Since the Hub is never closely warmed by the weak sun the lands there are locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days.{47} There are, of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its light spectrum. Eight is a number of some considerable occult significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard.
Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
(<< back)
2
Although in Trob the last word in fact became ‘a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said.’
(<< back)
3
“warriors who fight for the tribe with most milknut-meal”
(<< back)
4
instead of delegating the task to a subordinate, such as Disease or Famine, as is usually the case
(<< back)
5
wizards, even failed wizards, have in addition to rods and cones in their eyeballs the tiny octagons that enable them to see into the far octarine, the basic colour of which all other colours are merely pale shadows impinging on normal fourdimensional space. It is said to be a sort of fluorescent greenish-yellow purple
(<< back)
6
while the University librarian was otherwise engaged
(<< back)
7
Boom, boom went crypt lids, in the worm-haunted fastnesses under old mountains …
(<< back)
8
all cats can see into the octarine
(<< back)
9
such a one who, while wearing a copper nose ring, stands in a footbath atop Mount Raruaruaha during a heavy thunderstorm and shouts that Alohura, Goddess of Lightning, has the facial features of a diseased uloruaha root
(<< back)
10
the result of a lucky throw by Offler
(<< back)
11
B. Mgc., Unseen University [failed]
(<< back)
12
trolls being silicaceous lifeforms, their bodies reverted instantly to stone at the moment of death
(<< back)
13
Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you’ll be eight alive, apprentices were jocularly warned. Bel-Shamharoth was especially attracted to dabblers in magic who, by being as it were beachcombers on the shores of the unnatural, were already half-enmeshed in his nets. Rincewind’s room number in his hall of residence had been 7a. He hadn’t been surprised
(<< back)
14
demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned
(<< back)
15
burial in deep caves on land was earlier ruled out after some districts complained of walking trees and five-headed cats
(<< back)
16
but unwisely tried to investigate the Luggage before slaughtering the sleepers
(<< back)
17
carried as it was through space on the backs of four giant turtle-riding elephants
(<< back)
18
in this dim light there was something odd about the way he was slumped in the stone chair
(<< back)
19
During his life they had appeared to others to be eight-faceted and eerily insectile
(<< back)
20
and there had been slaves aplenty, in the first days of the Power
(<< back)
21
in a voice like the sound of a finger dragged around the rim of a large empty wine glass
(<< back)
22
this usually woke him up with his ankles sweating; he would have been even more worried had he known that the nightmare was not, as he thought, just the usual discworld vertigo. It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline
(<< back)
23
instead of sending one of his numerous servants, as is usually the case
(<< back)
24
as they stopped in front of another door
(<< back)
25
as they dragged the door open
(<< back)
26
and dragons had come this way once, it seemed; there was a room full of rotting harness, dragon-sized, and another room containing plate and chain mail big enough for elephants
(<< back)
27
and, until I was poisoned some three months ago, I
(<< back)
28
Owing to the density of the magical field surrounding the disc, light itself moved at sub-sonic speeds; this interesting property was well utilised by the Sorca people of the Great Nef, for example, who over the centuries had constructed intricate and delicate dams, and valleys walled with polished silica, to catch the slow sunlight and sort of store it. The scintillating reservoirs of the Nef, overflowing after several weeks of uninterrupted sunlight, were a truly magnificent sight from the air and it is therefore unfortunate that Twoflower and Rincewind did not happen to glance in that direction.
(<< back)
29
however, they had not. See below
(<< back)
30
save for the buzzing of a few expectant flies
(<< back)
31
Water on the disc has an uncommon fourth state, caused by intense heat combined with the strange dessicating effects of octarine light; it dehydrates, leaving a silvery residue like free-flowing sand through which a well-designed hull can glide with ease. The Dehydrated Ocean is a strange place, but not so strange as its fish.
(<< back)
32
in tones that made Rincewind imagine submarine chasms and lurking Things in coral reefs
(<< back)
33
Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals, which were sown this year to come up later this year, biennials, sown this year to grow next year, and perennials, sown this year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare re-annuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up last year. The vul nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown. Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut’s point of view, the past. Strange but true.
(<< back)
34
having developed hydrophobia to an astonishing degree
(<< back)
35
precisely what physical features made her beautiful they could not, definitively, state
(<< back)
Annotations
1
This line is interesting not only because it foreshadows The Light Fantastic (as in fact the entire prologue does), but also because it is about the only time the narrator really commits himself to A’Tuin’s gender without hedging his bets (as e.g. on the first page of The Light Fantastic). Note the capital ‘H’, which Death also rates in this book and loses in the later ones.
(<< back)
2
In real life determining the sex of turtles is no easy task. Unlike mammals, reptiles don’t have their naughty bits hanging out where they can be easily seen, and the only way to really tell a turtle’s gender is by comparison: male turtles are often smaller than females and have thicker
tails. Since there are no other Chelys Galactica to compare A’Tuin to, the attempts of the Discworld’s Astrozoologists are probably futile to begin with.
(<< back)
3
Puns on the ‘steady state’ theory of explaining the size, origin and future of the universe. The best-known other theory is, of course, the Big Bang theory, referred to in the following sentence.
(<< back)
4
Terry has said that the name ‘Ankh-Morpork’ was inspired neither by the ankh (the Egyptian cross with the closed loop on top), nor by the Australian or New Zealand species of bird (frogmouths and small brown owls, respectively) that go by the name of ‘Morepork’.
