Mort) walking across the floor at a party because our superior – adult – minds ignore him. From this we observe that the children in Pratchett’s world hold the real magic. They make the changes; they apply a new logic that adults don’t see. Tiffany Aching does very little magic; she applies logic and a cool head to her adventures and somehow gets through. Esk breaks down the traditions of the Unseen University to become the first female wizard. And what about Eric himself, the Discworld’s very own Faust? He is a 14-year-old boy who longs for love and adventure and goes to great lengths to achieve them.
The impetuosity of youth? Of course, it’s what feeds the human race. Without the burning ambitions of youth coupled with the experience of tradesmen (Death and his apprentice Mort), progress would be much slower. But these youthful characters aren’t performing magic – they are creating a form of it by playing in their room, having to grow up and do their chores, by facing danger with no one defending their corner, and that is a harsh reality for many children around the world. Pratchett’s advice to the younger readers is: make your own magic and question what is all around you. Curiosity is the trigger that allows you to find out about things. And that’s great advice to give. Don’t forget that the person who can argue that the works of Terry Pratchett are greater than the works of Charles Dickens is likely to get a degree in literature, not because they’re right, but because they have put up a convincing argument that raises points that have a validity and have not been shared before. Questioning sacred cows, looking at things sideways, is what is important here, otherwise there can’t be significant progress.
OLIVER TWIST AND MORT
The Sorcerer and the Apprentice is an age-old theme and one that can be exploited to either comic or sinister effect. In Mort we witness a young lad whose father puts him up for an apprenticeship but the only person who wants him is Death. Death tutors the boy in his ways of showing a lack of compassion when dealing with the nuances of the great inevitable. Life and death come to all, and Mort is taught harsh lessons, not unlike the young Oliver Twist by his own sorcerer Fagin.
Like Death, Fagin is both tutor and corruptor. Mort shouldn’t really need a job helping souls on their way. He should live as a happy young apprentice in a world of young, like-minded people, but the young people he is in contact with – such as Death’s adopted daughter – are corrupted, or at least damaged due the influence of Death. This is also the dilemma of young Oliver Twist. He may be tutored by Fagin but it is the children he lives with who turn his mind to do wrong and believe it to be good and right. Like Dickens, Pratchett peoples his world with corrupted adults and, broadly speaking, innocent children placed in danger. The children are always victims of their circumstances, which mirrors the unpredictable world we all live in. There are always layers of evil, from the incredibly dangerous (Bill Sikes as Lilith) to the more cunning and manipulative (Fagin as Lord Vetinari). There are always guardian angels (Nancy as the Nac Mac Feegle). Although some children die, the majority are saved, thus leaving us with a more optimistic view of the world.
It is not in just the extreme situations in Oliver’s story where we can draw a comparison – it is also in the more subtle scenes. Like Mort, Oliver
enters into an apprenticeship and, like Mort, Oliver serves Death (in an undertaker’s). Oliver struggles while serving his apprenticeship, as does Mort, but that’s the reality of learning a trade in the real world.
‘He was alone in a strange place; and we all know how chilled and desolate the best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The boy had no friends to care for, or to care for him. The regret of no recent separation was fresh in his mind; the absence of no loved and well-remembered face sank heavily into his heart. But his heart was heavy, notwithstanding; and he wished, as he crept into his narrow bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be lain in a calm and lasting sleep in the church-yard ground, with the tall grass waving gently above his head, and the sound of the old bell to soothe him in his sleep.’
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
Mort is older than Oliver. He is ready to go out into the world, and it’s that level of maturity that saves Mort from despairing at his situation. However, when he begins to be conditioned by Death, he does try to escape the confines of the house of Death and seek living, breathing people. He falls in love with a queen, but a young queen who should be dead. He was there to take her soul but instead he saves her. So by the laws of nature she is dead but in reality she still breathes. Mort’s unrequited love for the queen is a terrible weight to carry. He daren’t tell Death that he has messed up, but Death is suddenly interested in mortality. As he drinks, dances and desperately tries to understand what makes humans drunk and be happy, Mort takes on the supernatural powers of his master – Death himself – and that’s where a transformation begins to take place.
Pratchett’s Death is not an unsavoury character – melancholy yes, but not hostile and scary. In a way, he could be described as uplifting. He talks conversationally about the one thing we all want to avoid discussing, thus stripping down the taboo and moving on to a more philosophical level (a little like Pratchett discussing assisted death).
Death’s showcase book is Reaper Man. Although he may have a bit of a mid-life crisis in Eric, he’s back to his age-old tricks a couple of books later, and there’s something quite reassuring about that. The predictability of the world is a calming thing. It keeps the vast majority of humans sane, just as the omnipresence of God does. Faith in God is a major part of many people’s lives. They draw strength from it, use it as a guiding light – a parameter – to structure and shape their family life. In many neighbourhoods faith also brings a community together, to share both good and bad experiences, to make sense of their collective and individual journey, to tackle the hard – terrible – moments and share the good times.
There are different types of faith and different types of belief. We know Pratchett is not a believer in God, but he populates his imagination with many gods (plural) and other ‘makers’ (sometimes the human race; witness his science fiction novels). This is a constant theme.
