Tessa  0:23  
Welcome to nanny Augs book club a Discworld podcast Join us as we read through all 41 of the fantastical and outrageous Discworld novels. I'm Tessa. Hello Nigel. This is episode three, the color of magic. The color of magic was the first ever Discworld novel published in 1983. So we are going all the way back to the beginning, I decided to do this 1/3 Because really, as we will discuss, this book feels more like a bit than a cohesive story. Pratchett specifically described this book as a parody, quote, what Blazing Saddles did for westerns. So he was really more interested at this point in the satirical elements than the narrative ones that he would become interested in later, there have been three adaptations of the color of magic, there's been a TV movie, a graphic novel, and a computer game.

Nigel  1:19  
And I have seen none of those.

Tessa  1:22  
I've only seen the TV movie, I was not impressed, seamlessly. I have not seen anything and that's, you know, I feel like people know that about you at this point. Right? Yeah, I just choose not to perceive it, not to not to see it. So I like subsequent Discworld novels. The color of magic is divided into four main sections that almost act like interconnected short stories, or novellas. Each of these sections remixes and satirizes classic sword and sorcery genre tropes and texts that were very popular in the 70s and 80s. Before this book came out, the overall plot introduces us to the failed wizard rinse wind a cowardly loser, who has the worst luck in the universe, and only knows one spell that he cannot say for fear of what it does. He is coerced by the patrician of Ogmore porque into becoming a guide or a protector for to flower, the Discworld first tourists from the Counterweight Continent, little knowing that this job will lead him on a journey to the literal edge of the disk, literally hanging off of the disk by his fingers. Nigel, what were your first impressions of the color of magic? The first Discworld novel?

Nigel  2:41  
I'm gonna be honest, I didn't like this. I really didn't like this and I like I know it's only the third one I've read. And so it's I don't know whether it's the worst Discworld book but it's definitely like the worst rated on my Goodreads out of all the Discworld books so far. Yeah, I gave more four stars. I gave word sisters five stars and then gave the color of magic three.

Tessa  3:05  
I feel like that's fair. Like I said at the beginning this feels like it's more of an idea. Like the Discworld like this is the Discworld idea. This is like proof of concept. It's not it's not like a cohesive narrative.

Nigel  3:21  
Like I know listeners won't be able to see this but I like I said that I have thoughts about this novel. This novel feels more like a bunch of like wacky sitcom episodes you know, it feels like a Will they won't they kind of rom com almost between where the Swindon death you know, like, death claim. Will death time wrench When soul will resume escape? Who knows

Tessa  3:45  
enemies to lovers between death and rinse when?

Nigel  3:48  
Yeah, dirty? Dead right, honestly.

Tessa  3:52  
So how familiar were you with the sword and sorcery? Because this is like a very specific satire that's happening here. Like, I know you were familiar with Macbeth, because you're an English major when we read Weird Sisters. And obviously Mort has a lot of literary references that you got as well.

Nigel  4:12  
So I'm, I'm into Shakespeare because I'm gay.

Tessa  4:16  
And that's fair. That is absolutely fair. But like, are you familiar with some of the source material that Pratchett is riffing on in color of magic?

Nigel  4:28  
No, not at all. It's really not the type of fancy that I've got. I go in for and I don't know whether were whether I ever will. Probably a bit disappointing, but sure. You know, that's just how it is. That's not what the type of fancy I'm into. seem very boring.

Tessa  4:46  
Yeah. So for those of you who are maybe unfamiliar with some of the things that Pratchett is referencing, which to be fair, I was also unfamiliar with a lot of these stories. When I first read the novel when I was a teenager I was I had not read a lot of Sword and Sorcery I'd read Lord of the Rings, which is, of course, where a lot of fantasy comes from. But I never read some of these like more mid century 70s and 80s types of what we'd call genre sword and sorcery. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with the the references, so the first section, the color of magic, the characters robbed and the weasel are specific references from Fritz Leiber sword series, the sending of eight, which is like the second novella section has some really Lovecraftian vibes to it. So we can talk about those here in a little bit. And then the lure of the worm is a direct parody of an mccaffrey's Dragon flight series, which I have since read. So I actually write about McCaffrey in my dissertation. So I have I know her work, probably more than I know any of the others in that are being referenced here. But that's just a quick summary of what what is being parodied here. I wonder if people who like grew up reading these would find this a little bit more engaging?

Nigel  6:07  
I don't know. Obviously, I can't speak to contemporary accounts, because thought is before I was born. And also then I don't know, was there. I don't know what like I mean, I don't know anyone who's getting into that old old fantasy now. Like, I feel like if people are getting into fantasy, the oldest they'll go is like, Lord of the Rings. And that was written in the 50s. Yeah. Well, yeah. But it's like, that's a specific type of, you know, thing isn't different from, like, this kind of thing, which is from the 70s, or whatever.

Tessa  6:41  
Yeah, so what he's talking about is very different from Lord of the Rings I'm actually going to read, let me read you a sort of extended quote, it's from a speech that to Pratchett gave in 1992 So he's this is about a decade after the first book came out. It that speech was called the elves were bastards, which I think is a great title for a speech. This This to me, what he says here kind of encapsulates his frustration with sword and sorcery and what Fantasy had become in the early 80s, when he wrote the color of magic, and I think it informs a lot of what he was trying to do in this particular novel. Unfortunately, there's still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another, he will grow Roth, oh my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar job breaking mock archaic narrative, be like if Faith This is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third rate Romantic literature. Yonder lies the palace of my father, the king. That's not fantasy, that's just token reheated until the magic boils away. I get depressed with these fluffy dragons and noble elves. Elves were never noble. They were cruel bastards. And I dislike heroes, you can't trust the buggers. They always let you down. I don't believe in the natural nobility of kings, because a large percentage of them in our history have turned out to be power crazed idiots. And I certainly don't believe in the wisdom of wizards. I've worked with their modern equivalents. And I know what I am talking about. Fantasy should present the familiar in a new light. I try to do that on the Discworld. It's a way of looking at the here and now not that there. And then fantasy is the earth literature from which everything else spring. At its best, it is truly escapist. But the point about escaping is that you should escape to as well as from you should go somewhere worthwhile and come back better for the experience. Too much alleged fantasy is just empty sugar life with the crest Soph does that like I find that to be a really interesting excerpt from that speech? Because I think that for someone who actually really loves fantasy as a genre, he's very, very critical of fantasy that's just sort of token reheated is what he calls it. And I think that's what he's deliberately making fun of here or riffing off of in the color of magic.

Nigel  9:13  
Yeah, I I really noticed that in the like, when I was reading it Some parts were just painful to get through, especially the on McCaffrey, one, the lore of the worm. They have a section where Oh my God, what's the barbarians and prune? Right? Yeah, he's talking about the princess and he's literally like, oh, the wench was commonly enough. And it's like, what no star

Tessa  9:38  
the when she

Nigel  9:39  
shot off about the way showed off about the wage. I hate that word so much.

Tessa  9:48  
Yeah, but I don't think Pratchett particularly likes it either.

Nigel  9:52  
Oh, I know. I know. It's not like Pratchett on his own because he wouldn't be like I mean, cuz I've read later Discworld books and they're nothing like this. right fucking hate this mode of writing. It makes sense when Tolkien is writing in similar language to that, but not that type where it's like, he's going for something which emulates Anglo Saxon literature because he's a professor of Anglo Saxon literature. He studied the language he's trying to make fantasy, which provides a fictional fantasy history for England. It makes sense. Everywhere else it doesn't. I hate it.

Tessa  10:27  
Right? Yeah. And I think that that's kind of part of what he's doing is the idea that you get these characters like rune who talk this way. And then you have other characters like Rincewind, who are just like, What the hell are you talking about? Like, what the fuck? Why the fuck are you talking like that? Like, it's the juxtaposition between, like, here's the familiar fantasy trope. And then here's a way that we can undermine it.

Nigel  10:50  
Do you know that I'm breaking bad meme? Or like, Jesse? What the fuck are you talking about?

Tessa  10:55  
No, I don't I have actually never seen Breaking Bad.

