Discworld: what it is

Discworld is definitely a place, and it’s also a state of mind.

June Gilbank’s representation (in crochet, which is its own inside joke) of the Discworld cosmology. Or something.

The geology on which the characters stand: the world is a disc (hence the title) rotating on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle.  Plot devices include characters falling off the Edge, but mostly the action takes place away from the Edge.

There’s a fair amount of detail available (in footnotes.  Yes, fiction with footnotes.  Somehow it works) about things like the eight seasons (our four plus some others) and the four directions (hubward, rimward, Turnwise and Widdershins).  One needn’t understand it for it to work.

The political geography of the Discworld has definite Roundworld (translation: real) analogues.  Ankh-Morpork, the chief city, is sort of medieval London (it’s got guilds) with some New York attributes (there’s a Guild of Thieves and a Guild of Assassins).  Klatch is sort of the Middle East without oil.  Uberwald is sort of eastern Europe with fat (read: oil).  The Agatean Empire is sort of the Far East, but instead of them sending silver to the West, they have lots of gold. XXXX, or Terror Incognita, is Australia.  Just as in Roundworld, they have a lot of beer.

Creator Terry Pratchett wrote, “There are no maps.  You can’t map a sense of humor,” in the 1989 foreword to the American edition of The Color of Magic, the first Discworld novel.

In 1995, he and Stephen Briggs (sort of Pratchett’s first creative officer) published The Discworld Mapp: Being the Onlie True & Mostlie Accurate Mappe of the Fantastyk & Magical Dyscworlde.

In a way, this tells you a lot about the Pratchett sense of humor.

The actual shape of the planets on the map look nothing like those on the planet known as Earth, but people are people everywhere.

Speaking of people: they exist on the Discworld.  They’re humans, trolls, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, gnomes, goblins and elves.  Feegles are very Scottish, and vampires are closer to Transylvania and Nosferatu than the Twilight Saga.  And there are dragons in two varieties: draco nobilis, the big buggers of the Saint George variety; and swamp dragons, which grow to about two feet long and are frequently kept as pets (very useful for lighting fires) despite their terrible digestive problems.

Up till this point, technology on the Discworld has been a real mish-mash when seen from a Roundworld vantage point.  There are imps that do jobs similar to those we achieve with microprocessors.   In the case of the thinking engine Hex (located in the High Energy Magic building on the campus of Unseen University, chief institution of wizardry), an ant farm is integral to the rapid calculations necessary for some very sophisticated spells.  People ride horses or camels, walk or drive oxen.  In Klatch, the privileged can ride magic carpets.  Ships exist and are sail-driven.  A complex system of semaphore communication (called “the clacks”) develops, which roughly equates to our telegrams.

However, in the next novel, Raising Steam, steam power arrives in Ankh-Morpork.  (This novel will be available in the UK in November 2013 but not until March 2014 in the US, to the great disgust of American Pratchett fans.)  Considering the effect steam had on the Roundworld, the possibilities for the Discworld are mind-boggling.

Very little information is available about the plot of Raising Steam, but considering the backstory, one character above all others will most likely be taxed with managing the new technology: Lord Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician.  He manages everything else, being the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork.  (An example of his managerial style: he throws people he doesn’t like [especially mimes] into the scorpion pit.)

What little information is available about the plot of Raising Steam indicates that Vetinari will handle this crisis in classic Vetinari fashion, by delegating it.  The unfortunate middle manager is said to be Moist von Lipwig, a consummate swindler snatched from the gallows by Vetinari, who promptly put him to work resuscitating the city’s dead postal service (in Going Postal, Discworld novel number 33) and moribund banking system (Making Money, number 36).

Curious, possibly, about some of Discworld’s other inhabitants?  Characters will be covered in the next post.