Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld

by Linda Washington

  Pratchett is adept at juxtaposing unusual villains with the evils of the everyday. (For more on villains, see chapter 12.) Vimes’s prime adversary is himself, followed a close second by the “politicians”—guild leaders and Vetinari, who is incredibly skilled at mind games. And then there’s everyone and everything else: corrupt cops and a psychopath (Night Watch); dwarfs, werewolves, and vampires with political agendas (The Fifth Elephant); corrupt civil servants and a confused but dangerous dragon (Guards! Guards!); assassins with diabolical weapons (Men at Arms); a crazed golem and a vampire with an agenda (Feet of Clay); the corrupting evils of war and bureaucracy ( Jingo and Thud!); and ancient supernatural evil (Thud!). Even a street-smart detective like Sam Spade or a cop like J. P. Beaumont would be hard-pressed to last in the minefield of Ankh-Morpork.

  You: Not sure I agree with that. If they were born in Ankh-Morpork—

  Us: Now let’s move on to the end.

  You: Finally! (pauses) You get it? Finally …

  Act III: The Denouement—All’s Well That Ends Well?

  Us: Every good mystery needs a satisfactory ending.

  You: That goes without saying … . Speaking of endings, I never finished what I started to say about Ankh-Morpork at the end of the last scene.

  Us: In some mysteries, a dramatic showdown occurs between the villain and the hero/heroine. In others, the truth is revealed in a dramatic fashion by the detective. (“At eight o’clock precisely in the drawing room, I will reveal the murderer’s identity.”) In Pratchett’s mysteries, you may find your views overturned as to who the villain really is. Is Dee, the ideas taster of the Low King, really all “he” says “he” is in The Fifth Elephant? Is a golem a tool or a person (Feet of Clay)? If it is a tool, can it commit murder?

  You: I wouldn’t mind having a golem to be my slave.

  Us (nod, but move on quickly): Sometimes, although a mystery is solved, some things, like bureaucracy, still continue, to Vimes’s chagrin.

  Not content to bring their mystery story to a satisfactory conclusion, some writers attempt to end their creations, and thus begin a new chapter of their literary lives. Arthur Conan Doyle tried to end his famous character by sending him over the Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty. Simenon, too, tried to end the celebrated Maigret.

  Pratchett thought he was done with Vimes after Guards! Guards! But the fans responded positively. Now Vimes is a favorite of Pratchett’s, as he revealed at a book signing in Naperville, Illinois. He’s a favorite with us, too, obviously.

  That’s our argument for why Vimes is the hardest-working detective in mystery fiction. Any questions?

  You: I’m sure you’ll think of some that I would have asked.

  Mystery Scorecard

  Confused about which mystery writer is responsible for which character? This handy list will help. For more on Vimes and the

  AUTHOR DETECTIVE/CRIME SOLVER

  Bain, Donald, and Jessica Fletcher Jessica Fletcher

  Block, Lawrence Matthew Scudder

  Braun, Lilian Jackson Jim Qwilleran/Koko/Yum Yum

  Chandler, Raymond Philip Marlowe

  Christie, Agatha Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford

  Cornwell, Patricia Kay Scarpetta

  Dexter, Colin Endeavour Morse

  Doyle, Arthur Conan Sherlock Holmes

  Evanovich, Janet Stephanie Plum

  Grafton, Sue Kinsey Millhone

  Hammett, Dashiell Sam Spade, the Continental Op,

  Nick and Nora Charles

  James, P. D. Adam Dalgliesh

  Jance, J. A. J. P. (Beau) Beaumont

  Marsh, Ngaio Roderick Alleyn

  Parker, Robert Spenser

  Peters, Ellis Brother Cadfael

  Pratchett, Terry Sam Vimes

  Rendell, Ruth Reginald Wexford

  Sayers, Dorothy Lord Peter Wimsey

  Simenon, Georges Inspector Maigret

  3

  Lights, Camera, Chaos

  Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife.

  Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all.

  —Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien45

  Each of our acts of observation will in some way disturb the universe and we must accept full responsibility for the consequences of these actions.