Nigel  10:58  
Well, it's a completely unrelated that, but it's like, you know, so you just completely makes no sense to anyone else within the person saying, and usually, you know, like, beyond like the house of my own father, the king, you know, he will grow Roth, it's just you just turn on the like, Jessie, what the fuck are you talking about? That's the

Tessa  11:19  
Monty Python esque in some ways.

Nigel  11:22  
Yeah. But see, Monty Python knew what they were doing. Were able to do it. Well, whereas I don't think Terry Pratchett is particularly good at parodying, especially in the first book, a sub genre of fantasy, which is particularly bad in his writing, you know,

Tessa  11:39  
right. At a certain point, it's like, if I don't get if I don't enjoy the source material, why would I enjoyed this?

Nigel  11:47  
Yeah, I think that's probably, I think maybe that's probably the biggest disconnect I might have had, where it's like, I'm not invested in this story at all. I really could not care less about what happens half the time to have these characters. And that's probably the variable of me, I'm sorry. But no,

Tessa  12:07  
it's totally fine. I that's kind of how I felt the first time that I read it as well. And I think it's improved a little bit on reread, but not the rents went books are not my favorite of the Discworld books, which is another reason why I wanted to save this one for number three, because I wanted to get you hooked on the concept before i i had to read some of the earlier ones.

Nigel  12:29  
I appreciate that like as someone who, as someone who first of all, I mean, I would have continued reading anyway, have I started with the color magic, mainly because that's how my brain works. If I start reading a series or watching it, I'm gonna have to finish it no matter how bad, but I really appreciate that. Because like you, you know, you see people on there talking about a show or whatever. And it's like, oh, no, you just like, you just got to skip the first like, two seasons, or you know, you got to watch like, 100 episodes of this, and then it'll get good. And it's like, I don't really have time for that.

Tessa  13:04  
Yeah, nobody has time for that busy.

Nigel  13:06  
Leave me alone.

Tessa  13:08  
You're welcome. I avoided that for you. Yeah. So since you brought up characters just now might now might be a good time to talk about some of the central characters that we are introduced to here. We saw rince wind fairy briefly in mort, if you remember, he was kind of in the background at unseen university. But now he is the main character. So how did how did you feel about rinse wind?

Nigel  13:33  
I mean, I like Rincewind as a character, but I don't know whether I like him as a character in the color of magic, if that makes sense. I just think everyone is poorly characterized. Because this is so specific, a satire and it's entirely completely different reference point to anything I've experienced. So it's like I can't get in with this characterization, but no, like what Richmond is later.

Tessa  13:57  
So let's let's talk about him a little bit. So he's, he's definitely described. He's like a unseen University, which is like the wizard school of the Discworld. Yeah, he's an unseen University drop out. Because when he was a student, he snuck into the library on a dare, which the unseen University Library is definitely a fixture that will become more and more interesting as we go along. But he snuck into the library on a dare and opened the ark. Tavo. Right, because there is an eight color. Yeah, which is the the Octarine color. And that's and that's what the book is named after the color of magic is Octarine, which we can talk about that took me

Nigel  14:40  
so long to figure out what they were on about, where it was like, why is this book called The color of magic? And even though I had heard about Octarine, it was like, didn't click for so long. And then I was like, oh, okay, this is actually kind of like a clever book title. I'll give you that. Color of magic.

Tessa  15:00  
colorimetric is a pretty good book title. I mean, so far what's your favorite book title? More Weird Sisters are color of magic, I

Nigel  15:07  
think purely in terms of title alone the color road magic, shame that the book was such a letdown to me. Because it's like more oh, it just means that the book is about death. So that's kind of like the worst out of those three Weird Sisters like what you know, it relates to and you're like, Oh, you got that in joke in Shakespeare? Because there's a lot of Shakespeare and references and stuff. So that, you know, that'd be second. But I think just purely in terms of title, the color of magic, that's like, wow,

Tessa  15:36  
yeah. And like the fact that there is actually a color of magic. It's Octarine. And I love that he tries to explain what colors it might relate to. But he makes it very clear that there isn't like a Earth equivalent to the color. Yeah, which I find fascinating. Like, in my mind, it's kind of a yellowish green.

Nigel  15:57  
In my mind, it's kind of orange. And maybe that's just because it begins. Oh, and that's how my brain works.

Tessa  16:04  
And that's fair, I just think it's interesting that like, I wonder if everybody has a different color in mind when they think of Octarine.

Nigel  16:12  
But see, here's the thing, like, here's the thing, shrimp have more color receptors in their eyes than we do so they can perceive more colors. So maybe they can see Octarine.

Tessa  16:23  
That would make sense. It would be the tragedy of the shrimp to be able to see a color that humans can't, but they can't communicate about it, huh, rinse wind as a character gets kicked out of the unseen university because he reads the arc Tavo. And one of the spells largest itself in its brain, he doesn't know what it does. It's like one of the primary spells of the universe. So who knows, it could stop time, it could unravel reality, like we just don't know what it does. And he doesn't either. But he can't learn any other spells because it's taking up like all the magic space in his brain. So he gets kicked out of the unseen university, but he's still as a wizard, because wizards are born not made. And he compensates for this fact by wearing a pointy hat that has the word wizard embroidered on it, which I thought was kind of clever. He's definitely like very cowardly like he does. He doesn't. Richmond is the equivalent of someone who doesn't want to be a main character, but keeps becoming the main character, which I think is a very funny characterization. I'm not sure it works very well in this particular novel. But I do appreciate somebody who like really doesn't want to be the main character of something and yet keeps getting pulled into that position.

Nigel  17:37  
Yeah, where it's like, he seems like the most put upon person in the entire world. And I think that's largely his fault. But yeah,

Tessa  17:46  
how is it his fault?

Nigel  17:47  
Yeah, like as in, I think he gets into an awful lot of situations or allows himself to be dragged into situations for better or worse, which make him put upon on the main character.

Tessa  18:01  
Yeah, I mean, he keeps trying to get away.

Nigel  18:03  
He really could have just said no and more to get away from to flower, I think.

Tessa  18:08  
But the patrician threatened him with death.

Nigel  18:11  
Yeah, I know. But like, he could have done more cut me.

Tessa  18:14  
I guess after they leave on more pork. He could have like parted ways with him. Yeah. Yeah, like, I guess I could see that. So let's talk about to flower then who's like the other big character in this book to flower is the world's first the disc world's first tourist. He's from a completely different continent than ONC more pork, and a much richer continent. And so he shows up in encore porque. And there's sort of a series of jokes around to flower where he comes from a completely different culture. So it's sort of a fish out of water, he only really can communicate either through rinse wind, because they both know a language in common or through his like, guide book of Ogmore, Porky and phrases, which, if you've ever seen a tourist do that it's a real thing. Of course, he has the luggage. He also has a camera, which no one's ever seen before. And like it's it is interesting that ONC morepork at this point is not really like a steam punk town the way that we'll see later in books like Weird Sisters, and more. It's more like a traditional fantasy city like with a tavern and, you know, heroes that sort of congregate there. And it is interesting, this idea of bringing in like a tourist. What did you think about two flowers, the character

Nigel  19:28  
I didn't care for, to flower as a character. But I think the concept of a torus in a fantasy world is quite hilarious, because it's like, they take these things for granted. Like when you look at Lord of the Rings, they live in such a beautifully described world and like, you know, completely separate from Peter Jackson's visualization of in the films, but like, Culkin goes to great lengths to describe how beautiful the Shire on different elements Are you know, like even and when we and when Moodle like that harsh karst landscape that's like the burn here in Ireland and it's like, I can't go around Ireland without constantly like, wow, I live in such a fucking pretty country. Like if I lived in a fantasy world, I would never shut up about it. And everyone just takes it for granted so the fact that like he's a tourist and has like this dainty little camera, I think that's a really cool concept. I just like really couldn't care about two flower.

Tessa  20:30  
Let's talk about the camera here in a second. But what about two flower was off putting for you?

