Terry Pratchett

by Craig Cabell

  The Johnny Maxwell novels are about the chances and choices of youth, about being aware and focused and forever questioning and not taking things for granted. They are simply one of the best series of books in Pratchett’s back catalogue and give us many insights into the way in which he looks in wonder at the world around him. He tells us that he doesn’t think the human race has got religion right but he believes in the human soul and its ability to want to do its best and go on to better things. The Johnny Maxwell books also make us appreciate the things we have and the short amount of time we have to enjoy them. Our town will change, our friends will move away or simply move on, and people we know and love will pass away and become just a fond memory of a past life.

  ‘Grandad and Johnny sat and looked at one another for a moment. There was no sound but the rain and the ticking of the mantelpiece clock.’

  (Johnny and the Bomb)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nation

  ‘The fire crackled and sent smoke and steam up into the darkness, and he saw them in the firelight, watching him, smiling at him. He closed his eyes and tried to force the clamouring memories away, into the dark.’

  (Nation)

  Sometimes authors who write a long series of books suddenly find greater success with a one-off idea that has nothing to do with their acclaimed characters and ongoing antics. A good example is crime writer Ian Rankin, who wrote a short novel called Doors Open that sold more than his last Inspector Rebus book.

  This shouldn’t be a shock. Sometimes people want to read a specific author but don’t want to start reading a series of books from book number 19 and try to fathom what the intricate relationships are all about. When one learns that there is a one-off book, the desire to try out that writer is suddenly justified and a whole new audience is achieved.

  Nation (Doubleday, 2008) was Pratchett’s first non-Discworld novel for more than ten years. It was a story that was just bursting to be told, and it instantly attracted much attention. It was a book both funny and sad. Again it featured a youth – a boy this time – on the verge of manhood and facing the complexities of life.

  Before we meet the boy – Mau – there is a two-page prologue that reads like one of Kipling’s Just So Stories, telling of the creation of the world in the story. The story itself is set in the 19th century somewhere in the multiverse – not our universe, but one where we can see many similarities. Mau is placed on Boy’s Island, from where he is expected to make his way home within 30 days, leaving his boy soul behind in order to collect his adult soul on his return to the Nation.

  After he has made his boat to make the return trip and has left his campsite spotlessly clean, he is overcome with anxiety. Birds explode into the air from all over the island and he collapses with the feeling that he should return home. And so he does, because only animals and boys flee – a man faces his danger. Then he sees a huge black tidal wave and becomes fearful of the plight of the Nation. Once he arrives back home and no one is there to meet him, he becomes terrified that a huge disaster has befallen his people, and cries the tears only boyhood can shed.

  A key piece within the opening pages of Nation is the boy contemplating his vulnerability. He is between souls – boyhood soul and manhood soul – and that leaves him feeling exposed and lonely.

  How many times have we seen this in a Pratchett novel? This is Mort, it is Queen Keli, Tiffany Aching, Eskarina Smith, or it could even be Johnny Maxwell. There are life rules in Pratchett’s novels, and these are dictated by the age of a person. Children harbour the most pure but dormant magical powers, and they can harness them for good or ill and to varying degrees. Children also meet disaster full on and get on with it. When Mau realises that a tsunami has wiped out the whole of his people and he sees the dead squashed in the remnants of his village, he blocks the disaster from his mind and buries the dead at sea so they can take on dolphin form (his religious belief). His mind wishes to replay the horror, especially at night, but he manages to shut it out, showing a maturity way beyond his age. Then the ancient voices of the grandfathers come to him, telling him that he needs to follow the tradition of his people and recite the final prayers over the dead. This is a most poignant scene, as the reader almost cries out: ‘Hasn’t the boy done enough?’The simple answer is no. He hasn’t, and only then does the story begin to flow.

  Pratchett had intended to write Nation before 2008, but the dreadful Indonesian tsunami thwarted that idea. There was no way that Pratchett could convince anyone that the book wasn’t cashing in on the real-life catastrophe, but it wasn’t. So he left it for a while, eventually releasing it after Making Money, his 36th Discworld novel.

  The story of Mau, last survivor of the Nation, begins tragically, but he buries his dead at sea and he keeps his wits about him. For Mau, life has to go on, because he is the only future of the Nation. Very soon he meets a girl, Ermintrude (although she prefers the name Daphne), and, although they can’t speak each other’s language, they are of similar ages and brought together by the tragedy of the tsunami.

  ‘They didn’t know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you’ve got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you’re alive, when you really shouldn’t be.’

  (Nation)

  Daphne is from the civilised world. She is a lady while Mau is little more than a savage, but the beautiful thing is that they both have their own magic. Natural magic, that is. Mau’s is the ancient power of instinct and tradition, while Daphne’s has been touched by science and the sensitivities of society. In short, he holds the old magic and she holds the new, and their relationship is forged from these opposite poles. But later Mau starts to question life and death and, of course, doesn’t come up with any answers. Daphne’s response to this is that magic is just a lazy way of saying ‘I don’t know’ (i.e. it must be magic then). The layers of natural magic are again explored by Pratchett, which leads to the ultimate question: is there really any magic, any God? But all that is far too deep for Nation. The beauty of the story is its simplicity.