  —F. David Peat, From Certainty to Uncertainty46

  THE MAKINGS OF A DISASTER MOVIE

  The earth’s inner core stops rotating. The eroding magnetic field will mean the deaths of billions. Chaos?

  Frog DNA used to complete the DNA strand causes uncontrolled breeding in dinosaurs, including vicious raptors. Chaos?

  An iceberg looms out of the darkness. A huge luxury liner strikes it. Chaos?

  Many think of chaos as any of the above—a chain of events gone horribly wrong. In other words, the ingredients of a thriller/disaster movie such as Core, Jurassic Park/The Lost World, and Titanic. But chaos is many things. It’s certainly the “I don’t know what could happen if things keep going the way they’re going” factor in a chain of events. It is a quest standing on the edge of a knife, as Galadriel said in Fellowship—one that could end in disaster if the quest fails. It’s the slow unraveling of order—like a key thread pulled out of a sweater. (It’s also anytime Carrie’s cat, Sassie, gets angry with Carrie’s border collie, Wilfred. But that’s another story.)

  Chaos as a theory in science evolved in the twentieth century. You know the buzzwords: fractals (patterns that repeat a particular design), time evolution, dynamical systems, nonlinear behavior, the butterfly effect. (Yes, that was the name of the Ashton Kutcher movie from 2004.) Chaos is often discussed in terms of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics (“The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value”47), since entropy is a way to measure the chaos or order of a system.

  You can find loads of references to chaos throughout Discworld, which we’ll get to shortly. But first, what is chaos? For an answer to that, we have to start at the beginning.

  Roll credits … .

  In the beginning, there was Chaos …

  … according to the Greeks, particularly the Greek poet Hesiod. Chaos was a god who ruled over the shapeless, preuniverse mass. Some would say he personified this void. Supposedly out of Chaos came Nyx (Night). Nyx was the wife of Chaos; they had a son, Erebus (Darkness). But then Erebus decided that Nyx would make a good wife for him. (We would call that incest.) Their union produced two offspring: Ether (Sky), and Hemera (Day). Hesiod had lots to say about that in his Theogony. But Ovid, a Roman poet, believed that Chaos was matter without form (sort of like a movie with a weak storyline and tacky sets). In his narrative poem Metamorphoses (which reminds us of the title of that Kafka story usually read in high school—“The Metamorphosis”), we read, “A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,/Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.”48

  But the theory of chaos evolved from a gleam in the eye of Henri Poincaré, a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher who hoped to solve the tricky two- or three-body problem in physics and astronomy. What’s the three-body problem? We have to go to Newton’s theories for that.

  And then there was Newton …

  As you learned in physics or earth science, British physicist/mathematician Sir Isaac Newton came up with three laws of motion:

  I. Every object in a state of uniform motion remains in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

  II. The relationship between an object’s mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma.

  III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.49

  According to Newton, this creates a sort of built-in regularity in the universe (tides, sun rising and setting, eclipses) like that of the mechanism of a clock. Pratchett alludes to this in Thief of Time as “the fabled ‘tick of the universe.’”50 But other scientists wondered about the effects of small irregularities in pul
l (also known as “perturbations”—disturbances in the pattern) when the moon goes around the Earth or the Earth orbits the sun. This is a three-body problem: “How do three or more bodies move under their mutual attractions of gravity?”51

  Some astronomers came up with a theory known as the “perturbation theory,” which meant shifting the calculation of an orbit to account for tiny irregularities. But even that created more irregularities. That was the problem Henri Poincaré tried to solve.

  And then there was Poincaré, a bunch of mathematicians and scientists, Edward Lorenz, and such writers as Michael Crichton …

  Along came Poincaré, toward the end of the nineteenth century, with the germ of chaos theory. He started with the issue of the buildup of tiny irregularities known as “resonance.” When resonance upon resonance occurs, instability can occur—something you can’t always predict. This is chaos.