Nigel  20:35  
I don't know. And I really hate saying I don't know, but it's just like, can I just say vibes? Like oh my god. We're all

Tessa  20:45  
vibes is like an emerging analytical category when it comes to film books. Yeah, by vibes is a totally reasonable

Nigel  20:53  
like, he seems like he's set up to be some kind of like, I don't know, comedic psychic, but then they never like really go whole hog on it. Or at least like enough for me to reasonably buy into this thing. So it feels like he's kind of in. He's like, caught in between being the straight mom to rinse wins. Like wacky goofball and having him be the wacky goofball to rinse when straight mom

Tessa  21:24  
retweeted seems constantly exasperated by to flower but you're right in the fact that their dynamic does seem to switch between which one is being more ridiculous I guess it's the best word like because yeah to flower the a lot of these stories seem to be to flower gets them in trouble runs wind tries to get them out of trouble. They have about of luck. But then that luck turns into shit by the end of the story like like it's just that's kind of the natural arc of all four of these really? Yeah, so let's let's talk about the camera i This is actually something that continues throughout all of the Discworld novels when we talk about cameras. So cameras are a new technology to ONC more pork when to flower brings them but by the time we get to the later books, you'll see that it becomes a lot more ubiquitous, a lot more people have cameras. And what's interesting is that in the Discworld, there's this real, like tension between things that on Earth in the real world would be science and magic, which we'll talk about here a little bit more later. But in the Discworld cameras instead of being a mechanism, there's like a little imp with a it describes how he has like an easel and like there's like a bed in there. Like there's an imp that lives in this camera and paints the pictures that come through the lens. And it like at one point he like emerges and is like you've run out of pink. We've run out of pink pate. And it's it's so interesting to me this idea that like you take this device and make it more magical, which kind of feels a lot more steampunk to me.

Nigel  23:09  
Yeah, it's really weird because this is kind of like pre steampunk like ONk morepork. Feels more steampunk and lander books that we've read. Whereas this feels like this feels like sort of your traditional fantasy town. That's what ONk Moorpark feels like, in the color match. It feels like you know, something similar to Bree. In the Lord of the Rings.

Tessa  23:30  
Yes. There's definitely Brie vibes with the the broken drum, the tavern that they go to.

Nigel  23:36  
Yeah, the one that gets set on fire. You're right.

Tessa  23:41  
Because the owner is committing insurance fraud.

Nigel  23:43  
I think that's nearly as funny as the concept of a tourist and a Fantasyland, the concept of fantasy tax fraud. I I'm a big proponent of tax fraud, or tax evasion when it's done by the working class, so I can respect that. I have no respect for people who don't pay their taxes like Bill Gates like ether rich, because definitely the the patrician. Like if there were an uprising and more pork, he would get eaten first.

Tessa  24:17  
Well, it's funny that you say that because the patrician, even though he's not really named here. He is a much more important character in the Watch books. And he's kind of Beloved, which is interesting, or at least beloved by readers, not necessarily by Ogmore Porkins because he's the one who comes up with like the guild system of encore park that we see explained in Weird Sisters, which, like everything is sort of like everything is made into a guild like there's the guild of assassins and the guild of which we start to see here, but it's not really explained. There's the guild of assassins. There's the Thieves Guild. There's like a sex workers guild. There's It's just it's really interesting how that works. And we talked about that a little bit in in Weird Sisters. But yeah, this version of the patrician is very like dictators. He, Yeah, he

Nigel  25:11  
definitely has sort of that. Are you familiar with the poem Ozymandias by Percy Shelley?

Tessa  25:17  
Yes, I have to say that I am not a huge fan of Percy Shelley. I actually wrote, I wrote an entire non fiction essay. When I was in undergrad on how much I hated Percy Shelley. Okay, whole thing was about that. But I do I am aware of that poem. Yes.

Nigel  25:37  
Yeah. So I'm thinking of the I'm thinking of the line. Hold on down. I'll bring it up so I can quote it accurately Poetry Foundation. Thank you. Yeah. Whose frown and wrinkled lip and smear of cold command. That's what it feels like this version of the patrician. But it's really interesting that you say that he's beloved in later books, because like, Renson, doesn't feel like we're in Swindon, this book death doesn't feel like death. In other books. Terry Pratchett is kind of hitting a learning curve here.

Tessa  26:07  
Yeah, it's like he these characters really develop into something else later that we kind of see the, you know, to borrow terms from botany, we see the germ here. Like, it's the, like the, the germ of the ideas here. And it's not really until later that we see what these ideas become. But yeah, the insurance thing is hilarious, because to flower is an insurance adjuster. And the idea of insurance is also new to Ogmore. Pork. So like, we haven't, we don't ever see the counterweight cotton in this novel anyway. But it seems like a more bureaucratic place, perhaps, or at least a more like, modernized. I don't want to say progressive, because I don't think it's progressive, but it seems like a more developed or a more, like, closer to what we would say Earth is like they anok more porque yeah, there's this great moment where he's trying to explain what insurance is to rinse wind, let me see if I can find it. So there's this place where there's this this, it's on page 40 and 41 of my book, where he's trying to explain what insurances and he, he says the syllables to rinse when because it doesn't translate into the language that they both speak and rinse when he calls it in sewer ants. And so which I think is hilarious. So you, you take out an in sewer ants policy, and I work out the odds against the cargo being lost based on weather reports and piracy records for the last 20 years, then I add a bit then you pay me some money based on those odds. And the bit rinse would said wagging a finger solemnly. And then if the cargo is lost, I reimburse you, reimburse pay you the value of your cargo. So to flower patiently, I get it. It's like a bet. Right. A wager, in a way, I suppose. And you make money at this in sewer antes. It offers a turn on return on investment. Certainly. And I love that because it's like, yeah, like all insurance is is a wager, like, it's this whole industry that's grown up. I mean, and I don't know what it's like in Ireland to say, I don't know, either. You'll have a very different like, especially healthcare system than we do. But like 30% of us, like jobs are in the insurance industry. Like, it's that's a significant portion of employment in the US. And the fact is, is that it all boils down to a wager, right? Like your house is not going to burn down. But if it does burn down, here's the money that you get. And I really appreciated that sort of explanation of it.

Nigel  28:46  
I don't really understand any of this. So it's like, that could be how it works like that, also, I mean, like, personally, I think I'm too hot to do math,

Tessa  28:59  
that and that's fair. That is fair. But he explains so two of our ends up explaining this to the owner of the broken drum, who promptly signs an insurance policy with two flower and then burns his is in down to collect on the money, which is insurance fraud. And of course, in the process, he ends up starting a huge fire in Ogmore porque, which is sort of the arc of that first short story, the color of magic. And we obviously see death for the first time in this book. And like you mentioned, this is a very different version of the character than what we will see later. The death in this book seems very cruel. Compared to the later versions of death that we'll see. He seems like he's actively taking enjoyment out of his job, which we don't really see that in later versions of death. He seems a lot more implacable in later versions and a lot more interested in humanity.

Nigel  29:59  
I Thought I mean, I kind of like the whole will they won't they dynamic. But like, I mean, when you pointed out it does feel slightly weird, because any kind of like, gives up halfway through it. You know what I mean? For it's like, yeah, I like I like the idea that resentment is just like too busy or put upon to die at the correct time. Like, death is like, well, we'll really you have to amend since I get a BA. So I think it's an interesting dynamic for this book. It's probably like, the thing I enjoy the most out of this book, I enjoy very little of this book, and I'm being honest, as a collective whole. There's certainly like, some individual parts that I was like, oh, that's quite good. But I think my favorite part of this is the will they won't they, between Richmond and death.

Tessa  30:52  
Yeah, death gets very invested in whether Rincewind is going to die or not in this book, and he seems very like gleeful about it. Like I've got to this time, it's almost like a like a wily coyote situation where he's like, like, like he's sitting in the tree waiting for rinse wind to fall, rinse, wind is saved. And so he ends up killing like these gnats instead. Hmm. But it's funny you say that because later we see the death still has an interest in whether rinse winter will die or not. But it's more of a like, it's less of a like, I'll get you this time my pretty and more of a like, curiosity, like because of all the people in the universe death actually doesn't know when rinse wind is going to die. And that like irks him. Yeah. So he like keeps showing up when rinse wind might die.

Nigel  31:45  
Yeah, this also like, another thing, which I thought was interesting was like, at the end of the book, like you see scrofulous, pretending to be deaf and trying to claim brands, which I thought first of all was funny, but I think it's interesting, especially like in the order we read them, because in more you have, like death goes on the holiday. And more as his apprentice starts taking on the aspect of death and starts speaking in a distinctive death way. And then in Weird Sisters, you have the play where they're playing death, and then has death has to come on and play himself on stage. So like, you know, he has to take on an aspect of death, which isn't necessarily what death really is, is what the play demands death to be. So I think this was really interesting through line that goes through the books. I don't know whether this is like an actual thing, or just the thing that I happen to have, like, randomly picked up on. But I think it's interesting that you have this through line of people becoming death, people taking on aspects of death.