  A canoe approaches the island and Mau stops it from capsizing. Inside is an old man, a priest from one of the other islands who has saved an unconscious woman and a baby. Now there are five of them, but the priest is scornful towards Mau, calling him ‘demon boy’ as though he has no justification to live while his nation died. Mau becomes incensed, hating the gods that have cursed him, but the old man, perhaps not unlike Pratchett himself, tells the boy that although his own legs click and his back aches, he finds a reason each day to be grateful that he is not dead. (A small portion of alcohol perhaps? Oh, the indulgences of the flesh!)

  Nation could only have been written by a mature man, someone who has experienced the stages of growing up. It is a book that threatens to slide into cliché but somehow avoids them. Just when you think you know what is coming next, you don’t.

  Is Nation a typical Terry Pratchett novel? No, it isn’t – it appears to be one of those books that a writer must write. Pratchett has said that most of the story came to him at once. It tackles Pratchett themes: the stages of life, the young having to grow up quickly, the big decisions in life, questioning God, old magic/new magic, and natural things that are sometimes mistaken for magic. There are ecological issues in Nation too (including global warming). Nation is a book that has tumbled out and touches on some of the darker issues that will appear in I Shall Wear Midnight. Perhaps because of his confrontation with Alzheimer’s, Pratchett was suddenly facing bigger and darker issues full on in his fantasy novels, and not just in the Discworld books. Nation was a leap into the world of wider issues, and fans and critics alike instantly got it, making Nation perhaps the most important work Pratchett has ever written.

  The story builds, becoming more intricate and more complex, especially when Mau’s island takes on more guests: brothers, one supporting his very pregnant wife. But she isn’t just pregnant, she is in labour, and t
his is where Daphne has to face her own personal demons. She remembers being a helpless nine-year-old when her mother screamed through her final labour pains and into death, for her and her baby.

  It’s at this stage of the book that Mau declares that he is ‘fighting Death’. Note, not death, but Death, the Grim Reaper, the character so embroiled in the Discworld. And then with the knowledge of Discworld, we recognise that the grandfathers who speak in Mau’s mind speak in capital letters. Is he mad? Is it really the ghosts of his forefathers? Or is it Death speaking to him? Suddenly the plot becomes even more involved, and the new woman gives birth.

  Nation is about life and death, choices and chances, struggle and survival – finding out how little one can live and make do on. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate in the material world we now live in – it’s like a novel version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

  Nation is a watershed in the work of Terry Pratchett. It is a book that serves as a reality check, a weighing up of all the wholesome things that life offers and can only be appreciated when stripped down to the bare essentials on a desert island. And then a greater understanding is born.

  ‘Daphne thought: I’m learning things. I hope I find out soon what they are.’

  (Nation)

  Does Nation teach us anything? Probably not, but it does give us pause for thought. It allows us the opportunity to reassess what is important in our lives, as many great books do. All that said, is Nation for younger readers? If younger means teenage, then yes, but to give the impression that it’s for ten-year-olds and younger children – grouping the book with the Bromeliad and Johnny Maxwell trilogies at the front of Pratchett’s books – is wrong. A couple of milder swear words aren’t the clincher here, it’s the subject matter. The book is effectively about young people forced into a harsh adult reality, and that clearly doesn’t work for Year 5 students and below. The children in the book are not children, they are on the cusp of their teenage lives, desperately trying to work out what adults with experience will do. Interestingly, once an older and wiser man turns up, we find Mau working against him, because he is now the chief, he is the Nation, and he takes the responsibility, not the wise old priest.

  Is Mau in control? Perhaps not. Mau feels intimidated by the old man – the priest – and he confides his frustrations in one of the brothers. Mau is constantly asking questions at this stage, desperate to understand the ways of the shipwrecked girl and the adult things he would have been told on his return to the Nation had the tsunami not happened. Mau is proud but happy to concede his ignorance to the right person – someone he can confide in.

  ‘“Look, I know you think there are no gods –”

  “Perhaps they do exist. I want to know why they act as if they don’t – I want them to explain!”’

  (Nation)

  And like a good Discworld novel, the subject of religion crops up, but only in the question everybody asks themselves when something terrible happens: is there a God? And if so, why does He let terrible things happen?

  A time-honoured question it may be, and one often brought up during the second half of the 20th century when discussing the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Why did God let that happen? Is it because there had to be a massive catastrophe for the human race to stop and think that extra second to prevent something even more terrible from happening? Perhaps. In the UK, it took the terrible deaths at Hillsborough to shock the football world into taking down the cages that penned fans in, and it was done on the condition that a certain fraternity of football thugs around the country would behave themselves – and strangely they did, out of respect for the innocent dead.