‘“… I imagine there’ll be some gods along soon. They don’t wait long to move in… They tend to be a bit high-spirited to start with, but they soon settle down…”’
(Eric)
Let us return to Mort for a while. Like Esk, like Eric, like Tiffany Aching, Mort reaches a crossroads in his life and has to make a decision about whether his choice in career is the right one. He has had a journey of self-discovery and has decided that the queen wasn’t what he was truly looking for, but he did find a direction he wanted to take. And there’s the crux of Pratchett’s recurring theme. It’s not just the self-discovery, it’s the ability to drive it forwards from there – something that was so present in his own life during his teenage years. We will discuss Tiffany Aching in this context in a later chapter, and we will discover the theme again with Mau (in Nation), but what drives Mort? It is not faith in a superior being in the heavens above, it is being aware of his own mortality and understanding that he doesn’t have the whole of eternity to get life right – he has one opportunity and the time to make it happen is now. And while it is unfair, the teenage years are exactly the right time to push children into thinking about their future life, and this is the right time on the Discworld too – or in the parallel world of Nation – to make things happen, because that’s when there is the most enthusiasm for bettering oneself and still a smattering of wide-eyed wonder at the world around them.
There are many Terry Pratchett books that capture this key theme and open a whole new multi-universe of opportunity for his younger fans, as great novels past have done in their way.
‘Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes’ crime, fell into a train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best. Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action. He struggled hard and suffered much, for some time; but having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end; and, from being a farmer’s drudge, and a carrier’s lad, he is now the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.’
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
INTERMISSION
The Carpet People (again)
‘History isn’t something you live. It is something you make. One decision. One person. At the right time. Nothing is too small to make a difference. Anything can be changed.’
(The Carpet People)
With the success of the Discworld series, around the time of Mort, people started to get interested in Pratchett’s early work. The Carpet People was long out of print and the consensus of opinion was that there was no demand for it. But there was. Pratchett’s fan-base grew and grew. First there was the little ‘cult’ following, and then there was a much larger Discworld group that wanted to read the books that came before The Colour of Magic.
The paperback of The Colour of Magic became extremely successful, as had The Light Fantastic and the ten novels that followed in the series, which really built an impressive following. These books started the sort of obsessive fandom not uncommon in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and pressure to reprint Pratchett’s early work became intense.
It was obvious that The Carpet People would sell well if reissued, but Pratchett wasn’t content with it. He had written it when he was 17 years of age and in the traditional fantasy mindset that he was now so against in his early forties. So he decided that the book should be written by two people – the young Terry Pratchett and the older Terry Pratchett. He would revise and update it to fall more in line with the type of work he was doing with Discworld, i.e. breaking down the fantasy genre. He admitted that his older self wouldn’t even think about writing such a book from scratch any more, but this was where his worlds would collide and The Carpet People was recast for posterity.
Was it a better book? Was it radically different? When horror writer James Herbert was approached to reissue The Fog in the mid-1980s, he mentioned in the special foreword that it would be wrong to rewrite the book, as if the tampering would in some way take away the energy of the book. As we have seen, cult writer of the macabre Algernon Blackwood said that a body changed its cells once every seven years, so he was not the same person he was when conceiving and writing his earlier stories. I’m inclined to agree with both writers: tinkering with early works spoils the raw energy of youth, that naivety that was so refreshing first time around.
When I refer back to the first edition of The Carpet People, I feel the original mindset of the author, the awakening of a flat world of possibility – not exactly a discworld but an embryo that needs to grow and absorb more life experience before maturing into the type of novel it was capable of being. Sometimes it’s wrong to go back, but pragmatic fans of Pratchett, those who were introduced to The Carpet People through the reissue, would argue that I’m wrong. They may be right – it’s all subjective. Perhaps nostalgia is a very dangerous thing, but Pratchett always seems to regret that he got his break as a novelist so young, with his first attempt at a novel. One can argue the for and against here, but what is interesting is the opportunity we have had to
see the Discworld appear out of the primeval mud of his earlier work. To coin a Lou Reed album title, Pratchett had been ‘growing up in public’ through his first three novels. They all added to the group of ideas that became The Colour of Magic. They defined the fantasy world he was looking for. Interestingly, it was the fantasy world millions of fans around the world were looking for too, but he needed to expel the science fiction genre from his blood first.
The Carpet People is still an ingenious novel from our present viewpoint, showcasing Pratchett’s early obsession with genre fiction. He wanted to create a new Narnia, a Middle Earth, all his own. And when the oceans fell tens of thousands of feet off the discworld in Strata, his journey to that world was over. But one needs to read the original version of The Carpet People to understand that, followed by his two science fiction novels. One could go further and say that one should also read the Bucks Free Press stories too, and I will not disagree, because in their own way they explain where the Bromeliad novels came from, for much younger children.
Pratchett’s evolution as a novelist has been a methodical one, and the rewriting of The Carpet People has obscured that genesis somewhat.
‘How careful was I, when I took my way
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
That to my use it might unused stay
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!’
William Shakespeare (Sonnet 48)
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Vastly Populated World
‘Eight spells go to make up the world. Rincewind knew that well enough. He knew that the book which contained them was the Octavo, because it still existed in the library of the Unseen University – currently inside a welded iron box at the bottom of a specially dug shaft, where its magical radiations could be kept under control.’