Tessa  32:43  
Yeah. And that that is you're you're very perceptive, because that is a through line in the books. It is not scrofula as a standard for death, and more as a standard for death. Those are not the only people that we see do that in the series. Oh, good. And part of it is I think that like the way that this is set up the this universe in the system of magic, and everything that Pratchett has done is that there's like a death shaped hole in the universe, and somebody has to fill that hole. And it can either be death, like the Grim Reaper, who speaks in all capital letters, which we still see here. Or it has to be somebody else. And I think that's a really interesting thing that you've pointed out here.

Nigel  33:27  
I like the I like that moment where death talk to fate, but it's really weird because death talk like death talks to fake but it doesn't feel like fate. Like, you know, this feels like a moment from Sandman. Almost but fate feels like dream instead of like, this feels like dream and death talking or dream and destiny talking. Not necessarily death and faith figure we look at the Sandman comics, obviously that's Neil Gaiman and stuff. But yeah, anyway, I think that's a an interesting one. So I have tasks enough this day, said death in a voice is heavies. neutronium. The white plague abides even now and sued opolis and I am bound there to rescue many of its citizens from his grass. Such a one has not been seen these 100 years. I am expected to stalk the streets as is my duty

said fate softly I imagine Yeah, imagine fate has a soft voice because it's like well, people can people can't escape them that he's you know the ultimate in the same way that death is a boom a monotone. Fate is a soft whisper that you can't escape seething himself beside deaths black robe form and staring down at the distant multifaceted jewel which was the disk universe scene for this extra dimensional vantage point. The sights ceased at song hours Today is a death stirred and the stone began to move again. I thought you said fate, death shrug, a particularly expressive gesture for someone who's visible shape does not have a skeleton. I did indeed chase the mightily once, he said. But alas, the thought came to me that sooner or later all men must die. Everything dies in the end, I can be robbed, but never denied. I told myself, why worry. I snapped faith. So I have heard said death is still grinning. I like that. I like that moment. I think it's one of the better moments in the book. I think it really, I think it really just captures what death is going to call, like, come on to be where he's like, you know, he can't be cheated. So he may as well, except for the case of rinsho. And he may as well like take an interest in human affairs because everyone's going to die at their pre described times.

Tessa  35:57  
Right? And cats. Oh, yes, I guess why not? Yeah, cat. Well, since you brought up fate, there is an interesting. So in Weird Sisters, we were introduced to this idea that the gods don't play chess they but they do play games. But it's more like snakes and ladders, Chutes and Ladders where there are snakes at the bottom. Yeah. And so we actually get to see a game that's played by the gods in the sending of the eight. So blind IO and fate and the lady who's whose name you can't say or she'll disappear and offer the crocodile God and I found this to be a really interesting scene because it reads more like a d&d game, right?

Nigel  36:39  
Yeah, it definitely feels like that. You know, we're like the ogre springs up and still they've definitely feels like there's a DM and it's like, you know, these are helpless player characters are in Swindon to flower you know, they're really helpless player characters, and they've been stuck with a really sadistic D or GM.

Tessa  36:57  
Yeah, I mean, I think so. And of course, the showdown is between fate and the lady. The lady seems to be more on rinse wind and to flowers side, you know, and fate is of course against them, which we kind of see in that conversation with death. I think that's fascinating, because they keep saying that he can't be cheated, but the lady is the one who kind of resists him. She's like the wild card, right. And of course, we get to see her later in. In the last story when she appears to read Swindon to flower.

Nigel  37:30  
I quite like that. But it's also it's also really interesting, I think, because you have this direct contradiction, then to walk in Weird Sisters are like they don't play games, but they do when it suits them. I think that's quite I don't know if this makes sense. But I think it's like, quite a human, like an arrogantly human perspective to say, Oh, well, the gods don't play games with the universe, because it suits your worldview to say that, so maybe it doesn't contradict it. But I think it's distinctly and arrogantly human to assume that the gods do anything if they exist. I'm an atheist. So I assume they don't do anything because I assume they don't exist, like whether they do or they don't they play their own games, if they do they play by their own rules. Well, I guess we're stuck. Right. And

Tessa  38:23  
I think that's part of what the overall messages here because different characters in this series have different relationships with religion. Like you have people who are religious, who you know, sacrifice at these different temples that we see in Ogmore pork, but then you have characters like Granny Weatherwax, who like and Weird Sisters, just she knows that the gods exist, but she doesn't encourage them, right. Like, she doesn't have to believe in them because she knows they exist, but she doesn't really subscribe to them as like deities. And so I think it's interesting too, that here we're given a very, it's a very cruel version of the gods, right, like, they play games for their amusement, but they're not like, complex, interesting games. They're like, bloody unfair, you know, like, you're probably not going to enjoy this kind of games.

Nigel  39:15  
Yeah, I like that quote from King Lear that Gloucester says us flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport. It's like, you know, they could reach down and like, fucking kill any of us at any moment. Right? They wanted to. Yeah, but they're not real.

Tessa  39:33  
So I guess this brings me to another question about structure. So what did you think so this is very different than what we're going to see. I don't think any of the other books and maybe I'll be surprised as I reread them, but I don't think any of the other books have this structure of like the four short stories novellas, usually Discworld books don't even have chapters, right. They're just kind of Yeah, different sections. So what did you think about this? structure this sort of interconnected novella.

Nigel  40:04  
I didn't like it. It feels like a short story collection. But I don't think any of these were put were published elsewhere. I think they were written for this, right?

Tessa  40:13  
Yeah, I couldn't find any mention of them being published somewhere else.

Nigel  40:18  
Yeah. So it'd be different if they were if this were a collection of like, fantasy things that Terry Pratchett had written. I, you know, like, we see Stephen King in his first short story collection, night shift, where it's like, here's all the pieces he wrote for men's magazines. And he was starting to get into writing and trying to build up his name, you know, it would make sense it for something like that. But the fact that this is just, for some reason, divided up into four different short stories, I think it's really weird. I think it really fucks with the pacing of the pacing is strange enough, because the story feels really rushed in places. And then like, if I feel like it doubles an awful lot, especially in your of the worm.

Tessa  41:02  
I do know. And it's weird, because so if this was published as individual short stories, like if they were published in various science fiction fantasy journals, you would expect the type of language that you have here where each story kind of reintroduces you to the characters like this is rinse wind, this is to flower, this is why rinse when can't do magic, like you would expect that kind of language because you know, someone might be reading it, who hadn't read one of the previous stories about these characters. But since they weren't published separately, since they're all like published in the same book, it kind of becomes a little repetitive, like, they're the story of twins, going into the library and reading the octavo. And getting the the spell stuck in his head is told to us like four different times. In this Yeah, novella or in this novel,

Nigel  41:51  
it feels like it feels redundant, like, and it annoys me a little bit, because it's like, I don't need to be told these things. I remember these things, when I read them in a book series book. Like, where it makes sense, you know, other Discworld books to tell you, you know, they'll sort of like reintroduce you to the like, Oh, this is a planet that's on the back of four elephants that's on the back of a great turtle have called the two and a series of unfortunate events spends an awful lot of time catching people up. And it's like, okay, these books are meant to be read, you know, they're meant to be read in a series order. But it's also like you can read pick up any of these and in theory, know what's going on. And so it makes sense, then, but it really annoys me as a person and really annoyed me in this one where it's like, I know, you know, it's not even like, I were binging a TV show, and then it tells me previously on it's like, I've been watching this, you know, it's like, it's like, if you were watching a film, like imagine watching a two hour film, on every half hour, they stopped and just stop the story completely. And they told you everything that had happened so far. Again, you know, for no other reason, like it was completely addressed to the audience. It wasn't like, Oh, we're introducing a new character, we need to bring them up to speed. You know, like, if it were just an exposition dump to the audience, every half hour for some fucking reason, like your mind at how awful that would be. So I think like, if you're unsure about how this isn't the color of magic, you only have to transfer into another medium. And imagine how that would be and then go, oh, yeah, this, this makes no sense.