  Mathematicians later theorized that repetition in some cycles can cause repetitive changes in other cycles. This is known as “iteration”—using the output of one equation as input for the next. They were one step closer to the theory. But it needed computers to come to fruition. In 1963, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, used computers to experiment with iterations in weather prediction and came up with a chaos breakthrough that other mathematicians and scientists have since refined.

  They discovered that tiny changes within a system can “perturb” the system—one dependent on a certain set of conditions—into wildly different behavior—the butterfly effect. This is why attempts by Evan (Ashton Kutcher’s character in The Butterfly Effect) to make changes in his life in the past wildly affected his life in the future (the present). Famed author H. G. Wells discussed this aspect over a century before in The Time Machine.

  The “attractor” is an active ingredient in this system. Attractors are patterns within a system that push the system toward a certain point (kinda like some boyfriends we’ve had). In other words, they run a stable system. “Strange attractors” (also like some boyfriends we’ve had) are attractors within a chaotic system that take a system to a different place and show a kind of order. (Sort of like the well-mannered psychopath Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.) You can thank Lorenz for the term “strange attractors” and for the butterfly effect, which came from the butterfly shape of his charted pattern of a strange attractor in weather. But the butterfly analogy is from ancient China.

  Now some systems are “self-organized”—able to return to a semblance of order. Think of a city like Chicago or Paris. Order is maintained even through bouts of chaos (riots, traffic, wars). Attractors (police, laws) are at work there as well.

  With a new theory in science like chaos floating around, book authors and Hollywood were bound to take notice. You’ve already seen the results if you saw The Butterfly Effect or any of the adaptations of The Time Machine. But before that, Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park (also a 1993 Steven Spielberg movie—yeah, ages ago) featured a chaos-theory-spouting mathematician, Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie), who predicted the chaos of the dinosaur experiment. If you read the various iterations of the experiment in the book or saw the movie, you know dinosaurs ran amok, thus proving Malcolm’s point.

  But what about Pratchett? Drumroll, please …

  And then there was Pratchett …

  In many of his Discworld novels, Pratchett pushed the conflict to the point of chaos and beyond. Since his created universe is constantly destroyed and rebuilt anyway, as we’re told in Thief of Time, chaos is constant.

  In cracking the code on Discworld chaos, let’s start with some allusions. You can find them in Witches Abroad, Interesting Times, The Last Continent, and Wintersmith. At the beginning of Witches Abroad, we’re in the world of chaos where the butterfly exists. In Interesting Times, we’re told about “the butterfly of storms,” “the fractal nature of the universe,” “Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos,” and the butterfly with “mandelbrot patterns” on its wings—Mandelbrot being a reference to Benoit Mandelbrot, a real-life mathematician and fractal geometry guru.52 In The Last Continent, the wizards discuss how treading on an ant or making any changes in the last continent (Fourecks) could change their future existence (shades of The Time Machine). In Wintersmith, the Summer Lady talks of resonance—the fact that she looks like Tiffany and Tiffany acts like her. Tiffany’s insertion of herself in the Morris dance causes this resonance. And the intrepid Commander Vimes in Men at Arms muses that wizards occasionally “took the canoe of reality too close to the white waters of chaos.”53

  Magic is a frequent contributor to chaos in Discworld. Unseen University, particularly the High Energy Magic Building and the library, contains enough ingredients to provide endless calamities. Think about the chaos caused in Guards! Guards! by The Summoning of Dragons, a book stolen from Unseen University’s library. Think of the wizards themselves and their inept attempts to send Rincewind anywhere.

  We talked about attractors earlier. Azrael (the Death of Universes), Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching, Lord Vetinari, Sergeant Jackrum (Monstrous Regiment), Carrot Ironfoundersson, Death, and other characters behave as attractors—those who pull others to a certain point. They work overtly or behind the scenes. Azrael has to be the biggest attractor of them all, since he’s known as “the Great Attractor” (Reaper Man, 321). Ha! Ha! Actually, a “great attractor” in space is a large mass about the size of thousands of galaxies with an enormous amount of gravitational pull. That’s Azrael all over. Just a big charming lump, really.

