Douglas: Now tell us about - are you going to tell us the story about you and Terry…
Neil: Yes, I will.
Douglas: I think that’s important one.
Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.
Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.
Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
“…God does not pay dice with the universe. I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch-dark room, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time.“
I feel like we don’t give God enough credit for telling us exactly who she is with this line. Yes, it’s funny and said in a breezy Frances McDormand voice, but it’s also kind of terrifying. That game does not sounds like a fun game for anyone but God, for whom it’s probably hilarious. And I think this really sets the tone for God in Good Omens (the TV series, at least).
Good Omens opens up the possibility that God is cruel. She is, at the very least, indifferent to a lot of human suffering, and is sometimes in the business of causing it. Her punishments are harsh, indiscriminate and irreversible. This is a God who drowns children to make a point. She admits that her creations fear her, and does not seem to have a problem with that. She’s capricious with damnation and forgiveness. (Crowley fell for asking a few questions and hanging out with the wrong crowd; Aziraphale straight up gives his flaming sword away and that’s fine.) She doesn’t seem to mind that her angels behave horrifically, from mundane bullying up to summary execution.
She is not merciful. She provides no answers, not even to the faithful. She does not come to the aid of those who call on her. Crowley tells Aziraphale that he shouldn’t count on God to come and fix things, and he’s right. At times, God seems downright sadistic. (Think about the plant scene as some kind of traumatic reenactment of Crowley being cast out of Heaven. Then think about the fact that God herself is narrating this scene in a tone of detached amusement. That’s fucked up!)
One of the reasons that Crowley is such a sympathetic character is that he asks the same questions that any person who has both faith and compassion would ask. (The idea that a demon is the moral center of the story is a think for another post.) If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why is there so much suffering in the world? Is God actively causing the suffering? Why? Does she just not care? Why doesn’t she make it stop?
@inthroughthesunfroof reply: You said what I’ve been thinking, just, much more beautifully. I don’t know what Pratchett and Gaiman’s religious beliefs are, beyond both having a strong humanist streak. Good Omens doesn’t read like an athiest work, it reads like someone wrestling with the fundamental question that all Christians run into: Given an all-knowing and all-powerful God whom we are told literally is love, why does suffering exist? Why does this suffering exist? How can our God be so cruel?
It’s a question that has broken many people’s faith, including mine. Good Omens doesn’t pretend to answer why, but it does answer so now what with a resoundingly humanist perspective. Whether or not God loves us, whatever that means, the only reasonable way for us to live is to love each other.
It’s a surprisingly biblical answer. Matthew 22:36-40:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a]38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
If the God of the Bible is real, I don’t know if They’ll forgive a loss of faith. I hope They won’t be too disappointed if people who fail to follow the first commandment hang onto the second.
@ilarualreply: This is such a good post, and really articulates a lot of the thoughts that serve as the backdrop for basically all my readings of the lead characters of GO (both the immortals and the humans). The point is not: is God there? will God save us? Instead, the point is: it is imperative that we assume that there will be no divine intervention, and that it is up to us to work our own interventions.
It’s interesting to me that the human characters do not seem to give a fuck about God. Adam and the Them care about their world, and they care about protecting it regardless of what anyone, divine or otherwise, has to say about it. Anathema, likewise, isn’t interested in anyone’s guidance but Agnes’s. As for Tracy and Shadwell and Newt… they’re just along for the ride, they’re not worried about big theological questions. They’re just humans, messy, lovely, ridiculous humans who are just Doing Their Best when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. And all of them have no truck with any Great Plan, whether it’s God’s or anyone else’s— the human characters just want their planet left in one piece. Humanity’s responsible for wrecking it, and humanity’ll be responsible for fixing it, thank you very much. It’s only Heaven and Hell who have any real investment in what God wants or doesn’t want. Squabbling children who are still, after millennia, vying for Mom’s attention no matter how silent and indifferent She may be.
And as for our show-stealing leads…
Obviously Aziraphale’s entire journey over the course of the story is about finally giving up the ghost and accepting what he’s known to be true, in his heart of hearts, for awhile now: God isn’t coming to help you. God isn’t going to tell you what the right thing to do is. You need to do for yourself, you need to speak for yourself, you need to take action, because if you don’t, then who will? Aziraphale’s story is about recognizing that maybe God really does have a plan for all this, but maybe it’s cruel and unjust. And, not knowing what the plan is, if there is one, it is imperative that we step up and act with radical kindness, because to do otherwise is unthinkable.
Crowley… well… OP said it all. Crowley understands this. He is the only character in the entire series that actually addresses God directly, and we know She hears him. She sees, She hears, and there’s a distinct possibility that Crowley and Aziraphale were Her answer all along, but whether that’s the case or not, She’s not telling. And that indifferent silence? Crowley knows that’s cruelty, and that’s why Crowley so thoroughly rejects the false dichotomy of Heaven and Hell. He knows, has known for millennia, that it’s all bullshit. And he knows Aziraphale knows it too, it’s just a matter of getting to admit it.