Tessa  43:33  
Right? And speaking of that, there's even like so I thought of two things when you said that the first thing was the way in which Terry Pratchett reintroduces the idea of the Discworld in every novel, like the first page of almost every single novel is like, this is the Discworld it is a disk on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle named bituin, who swims through the stars, which is a really cool concept. That actually really reminds me of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time, like how every Oh my God, every single. At the beginning, he always does like the same thing about like, this is the Wheel of Time and like, yeah, it almost feels like a television show, right? Like how they're some like, like, almost like Buffy the Vampire Slayer like every single time that they say no, well, every single time they roll the intro music like the intro credits, you can hear Giles voice at the beginning sake. Once in every generation, there's born a Slayer and like so it's almost like it's almost like that where like you kind of get that reintroduction at the beginning. But it's also it also kind of becomes a trope of the series,

Nigel  44:39  
I think at the start of every Wheel of Time book, specifically at the start in the opening chapters as well like the the opening of the first chapter, not the prologue, when they go a wind rose in wherever I went through this mountain and it went over this geographical feature and blah, blah, blah. And it was a beginning but it was a big beginning, not the beginning because there's no big Getting in the Wheel of Time. I think that's okay. That specifically because it's a themed opening, they do spend ages telling us stuff. Part of me thinks that's okay because like in once you get into the slump around book eight, you'll get like a couple chapters like so SPOILER ALERT parent has this plotline where his wife gets kidnapped. And so you're like, okay, and then like book A, you'll get like, half of the book where you'll like be following parents POV alongside other ones, and you just get to a point. And then Robert Jordan is like, Okay, I'm not doing this for any of the rest of this book. You're going to have to read the rest there the next book to find out more of this plotline. And so part of it makes sense, where it's like, okay, I need to reintroduce all that's happened, but it's like, why do you feel the need to do that? You could have done this like literally any other way. Mr. Jordan? You know, you could have spent the entire book you could have had an entire book was just literally just parents plotline. And then gone. Okay, the next book, this takes place at the same time, but this is like Matt's plotline or what? You know what I mean? Yeah. So many other ways that you could have done it without like splitting it up and having to do that lazy reintroduction.

Tessa  46:11  
Yeah. And I feel like it makes more sense, though, in Jordan's books. And when you look at the Discworld, which is 41 books, I mean, it's so huge series, it makes more sense to do that. But in the color of magic, the color of magic is only 241 pages in my copy, like it is a very, very short book. You don't have to tell stories,

Nigel  46:33  
multiple times. But also consider all like if you took all of the Discworld books and combine the number of pages, I'd say that is less than half the pages less than maybe a quarter of the pages that are in the Wheel of Time series that made no room. Yeah, there is no need to do this.

Tessa  46:53  
listeners. If you have tabulated all of the pages if we have time and all the pages of the Discworld.

Nigel  46:59  
Oh, hold on. Give me one second. There's literally a Wikipedia page. Oh, we'll have time for them. Sanderson. 15 book epic. 12,000 pages long, basically 100 pages per book. This is like a rough estimate. We don't have a thing now I'm just gonna keyword search this world. 15,497 pages. Wow. Yes. So then if we do the math, so hold on. Let me just go back. What's the Wheel of Time again?

Tessa  47:28  
Oh, I've already forgotten about it. I am I too am gay and too hot for baths?

Nigel  47:33  
What? 12,000 pages? That doesn't make sense. How is no. How could the Discworld be more pages than

Tessa  47:40  
I mean, there are 41 books.

Nigel  47:43  
Maybe less ephemera? Yeah, I suppose if you count a farmer Yeah. Okay. There's more pages if you count ephemera, and stuff in,

Tessa  47:52  
but still 50 versus 41 bucks. And they're all like they're, they're pretty close. Like it's not like, hugely different. The other thing I thought of when you were talking about the structure of the color of magic is that Pratchett adopts a really strange narrative voice in parts of this, and obviously the narrator in Terry Pratchett's books is a character like, the narrator is like weirdly omniscient, like knows about Earth, which none of the other characters in the book know about. Like we've talked about this before. This narrator in the color of magic uses this specific language that I really dislike. where he'll say like this is really true in the beginning when he's talking about the great too and he's introducing these characters, where he says like, see, the great too and the turtle comes swimming slowly through the interstellar Gulf. And then like later when the narrator introduces rinse wins. All eyes in the room we're watching the stranger except for a pair belonging to rinse when the wizard who was sitting in the darkest corner nursing a mug a very small beer. He was watching the luggage. Watch rinse wind, look at him scrawny, like most wizards and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnish sequence. I really dislike it when narratives when narrator's tell us to look at things in a book like look at Rincewind here's this description of him and I just I feel like that's a really weird position to be put in as somebody who's not looking at something visual that might just be a personal pet peeve.

Nigel  49:28  
I think there's a more egregious example of it later on in set and lure of the worm where for doing this walking through stuff in it's like observe through and as he walks through the court as Baba I hate that. Whereas this feels out of place for like this wash rinse when it feels like it's from a different story entirely. That's been co opted and it feels like like a casino heist film, you know, like, madness. They're in a casino. Everyone is watching the table. separates when when someone is watching the dealer or something, let's say, then you'd have Jason Statham will come on the on the VO and we go, this is read sweet. Watch read sweet. Watch what he does. He's watching the dealer. And that's what you would have. And so, and then the camera would pan around the casino and it would like, go on to someone else. And they'd be like, I don't know, face is sideways, Susan, or something. And Susan would be entirely on the y axis or something. Yeah, so it feels like it like it feels like it's been co opted from an entirely different things. So it doesn't make sense for us to be told to watch rings when what rings when it doesn't actually do anything. At that time.

Tessa  50:43  
It feels like a really weird like the, the narrator is trying to talk to us directly, which you can do in literature like CS Lewis and Neil Gaiman both use that narrative technique occasionally in a really true practice all the

Nigel  50:57  
time, but it feels forced, like, yeah, it doesn't feel like there. There are sections

Tessa  51:02  
of is this this. There are sections of this novel that do feel like him. But there are sections like that. But I just don't let me ask you, though, what is your favorite? So there are four novella novellas or parts or stories or whatever we want to call them. There's the color of magic, which is the first one, the sending of A, the lure of the worm and close to the edge. Which one was your favorite of those? Four?

Nigel  51:28  
I think the prologue to the sending of eight. Or close to the edge? No. Is it closer? Closer? Closer? Yeah. Yeah, close to the edge. I think I liked the concept of it. And so I feel like that makes up for the execution.

Tessa  51:45  
So what did you like about the sending of the eight so that's the one with the the Lovecraftian elements, you get the like, it's the travel narrative where they are. They're, they're traveling outside of Ogmore porque. They're going on this adventure, they run across Belle Shamrock, who is like the the center of the eight, like his number is eight. And I find that fascinating because Rincewind won't actually say the word eight. And the word eight is like unlucky on the Discworld, especially for wizards, which actually gets developed in a later book, which we'll talk about, it reminded me of like how 13 is an unlucky number in the US and like how a lot of a lot of like hotels won't have a 13th floor or they won't have like a room 13 They'll just like skip it, which happens at the NC university like rinse windows seven a instead of the room eight

Nigel  52:36  
are literally did this with its cars so the way our car license plates are laid out, it's like you have the year in two digits. So you know 99 0001 Whatever. And then you have a two letter identifier for the county that it's from or well unless it's Dublin then it's like D special things are like always G but like you know you have West me it will be wfh, me this MH, Wexford WX, things like that. And then you have a number which shows what number car it was that was sold in that county for the year. And so we've got you know, we've got like, oh 910 1112 And then when we got up to 13, we change the numbering system apparently because everyone is super superstitious, and it changed to 131 and 132. You have a switch over in going into July. And so now we have this thing so then if you see like a 212 car, you know that that car was sold between July and December of 2021. All because apparently the people who make car license plates in Ireland are afraid of the number 13

Tessa  53:48  
Right I mean it I feel like numbers really do have like this cultural power, but in this story, they have literal power. Like if they say the number eight in Bell Shama, Roth's temple, they call our call forth this like kung fu like Monster, right? Who was like trying to eat the world and for bed space around it. So what was your least favorite section of this?