  While characters such as Vimes and Susan are at the forefront of the action in their stories, they’re often reactors to the attractor or the strange attractor who comes on the scene and attempts to take the system to a different place. Think about it. In Thief of Time, Death inspires Susan to action by mentioning that someone like her was involved in building the clock. Vetinari often manipulates Vimes into action by telling Vimes what he shouldn’t do. And Carrot, possibly the rightful heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, is the one responsible for Vimes being the commander and knight that he is.

  In the wizard miniseries, when chaos happens, Rincewind’s usually in the thick of things. Check it out.

  DISC-CLAIMER:

  Plot spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.

  Tiffany is unique in that she’s an attractor and a system bordering on chaos. When the queen of the fairies (the strange attractor) steals Tiffany’s brother, Wentworth, and tries to take over Tiffany’s world in The Wee Free Men, Tiffany acts to pull the system back into order. In A Hat Full of Sky, she repels another strange attractor—an invading entity (the hiver) that attempts to pull her mind into chaos. In Wintersmith, Tiffany gains the attention of still another strange attractor—the Wintersmith—after leaping into the Morris dance, thus setting in motion a change in the pattern that will ultimately bring chaos (endless winter). Once again, she is a system bordering on chaos as she slowly gains the power of the Summer Lady but isn’t sure what to do with it.

  Thief of Time is another novel with strong elements of chaos. The villainous Auditors (more on them in chapter 12) hire Jeremy Clockson to build a clock to stop all clocks and trap Time (personified as a female—more on her in chapter 9). The Auditors usually behave as the strange attractors—beings who present a kind of order in chaos. They believe the universe would run smoothly without humans or immortals like Death and the Hogfather and use chaos to achieve that goal. But Lady LeJean (a.k.a. Unity) is an Auditor who becomes an attractor and tries to stop the other Auditors.

  BOOK STRANGE ATTRACTOR(S) MOMENT OF CHAOS

  The Color of Magic Twoflower, the naive tourist Rincewind and Twoflower wind up off Discworld.

  The Light Fantastic Great A’Tuin Great A’Tuin goes on a collision course for a red star. Only the eight great spells in the Octavo, a book in the wizards’ keeping, can stop it. But one is lodged in Rincewind’s head.

  Sourcery Coin the sourcerer who attracts magic; the archchancellor’s hat, which, unlike
the sorting hat in Harry Potter, is manipulative and evil. Coin takes over Unseen University and completely changes things there. Conina, the daughter of Cohen the Barbarian, steals the archchancellor’s hat, which falls into the hands of Abrim, the wicked vizier. The Mage Wars result. And Rincewind’s right in the middle of it.

  Interesting Times Twoflower again (through his pamphlet, What I Did on My Holidays) Rincewind travels to the Agatean Empire and is believed to be a powerful wizard/revolutionary. As usual, whenever Rincewind is present, war is the result.

  The Last Continent Rincewind and the wizards The presence of Rincewind and the wizards of Unseen University on the continent of Fourecks, still in its formative stages, causes changes that affect the fabric of the land.

  The Last Hero Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde The Silver Horde takes a bomb to Dunmanifestin—the home of the gods—which goes off. Rincewind’s on hand as well.

  As we mentioned before, the “tick of the universe” is an allusion to Newton’s clock. In a universe governed by magic and chaos, regulating the universe according to Newton’s clock would bring a reverse form of chaos. (That would be order, wouldn’t it?)

  Not only is chaos there, Kaos is there as well. The fifth horseman of the Apocalypse is mild-mannered (until provoked) Ronnie Soak, a.k.a. Kaos (not to be confused with KAOS—the secret organization of criminals on Get Smart, the 1960s TV spoof of James Bond movies). He’s a milkman, which is fitting for someone who once dealt with the primordial milk of creation, so to speak. It takes Kaos, the Monks of History, Lobsang Ludd (son of Time), and the intrepid Susan Sto Helit to make things right. Achieving balance—entropy—is the key. The procrastinators—the machines the monks monitor and use—are the symbols of balanced time. They’re also an example of the perturbation theory—how irregularities are compensated for to balance the equation. (For more on procrastinators, see chapter 19.)