  Pilu (one of the brothers in Nation) cries. Mau knows that this is the right thing to do, but he still doesn’t manage to cry himself. Every single one of his loved ones has been killed, along with his way of life and his culture (some of its ways now completely lost to him because he was never taught them). But Mau responds to a responsibility, to protect what is left of his world. How can he do that? By being there. Where he belongs. Never leaving. To make his beer, to listen to the grandfathers, to protect the Women’s Place. Is that all life has to offer him? Is that his destiny? Is that what being a man is all about?

  Many men would be grateful for just that, but is Mau? The future for him is loneliness if he chooses that path, because no woman would surely want to stay with him in a den of shadows. Mau becomes frustrated, and perhaps this is where we find Pratchett’s true thoughts about religion:

  ‘That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.’

  (Nation)

  Mau challenges the old man about the existence of the gods. He asks why do people want gods? Surely people matter more? ‘Without other people, we are nothing,’ he reasons. But after only two weeks the Nation is a fading memory; people from other cultures are now populating the island and things are changing.

  ‘He was here on this lonely shore and all he could think of was the silly questions that children ask… Why do things end? How do they start? Why do good people die? What do the gods do?’

  (Nation)

  Mau knows that things cannot stand still and that he alone can’t preserve the Nation, but he lacks the skill to give his plight direction. He believes the gods can’t help him, so the answer has to come from within, but he can’t do everything by himself. After a bout of much exertion and a lack of sleep, he collapses, finding himself at death’s door.

  It is around this point in the story that Daphne recalls the captain of her ill-fated ship reciting the Gospel of Mary Magdalene at the funeral of a cabin boy. The interesting thing about this is that, in the real world, the pieces of papyrus that make up this ancient text were not canonised and are therefore not an official gospel, so this is Pratchett having some fun with religion again – specifically the Catholic church. However, he softens the blow by saying – via a footnote – that Daphne was quite sure that Jesus had a female disciple because somebody had to keep his white robes clean! Pratchett humour through and through.

  The overall theme of the latter part of the book is the beauty of the uncivilised world. The Nation – like the most famous Native American tribes in antiquity – have their unspoilt history all around them. They have tradition and, above all, they have purpose because they have identity and kinship with their ancestors, or at least Mau does. But Daphne appreciates it too. She says that no civilised nation had ever visited Mau’s island because the ancestors’ gold and artifacts were still untouched in their ancient burial chamber. This clearly makes one think of the stripped-bare Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

  Nation is not the culmination of many Pratchett ideas, but perhaps it is the most astonishing embodiment of them. His fascination with astronomy and the wonders of Mother Nature provides an interesting backdrop to a story about an ancient race destroyed by the powers of nature. Conversely, the primitive – surely not naïve – ways in which the natives act in Nation show a wholesome way of living forgotten by the so-called civilised world: ‘If a lie will make us strong, a lie will be my weapon… People want lies to live by. They cry out for them…’

  There is a trend to show the civilised world as the bad guys. A good example of this is the movie Avatar, but that was based on the extermination of the Native American Indian by settlers from the ‘civilised’ world and their trail of broken treaties – it’s not a new thing. But something is surely endemically wrong with society if books and films need to remind the public of the splendour of the natural world and its people.

  Pratchett talks of ‘guns and flags’, and this is a beautiful summing-up of the British Empire: flags being stuck in the ground of foreign lands and guns demanding that the flags stay in place. The fantasy of Nation – apar
t from being set in a parallel universe – is that the Nation actually gets something of value from the invading forces. Something the natives never got in reality.

  ‘Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.’

  (Author’s Note, Nation)

  Nation (2008) and I Shall Wear Midnight (2010) are social comments about the society we have grown up in, about the bloodshed perpetrated by the winners (the flag-flyers) – the ones who write the history books and justify their crimes – and the rape of a nation’s history by the gun.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Courtly Orangutans

  ‘I have hugged an orangutan and worked liked hell to get my hat out of trees afterwards.’

  Terry Pratchett

  In Malay, orang means ‘person’ and utang comes from Hutan, which means ‘forest’, so orangutan means ‘person of the forest’. Orangutans are close relatives to humans but spend 90 per cent of their time in trees eating fruit and leaves. They belong to two distinct species: Pongo pygmaeus from Borneo and Pongo abelii from Sumatra. Physically the two species look slightly different. Sumatran orangutans have a narrower face and longer beard than their Borneo cousins. Also, Borneo orangutans are slightly darker than Sumatran ones.

  Unlike many other primates, orangutans are not sociable, especially not the male. They spend much of their time alone. When a mother has her babies, they cling to the mother for a while and then follow in her footsteps. They effectively stay with her for the first five years of their life. If the mother has three young, that will be 15 years out of a life that lasts approximately 45 years. That is, if the orangutans live that long, since their natural habitat is in grave danger.