In the novel, we’re left with absolute silence from God. Maybe God is there, maybe not, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter because we’ve got to take care of each other regardless. But in the show? God is there, God is watching, and God is a smug asshole.
It would be easy to confuse omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence with perfection. But God, it is said, created humanity in Her own image, and if you look at what humanity is like, capable of both extraordinary good and extraordinary evil… well, I think that says just as much about God as it does about us.
#god is human but on a cosmic scale #is basically my praxis both within the context of GO and within the context of just like… religion in general #either god is imperfect & fallible or god is unceasingly cruel #it’s up to the individual to decide which interpretation they can live with
@pisces-atdcomment: also worth noting the somewhat humorous line in the end of the series, in which gabriel states “god does not play games with the universe” and crowley responds “where have you been?” crowley and aziraphale have been living on earth for so long that they’ve SEEN things. think about it: they were the only ones actually THERE right before God literally drowned everyone except for Noah and his family. they’ve seen the type of things god is responsible for. every time aziraphale says “god’s plans are ineffable”, crowley is right there to jump in and ask “why?” which honestly is probably what got him thrown out of Heaven in the first place. eventually, aziraphale stops saying that. he never truly turns his back on heaven, not until the very end, but that’s not because he LOVES heaven or even god. he keeps his foot in the door out of fear. and crowley never truly aligns with hell, but he’d rather be on his own side with aziraphale than ever go back to heaven and work for god again. being on earth for so long, crowley and aziraphale side with the humans more than anyone else. they question hell and heaven, and more importantly, they question god. there’s literally a scene in crowleys office when he’s talking upwards, toward god, and asking “why? why does it have to be this way?” the angels and demons never ask, because for the most part they don’t CARE. the ineffable/great plan is just about a power struggle to them. also worth mentioning that god, in this situation, is about as chaotic as a 13 year old angsts fanfic writer. loving the beauty of suffering for the sake of the story, loving the heart wrenching plot twists, loving to panic and fear and chaos caused by her “ineffable” plan. fine in writing, evil when playing with the lives of real beings. but god has never seen it that way, in the same way angels and demons don’t value human life. I mean, they don’t really give a shit about killing 7 billion humans (not to mention the plants and animals) and of course, to mirror the scene in crowleys office where he’s speaking towards the ceiling to god, there’s a scene later where aziraphale literally calls god and asks to speak with her directly. both of them asking the same thing: “why? does there really need to be a war? can we stop this?” in conclusion: god is cruel and aziraphale and crowley are the only two on either side who understand this concept.
Just came across this on Goodreads. “Discworld #14.5; City Watch #1.5” - how cute is that?
If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a City Watch short story, here’s the link to where it is hosted The L-Space Web (by Sir Terry’s own kind permission: “I don’t want to see it in distributed print anywhere but don’t mind people downloading it for their own enjoyment.”)
Sharing this awesomeness with those who still doesn´t know!
Hoinarylup! Squidaped-oyt! The truth shall make ye fret! I’ve just seen some special Hogswatch news from Narrativia!
“Channel 4 has commissioned Terry Pratchett’s The Abominable Snow Baby for December 2021. Produced by Eagle Eye Drama, the production company recently launched by the team behind global drama brand Walter Presents, in association with Narrativia, Sir Terry’s independent production company, the animated Christmas special is based on a short story from his bestselling book of Christmas tales (Father Christmas’ Fake Beard).
The magic of Terry Pratchett, the legendary national treasure and maverick British author who sold over 100 million books worldwide, comes to life in this half-hour programme. The Abominable Snow Baby tells the story of a quintessentially English town which is thrown into disarray by a huge snowfall and the dramatic appearance of a 14-foot tall Abominable Snow Baby.
Shunned and feared by the local townsfolk, Snow Baby is rescued by the indomitable Granny who along with grandson Albert, welcomes him into her home, showering her new pet with love and affection, changing the town’s perception and helping the community overcome their initial prejudices.”
In the second installment of the Discworld’s Death subseries, Terry Pratchett once again shows that he is a not-so-secret humanist and a philosopher. He lures you in with wizard slapstick, surprises you with an achingly beautiful fable, and then leaves you by the side of the road with all these overwhelming feelings about people and the cosmos. Sneaky bastard.
We’re only two weeks away from Prime releasing Good Omens! Probably my most anticipated Story-to-Screen translation - though we’ve really been spoiled for choice these last few years, haven’t we? American Gods, Preacher, Happy, Umbrella Academy, Locke and Key, Nos4atu… my god, Brave New World! it’s a golden age of adaptation and I for one couldn’t be happier.