Nigel  54:13  
The lure of the worm no questions asked.

Tessa  54:17  
Okay, what was it about the lure of the worm that you didn't like?

Nigel  54:20  
It was so dumb. I hated it. I hate the language. I hate how weirdly chauvinistic it was, which is especially weird because Western and Liesa Yes, yeah, the princess she feels like objectified despite the fact that she's kind of like in a position of power in this society, like objectified by the narrative. And it's really weird like it goes back to the whole all of the when she was commonly. I hate that word. Don't ever refer to me as calmly

Tessa  54:50  
prophesy to people as calmly in this day and age, who ever

Nigel  54:55  
refer to anyone as calmly I don't think anyone even Victorian England refers to anyone as common.

Tessa  55:02  
What's interesting about the lure of the worm, which is also my least favorite, although it does have a really interesting, it has two really interesting points about it in its favor that I'll get to. It's a direct parody of Dragon flight, which is the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series that Anne McCaffrey is very famous for. What's interesting is that like Dragon flight, the main character of that story is called blessa. So it's very close to Lisa, who's the main character of this. And it's a very, like the dragon writers are a very, like, matriarchal utopian society and they have like telepathic bonds with like dragons. And this is very strange to me that Terry Pratchett's parody of this went in a very, like chauvinist stick, sort of way, and I don't think he's trying to be chauvinistic. I think he's trying to say something about these types of stories. But it is also very interesting considering the fact that that's not in the original story at all. Like that attitude.

Nigel  56:06  
Yeah, I don't know this whole thing doesn't really make sense to me. And I'm not I don't care for the story enough to give you time and energy to try and come up with a reason

Tessa  56:19  
there are two things about it that I think are in its favor one the imaginary dragons part of this is really interesting, like the idea that they don't have dragons, they have to like imagine them into existence like, and some people are better at imagining dragons than others, which that's the name of the band that came from it came directly from the story as I think we've discussed.

Nigel  56:39  
Yeah, it definitely. It definitely feels like that but it's like, have we just blown the case wide apart? Is this like a is this like a thing that people know? Or?

Tessa  56:51  
Oh, I have no idea I feel like it's true until I'm told otherwise. This is the origin story of Imagine Dragons.

Nigel  56:58  
Well, it's really weird because the origin story for them is like a lot of a lot of their songs are written for a Spider Man musical and then they were like, Hold on these are quote unquote good. I decided to look I'm not a fan of Imagine Dragons. Oh, so

Tessa  57:13  
I make fun of them a lot. But yeah, it feels like maybe this is their origin story this this kind of second rate Pratchett novella inside of a novel, but I do like the imaginary dragons I like that in order to escape to flower imagines what is the dragon's name nine tails?

Nigel  57:30  
Yeah, nine tails.

Tessa  57:31  
No, yeah, he's too far imagines nine tails in order to fly out, which I find I just find that fascinating. I find the idea of like being able to imagine a dragon and of course rinse when can't right he can't imagine a dragon which is why wood to fire gets knocked out, they start falling, which leads to the other interesting part of the story. The moment in which rinse went into flour very briefly, like rinse when can't imagine a dragon, but he can imagine a world in which science exist and so he imagines He and two flower are in this plane. And that he is like a Swedish Doctor rains wand. Rizwan? Yeah, it took it to read this section, like twice in order to understand what was happening. And I found it hilarious both times. Yeah, he suddenly like in this plane, right? Like they're falling through the air. He's in this plane. He thinks he's been eaten by a dragon for a moment. Right? And he has like a bomb. And, or he thinks that like, there's a bomb. There's like a bomb threat on the plane. But he's like wearing new clothes. And he's Swedish, but he can understand what's happening. The way that there's the sudden scene. And of course, that gets them safely to the ground, and then their prince winded to flower again. And we're back in the Discworld. For me this, this connects to a really interesting theme with rinse wind, which is like the science versus magic. So obviously, when we talk about a fantasy series, a lot of times we're like, oh, well, magic is like, like part of the imagination, like magic is associated with the imagination. But on the Discworld, it's so commonplace. And it's such a part of just like the daily fabric that rinse wins Imagination is more connected with science, which to him is like, really outlandish.

Nigel  59:19  
I don't know what did you think of this scene? I think is I don't know, I have mixed feelings about fantasy tries to do technology. Or I think like Brandon Sanderson does it quite well in the Mistborn series where it's like, this is a world which starts off as steampunk. And you see it gradually grow into having more and more advanced technology. I think like the world of Six of Crows thought does it reasonably well. But at the same time, it's like, I don't know, like this is done in kind of an interesting way. And I think it's the best example I've seen of when fantasy does, like, Oh, we're in a parallel you know, Reverse, or, Oh, we're just really far in the future or past two in modern civilization where they do some sort of time travel or whatever, and they come out in the modern world. I think that's lazy, hackneyed storytelling. For the most part. I think perhaps it does it quite well. It's again, it's like the only redeeming factor of this of the Lord of the worm. For me, I think it's interesting.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:27  
It's not even a page long.

Nigel  1:00:29  
Yeah, I think it's interesting that rinse wind wants to be in a world where there is no magic where there's science, where as like, the whole concept of magical realism and magical escapism, where it's like, I want to get out of my mundane. You know, I want to get to the drudgery of my mundane life. Gone. I wish I could go somewhere where I were a wizard in a beautiful fantasy land.

Tessa  1:00:52  
And we can really see this is in my book, it's on page 50 and 51, where he's talking to the imp inside two flowers camera, and he says, hey, look, this is all wrong. When two flowers said they'd got a better kind of magic in the empire. I thought, I thought the image looked at him expectedly rinse when kirsta himself. Well, if you must. No, I thought he didn't mean magic. Not as such. What else is there then? Prince when began to feel really wretched? I don't know. He said a better way of doing things, I suppose. Something with a bit of sense to it. Harnessing harnessing the lightning or something. The Emperor gave him a kind but pitying look. Lightning is the spears hurled by the thunder giants when they fight, it said gently established meteorological fact you can't harness it. I know said rinse wind miserably. That's the flaw in the argument of course. And I love that exchange because like the first of all the talks to rinse went here. Like he's, like, just not understanding a basic fact of the universe. And the basic fact of the universe is that lightning is the spirit of the thunder giants throw which I just establishes that things work very differently on the disk world than they do on you know, the readers Earth. But it also shows like this longing that rinse wind has to live in a universe that's less chaotic than the Discworld. Alright, a couple of other things to talk about. We haven't talked about the luggage. So the luggage is also a very important character item. thing in in the rinse a series.

Nigel  1:02:31  
I think the luggage uses its pronouns.

Tessa  1:02:35  
Yeah, I think so too. So what did you think of the luggage?

Nigel  1:02:44  
I want to like the luggage, I think it's a concept of it is quite cool. Yeah. Ezekiel seven on the permanent efficacy of grace by mountain goats off their two dozen, can I want to say album, the life of the world to come. They have this line drive, drive till the rain stops keep driving. And that's the kind of attitude that I have. Or that I that I feel like the luggage has where it's like, no matter how far Renson and to fly or get away from it, it will follow them. You know, even if it has to, like go into the water and walk you know, we're like bite people to get away from it. You know, it will drive until the rain stops it will keep driving.

Tessa  1:03:25  
Yeah, it's it's like homicidally loyal to its owner, which in this book is to flower. So

Nigel  1:03:32  
if so is this book like it's going to change the later books,

Tessa  1:03:35  
perhaps we'll have to see. But he like the luggage like threatens rinse wins and rinse when he knows that like he can try to get away but the light like he has to he even says something along the lines of I have to sleep sometimes which is like such a threatening thing to say lay like it's very like Nightmare on Elm Street right where you have to sleep sometimes, like the the luggage is, of course a trunk which is a very common type of you know, it's a type of luggage and fantasy like you put all your stuff in a trunk but it's like a completely magical what it's made completely out of sapient pearwood which is extremely valuable and everyone who recognizes that it is made out of the sapient pearwood knows how valuable it is. It has these little legs that it runs around on and the inside of it is very like it's almost like the hardest it's like bigger on the inside than the outside because it holds all of these things including to flowers things but it also swallows people sometimes. And sometimes things come out of it that you're not really expecting. It's for a character that has no dialogue. It has so much personality as well.