In The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and The Discworld Companion we are shown an illustration of the Ankh-Morpork coat of arms, which does feature a Morepork/owl holding an ankh. But from Terry’s remarks (see next annotation) it’s safe to say that neither bird nor cross were explicitly on his mind when he first came up with the name Ankh-Morpork.
Finally, many readers have mentioned the resonance that Ankh-Morpork has with our world’s Budapest: also a large city made up of two smaller cities (Buda and Pest) separated by a river.
(<< back)
5
The two barbarians, Bravd and Weasel, are parodies of Fritz Leiber’s fantasy heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The Swords series of books in which they star are absolute classics, and have probably had about as much influence on the genre as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
The Swords stories date back as far as 1939, but more than sixty years later they have lost none of their appeal. Both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are, in large part, affectionate parodies of the Leiberian universe, although I hasten to add that, in sharp contrast to many later writers in the field, Leiber himself already had a great sense of humour. Fafhrd and the Mouser are not to be taken altogether serious in his original version, either.
Given all this, I can perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Terry intended Ankh-Morpork to be a direct parody of the great city of Lankhmar in which many of the Swords adventures take place. However, Terry explicitly denied this when I suggested it on alt.fan.pratchett:
"Bravd and the Weasel were indeed takeoffs of Leiber characters—there was a lot of that sort of thing in The Colour of Magic. But I didn’t—at least consciously, I suppose I must say—create Ankh-Morpork as a takeoff of Lankhmar."
(<< back)
6
The story behind Rincewind’s name goes back to 1924, when J. B. Morton took over authorship of the column ‘By The Way’ in the Daily Express, a London newspaper.
He inherited the pseudonym ‘Beachcomber’ from his predecessors on the job (the column had existed since 1917), but he was to make that name forever his own by virtue of his astonishing output and success: Morton wrote the column for over 50 years, six times a week, until 1965 when the column became a weekly feature, and continued to the last column in November 1975.
Beachcomber/Morton used an eccentric cast of regular characters in his sketches, which frequently caricatured self-important and highbrow public figures. One continual theme was the silliness of the law courts, featuring amongst others Mr Justice Cocklecarrot and the twelve Red-Bearded Dwarves. In one sketch, the names of those dwarfs were given as Sophus Barkayo-Tong, Amaninter Axling, Farjole Merrybody, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Cleveland Zackhouse, Molonay Tubilderborst, Edeledel Edel, Scorpion de Rooftrouser, Listenis Youghaupt, Frums Gillygottle, and, wait for it: Churm Rincewind. Terry says:
"I read of lot of Beachcomber in second-hand collections when I was around 13. Dave Langford pointed out the origin of Rincewind a few years ago, and I went back through all the books and found the name and thought, oh, blast, that’s where it came from. And then I thought, what the hell, anyway."
(<< back)
7
Terry has this to say about the name ‘Twoflower’: “[…] there’s no joke in Twoflower. I just wanted a coherent way of making up ‘foreign’ names and I think I pinched the Mayan construction (Nine Turning Mirrors, Three Rabbits, etc.).”
(<< back)
8
On the covers of the first two Discworld books, Josh Kirby actually drew Twoflower with four physical eyes. Consensus on alt.fan.pratchett has it that Terry was trying to get across the fact that Twoflower was wearing glasses (‘four-eyes’ being a common insult thrown at bespectacled folks), but that Josh Kirby simply triggered on the literal text and went off in a direction of his own. Whether this action essentially shows Kirby’s interpretative genius (the KirbyFan explanation) or his inability to get the joke / read very carefully (the NonKirbyFan explanation) is a matter still under discussion.
(<< back)
9
The inn called ‘The Broken Drum’ gets burned down in this book. The later Discworld novels all feature an inn called ‘The Mended Drum’. The novel Strata contains an explanation of why you would call a pub ‘The Broken Drum’ in the first place: “You can’t beat it”.
(<< back)
10
One of the few clues to Rincewind’s age being younger rather than older, despite the tendency of every cover artist to depict him as at least sixtyish. No one ever draws him as looking like a weasel, either.
(<< back)
11
The name of the Discworld’s premier scientific institution resonates with that of the Invisible College, formed by the secret organisation of the Rosicrucians, whose members were called the Invisibles because they never dared to reveal themselves in public. The Invisible College was a conclave of scientists, philosophers and other progressive thinkers which, in later times and under Stuart patronage, became the Royal Society.
In the Brief Lives arc of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic, Dream visits the Invisible College, where a scientist is happily dissecting a dead orangutan. I don’t think that scene was entirely coincidental…
(<< back)
12
An American reader was puzzled by the fact that in Ankh-Morpork the unit of currency is the dollar, instead of, for instance, something more British, like the pound. Terry explained:
"The dollar is quite an elderly unit of currency, from the German ‘thaler’, I believe, and the use of the term for the unit of currency isn’t restricted to the US. I just needed a nice easy monetary unit and didn’t want to opt for the ‘gold pieces’ cliché. Sure, I live in the UK, but I haven’t a clue what the appropriate unit of currency is for a city in a world on the back of a turtle:-)…"
(<< back)
13
A very old British slang word for ready money is ‘rhino’, which Brewer thinks may be related to the phrase ‘to pay through the nose’, since ‘rhinos’ means ‘nose’ in Greek.
The Colour of Magic d-1 Page 22