Everytime that Tumblr post about “You can’t use the word bungalow in fantasy worlds!” or whatever and then it’s all the fucking reblogs of all the words that have “specific origins” that you “can’t use” because “those people don’t exist” or “those places” or whatever.
Do you know how many fucking basic words we use to describe the world are derived from very specific people and very specific events? Or are stolen from languages in which those words come from VERY SPECIFIC PEOPLE and events? If you get rid of one, you might as well get rid of them all! Because just because YOU don’t know the VERY SPECIFIC HISTORICAL ORIGINS of this word, doesn’t mean your AUDIENCE doesn’t and wouldn’t that break immersion??
No. No it fucking wouldn’t. Not if you, you know, make it work.
What else would you do? Write in a god damn conlang? Because all I’m hearing is “because I know the origin of this word, therefore it can’t be in fantasy” and honestly fuck off.
I’m gonna go put bungalows in my fantasy now.
This is how you get Uncleftish Beholding, a very clever sci-fi short essay by Poul Anderson, written in English without any loanwords. E.g. you can’t use the word ‘science’, that’s from Latin - so it’s called ‘worldken’. You can’t say ‘atom’, that’s Greek - it’s an ‘uncleft’. You can’t say ‘theory’ because that’s also Greek - so it’s ‘beholding’. The title, therefore, means ‘Atomic Theory’.
There are other books, even novel-length ones, that have taken similar restrictive or highly theoretical approaches to the use of language - Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban is one of the more famous, with its opening sentence of, “On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.”
They can be fascinating but extremely challenging to read, and I can only imagine writing one is an enormous task, simply because you have to think about every single word as you go. It’s not something you do casually on a whim, it’s a huge part of the construction and worldbuilding of the story itself.
So sure, maybe don’t say “French braid” in a world that doesn’t have France, that might throw someone out of the immersion, I guess. But if you start trying to limit words back down to their original meanings and saying you can’t use them because whatever language they originally come from doesn’t exist in [fantasy world], you’re going to end up with a ridiculously limited vocabulary.
Whereas if you’re Terry Pratchett you just mention cars and computers and whatever else because he is telling us about a fantasy world, it isn’t always meant to be an in-universe telling of a tale
[ID: a series of tweets by twitter user TheOperaGeek, on 6/8/2020.
“There were times when the world did not need policemen, because what it really did need was for somebody who knew what they were doing to shut it all down and start it all up again so that THIS time it could be done properly.” -Terry Pratchett, Snuff
“…but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?” - Terry Pratchett, Snuff
“I’m not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I’m supposed to KEEP the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I’m reading the wrong manual!” - Watch Commander Sam Vimes on policing (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)
“‘He asked you to shoot at people who weren’t shooting back,’ growled Vimes, striding forward. […] ‘They are throwing STONES, Sarge,’ said Colon. ‘So? Stay out of range. They’ll get tired before we do.’” - Sam Vimes on policing, again. (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch)
“No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.” - Terry Pratchett, THUD!
“And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘we’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things.” - Vimes on policing & excuses, part three. (Terry Pratchett, THUD!)
“But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.” - The Dragon on human nature, part two (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
“You couldn’t say ‘I had orders.’ You couldn’t say ‘It’s not fair.’ No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. […] Not ‘Thou Shalt Not” Say ‘I WILL NOT’.“ - Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
“And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for SOME reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.” - Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
“For the enemy is not Troll, nor is it Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good.” - Terry Pratchett, THUD!
She doesn’t know it yet, but she will soon. You see, the midterm paper on calls for students to write a collection evaluation for a library of our choosing. Now, I know that when she said that library does not need to be real, she meant that we didn’t need to pick a specific one. But what I heardwas…
For those of you requesting the full paper, I’ll see what I can do once I get the grade back!
I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED
For the sake of this evaluation, only the official, present collection of the Unseen University will be examined. Collections belonging to other libraries that are accessible via L-Space will be considered as part of the Interlibrary Loan System, as will materials available by time-travel and other such means.
Relatedly:
Whether or not acquiring books that have not yet been written is a violation of copyright law has yet to be legally clarified, but faculty and students should not expect to be permitted to cite them in their own work (see also Library Rule 3: Do Not Interfere With The Nature Of Causality).
Discworld quotes that make you stare at the wall, please add your own:
You fear tomorrow, and you’ve made your fear your god.
–Monstrous Regiment
Poison goes where poison’s welcome.
–I Shall Wear Midnight
People start off believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.
–Small Gods
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.
–Night Watch
They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.
–Guards! Guards!
And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
–Carpe Jugulum
If there is a supreme being, I told myself, then it is up to us to become its moral superior.
– Unseen Academicals (off the top of my head so the wording may be a little off)
I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.
– Snuff
Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
– Hogfather
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
– A Hat Full of Sky
All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!
The Wee Free Men
And of course:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