Nigel  1:04:44  
Yeah, this is like the animated psychic almost this is like like the BBA I hate Star Wars I've never seen it but I hated but this is what I imagined BB eight is like or what's that other droid?

Tessa  1:04:57  
Are two d two

Nigel  1:04:58  
d two? Yeah. The one that doesn't talk I know see Threepio talks so it can't be see Threepio Yes, this is what I imagined Star Wars is like.

Tessa  1:05:10  
Yeah, I feel like that would be an amazing

Nigel  1:05:13  
concept for a show just asked me what I think Star Wars is like.

Tessa  1:05:18  
What do you think? Who do you think Atkins Skywalker is? Yeah, that'd be hilarious. Darth Vader. Yeah, I think the luggage is really interesting. And of course, we'll be developed as as we go along. But But yeah, to flower doesn't seem very concerned because he knows that the luggage will follow him anywhere. So like, if he gets lost, he's like, Oh, it'll just show up eventually, which I think is great. I wish my luggage did that show up eventually.

Nigel  1:05:43  
Yeah, it would negate the need for baggage carousels at airports.

Tessa  1:05:47  
It's true, it's true. And finally, before we get to our wrap up of the show, we have to talk about the literal cliffhanger that happens at the end of close to the edge. So this is the only cliffhanger in any of the Discworld books. Usually, the Discworld books are self contained, even though there are storylines that go from book to book there. It never ends quite like this with somebody in danger, or there's this type of suspense. But in this ending, we literally see rents wind hanging off of the edge of the Discworld. Right. What do you think about this cliffhanger in the way that it's set up?

Nigel  1:06:25  
I think, Okay, so with the Dresden Files, the two most recent books piece talks about oh grounds, they came out, like within the same year, like a couple of months apart, I think maybe one in May and one in September, let's say. And when you're reading peace talks, the pacing of it was really, really weird. You were like, okay, all these things need to get done. But we're like 300 pages, plus into this, maybe like 350 to 400 page book. And then when you get to the end of it, you realize that oh, this is like technically written as part of like, basically one large book with the next book battleground. And so that's why the pacing feels off, because technically, you're only reading half of like a long book. And so that's why I feel like I can excuse kind of the pacing issues. Well, at the moment, I can't, because I feel like the color of magic. And the next one, the light. Fantastic, right? Yes, like this one. And the next one, the light, fantastic kind of form a larger overarching story. And also like the fact that it's a literal cliffhanger. He's literally like hanging on to the edge of the world, I think is funny enough to justify us in terms of the pacing at the end. I don't know whether this is correct or not. But also like, the light fantastic is another rinse when book Correct?

Tessa  1:07:52  
Yes, it picks up directly after the color of magic. And it helps the BBC TV series. The color of magic actually adapts both the color of magic and the light. Fantastic. So they are treated as one work in that adaptation.

Nigel  1:08:12  
When you look at like the series order, when you consider it's like, okay, so the color of magic is Rincewind in terms of like, who they talk about, or like who their main characters the color of magic is rinse when the light fantastic is rinse when what's the next book?

Tessa  1:08:27  
Equal Rights was the third book it came out in 1987.

Nigel  1:08:31  
That's a witches book, right? Yes. Yeah, I knew the next one was a witches. So you've got that one. And then more is number four. So that's that. And then you go to sorcery, right? Which is also our insolent. Yeah, and then you go Weird Sisters, which is a witches and then you go number seven is guards

Tessa  1:08:52  
guards. Pyramids actually came out before Guards, guards. Right? Okay,

Nigel  1:08:57  
well, anyway, when you look at the first two, it's really weird that it goes rent when rents wind, which is death for insulin, which is, so I feel like viewing the color magic in the light. Fantastic is one book, kind of, I guess reconciles that like, it's not too bad, but it's in like, you know, it will make more sense where it's like you have one book of basically each of the primary series, and within just squirrels, one after the other, and then all those repeats, like, I don't know, what series pyramids is from, but yeah, well, we'll we'll talk

Tessa  1:09:30  
about that when we get to pyramids, because there are certain series that don't, that have less cohesion and pyramids is one of those books. So we'll talk about that when we get there. But yeah, I do think it's interesting. It'll be interesting next week when we talk about the light fantastic, because that's the next one we're going to read to see if it kind of follows in the same somatic line as the color of magic or if there are big differences because it did come out three years after the color of magic so there was more of a gap between the color of magic and light fantatic there were between any of the other disk worlds like, even like equal rights and more it came out the same year 1987. So he definitely picks up steam as far as like, publication. Would

Nigel  1:10:11  
you say he's raising steam?

Tessa  1:10:15  
Haha. Yeah. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this is resolved in the next book. I mean, I already know how it's resolved. But it'll be interesting to read again, how it's resolved in the next book and to see if some of these issues that we've identified in the color of magic, if they continue into life fantastic, or if it starts to veer away from this formula that we see here at the beginning. So, before we wrap up, we have to of course do our tallies here. I didn't count the number of death sightings in this book because there are many, but he does first appear the character of death first appears on page 60. When rinse wind is hurrying through the crowd, and he beholds death, it had to be death. No one else went around with empty eye sockets. And of course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue as rinse when stared into horror according couple laughing at some private joke, walked straight through the apparition without appearing to notice it. Death insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features looked surprised. So that's the that is the very first Discworld sighting of death. And of course, he appears in every subsequent novel, as we have said, but he does appear many times I think he appears in every single story in color of magic, as well. Surprisingly, there is only one footnote.

Nigel  1:11:38  
Yeah. So I think that is my favorite footnote. One footnote. Yeah, but I really enjoy how it taught like, I like learning about cosmology, on like the actual world in which fantasy stories are situated in. So having, you know, this footnote, talk about how Hubbard and Rimworld work, like the holidays and just grow up and how the calendar is divided. I think that's really cool. So I feel like that nearly would have been my favorite footnote. Anyway, have there been more than one footnote?

Tessa  1:12:13  
So obviously, Pratchett had not developed his footnote game yet, because there's only this one and like you said, it focuses a lot on the cosmology of the Discworld. Are you the one who told me that widdershins is a real direction?

Nigel  1:12:26  
Yeah. widdershins means anti clockwise.

Tessa  1:12:29  
That's fascinating to me. I always just assumed he made that up. No,

Nigel  1:12:33  
widdershins is anti clockwise. And that show means clockwise, because the Irish for the Irish for rice is air. Yes. So that's how you remember them? Yeah. Dasha, look, we're gonna go with missionary motion towards the right in the direction of the hands of o'clock or the apparent motion of the Sun in the northern hemisphere.

Tessa  1:12:57  
Yeah, I think sometimes it's really easy to forget that this is a disc because we focus so like on specific parts of the Discworld that unless the disc Enos is emphasized that sometimes it's easy to forget that there would be different directional ways of thinking about it if you were living on a disc as opposed to a sphere. So like, the I found the Hubbard rim word thing interesting. Like those are like the primary directions, but Hubbard and Winward and then turn wise and widdershins.

Nigel  1:13:29  
Like, I mean, you have Captain beuter shins as a character. And I feel like how many times have I mentioned a series of unfortunate events? Every episode? This is basically this is basically an unofficial Series of Unfortunate Events podcast, which I still think that I will make a series of unfortunate that's podcast at some stage. But yeah, you have Captain widdershins, who, you know, things are constantly going arrive for him. And so you know, he's anti clockwise. He's against the nature of the clock of the sun. So of course, things are going to go incorrectly for him.

Tessa  1:13:59  
And that that makes sense to me. Okay, so what was the thing that made you laugh out loud while reading this book?

Nigel  1:14:06  
I don't think anything particularly made me laugh out loud. Like I wasn't too big a fan of this book. So this was there. I was like, Huh, that's good. You know, like the first debt citing a bit, you know, like, a bit further on from the bit you read where death is like, well, I could give you a very fast horse. And let's see if I can find it. Oh, no, not. Of course. What's so bloody vexing about the whole business is that I was expecting to meet the insofar fellas, but it's 500 miles away. You don't have to tell me the whole system's got screwed up again. I can see that. Look, there's no chance of you rinse when backed away hands spread protectively in front of them to dried fish salesman on a nearby stall. Watch this madman with interest. chance I could lend you a very fast horse. No. It won't hurt a bit. No wrench and turn around. Get watched him go and shrug bitterly. sod you then death said. That was, I think that's probably like one of the funnier bits or you know when scrofula reveals that he's not in fact death.

Tessa  1:15:11  
Yeah, Scott dysgraphia was seen at the end made me laugh like because dysgraphia is just such a funny name, too. It just adds like this. It's a real disease. Yeah, it is a real disease. I really love there were two moments that really stood out to me one because it actually made me laugh out loud. And the other one just because it reminded me of something that is near and dear to my heart. But on page 64, in my my book, that when Broadman the owner of the broken drum sets, it sets the broken drum on fire, and he's trying to find the matches and and suddenly, this lighted taper appears medeor next to him and it's death giving him like the, the lighting, that that made me laugh, like the fact that there's this horrible fire and death is the one who gives Broadman the flame. He's like here,

Nigel  1:15:57  
it's really like something out of Scooby Doo, you know, like, they'd be like barricading a room or something from the monster that's chasing them Shaggy and Scooby, and then they'd be like, chucking chairs and tables in front, and then they turn around, and they take a care from the monster who is in the room, and they go, thank you. And then they do that. And then they go, Wait a minute, and turn around. They go. There's the monster there.

Tessa  1:16:18  
Yeah, yeah, that that is almost exactly what the scene is, which it's great. The other standout funny moments because like you I just didn't find a lot of these jokes that a lot of his jokes were funny. They just weren't like laugh out loud, funny, like a lot of his other jokes are in other books. But I did want to point out that on page 124, there's this section that is really great. It's magic never dies, it merely fades away. Nowhere was this more evident on the wide blue expanse of the Discworld than in those areas, which had been the scene of the great battles of the mage wars, which had happened very shortly after creation. In those days magic in its raw state had been widely available and had been eagerly utilized by the First Men in their war against the gods. The precise origin of the mage wars had been lost in the fog of time. But this philosophers agree that the first men shortly after their creation, understandably lost their temper. And that that section of text to me reads like Douglas Adams, it reads like, there's the scene in the Douglas Adams book so Long and Thanks for All the Fish, the creator's last words to creation and it's the the last words are sorry for the inconvenience. And that really reminded me this, this section really reminded me of like a Douglas Adams type style of humor. And that made me feel like very warm inside because I have a very special place in my heart for Douglas Adams.

Nigel  1:17:39  
Yeah, like he definitely feels in the same vein as time is an illusion lunchtime, doubly so.

Tessa  1:17:45  
Yes, exactly. And I think Pratchett I mean, I think Pratchett has been compared to Adams quite favorably, but I think that he does have a very different narrative voice a lot of times, but there are just these little moments where you can kind of see that, that style

Nigel  1:17:59  
humor. Hmm. But it's also like, what else would men do? I men are the worst. Like, of course, they would get magic and they would lose their temper and have the giant brain

Tessa  1:18:10  
of course, they'd be angry about being created.

Nigel  1:18:14  
Yeah, exactly. Like, I understand the whole I Have No Mouth and I must scream, but it's also like, men just need to like calm down to fucking chill out who quote me on that? If you take nothing else in this podcast, quote, men need to calm down fucking true, Nigel.

Tessa  1:18:31  
Yeah, man, we're gonna need you to take it down like five notches. Hmm. So what is the thing that made you think?

Nigel  1:18:40  
So when I when I read these I try and think of like, more places that to take things from you know, because it's like, I want to show that I read them. But there's also like, so few bits that I actually liked. And I'm just going to go with the conversation between death and fate again, where it's like, well, yeah, these things actually can't be avoided. You know, when it really comes down to it, their concepts?

Tessa  1:19:06  
Yeah, like you. I don't know if anything about this book really struck me as particularly profound. But I did really appreciate once again, that scene with rinse wind and the imp where RINs wind is clearly wishing for a world where things are governed by rationality and science. And not magic like the Discworld is because I think for a lot of us, like you said, magic is an escape like we want the world to be more magical. We want there to be more than just you know, science and rationality. But for rinse wind who lives in a magical world, science would be an escape, right? It would be an escape from like the chaos of the magic. I mean, I think the the world is chaos anyway. But it's it just really drives home the point that whatever is normal to you, you're going to be looking for something else in order To make sense of it all. So for us, it's magic for winds wind, it's science. This book not my favorite, not your favorite, I think but it is an interesting to see where the Discworld sort of came from what the kind of genesis of the idea was for this particular world that we're exploring. So next week we're picking up where the color of magic left off to see what happens afterwards wind goes over the edge of the disk in the light fantastic. So go ahead and read the light fantastic if you are reading along with us, where can people find you online and on their headphones Nigel?

Nigel  1:20:41  
You can find me mainly on Twitter at spicy Nigel where I am tweeting out all my different podcasts ideas, big podcasts, I have two main ones going at the minute archive admirers, which is a bi weekly such fortnight the realism and discussion of the Magnus archives by Rusty Quill, you can find that on Twitter, at admirers archive, on Tumblr, archives, admirers. And you can also find you can find my other podcast hyper fixations, which every episode we have a different guest on to talk about an area of expertise of there's some random topics that they are really interested in. And you can find that on Twitter at hyper fixations P or on Instagram hyper fixations pod and then you know, basically wherever you listen to podcasts, that's where you can find them.

Tessa  1:21:29  
All right, and you can find me on Twitter and letterbox at suela Tessa Swehla is spelled SW e HLA you can also find me on my other podcast monkey off my backlog and you can find that on Twitter at monkey backlog or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nigel  1:21:46  
Read us out Nigel Yeah, I like this one begins after the end. There was a subtle change of scene a slight purplish tint to the sky have told black cloak figure was standing on the air next to the tree as a cipher in one hand, its face was hidden in the shadows of the hood. I have come through the said the Invisible mouth in tones as heavy as a whale's heartbeat. The trunk of the tree gave another protesting Creek and a pebble bounced off rinse wins helmet has one roof tore loose from the rock. Death himself always came in person to harvest the souls of wizards. What am I going to die off center and spread tall figure hesitated. Pardon? It said well ever broken anything and I haven't drowned. So what am I about to die of? You can't just be killed by death. There has to be a reason Sidran switch to his utter amazement he didn't feel terrified anymore. For about the first time in his life. He wasn't frightened. Pity the experience didn't look like lasted for long death appear to reach a conclusion. You could die of terror, the hood and tones. The voice still had its graveyard ring. But there was a slight tremor of uncertainty. Work said rinse when smugly there doesn't have to be a reason. So death. I can just kill you. Hey, you can't do that. If you murder the calld figure side and pull back its hood instead of the grinning deaths has that Rincewind had been expecting he found himself looking up into the pale and slightly transparent face of a rather worried demon of source. Oh, I'm making rather a mess of this aren't I it said we're early death. Who are you cried kinsmen. scruffy. scruffy Anna Jeff cookie coma so the demon wretchedly there's a big plague in suit awfulest he had to go and stalk the streets so he sent me guys have scruffy look, I've got lights. I'm a wizard. Oh, great. All right. This was going to be my big chance. So scruffy look but look at it this way. If I hit you at this site, you'll be just as dead as you will be if death had done it. Who'd know? I know. Snap prince would you wouldn't you be dead subscribe philologically This off screen Swindon. That's all very well, so the demon but why not try to see things from my point of view. This means a lot to me and you've got to admit that your life isn't all that wonderful. Reincarnation can't be an improvement. How? Is Hunkeler whose metaphor Renson was already pointing a trembling finger at him. Reincarnation, he said excitedly. So it is true. What the mystic say I'm an idol nothing nothing subscribe to the testily there was a slip of the tongue. Now are you going to die willingly or enough? No Sidran said, Please yourself. So the demon he raised the size and whistle down in quite a professional way. But Renson was on that. He was in fact several meters below and additional is increasing all the time because the branch had chosen that moment to snap and send him on his interrupted journey towards the interstellar gulf. Come back scream the demon bring swim didn't answer. He was lying belly down in the rushing err staring down into the clouds even now we're sending the vanished the low the whole universe twinkle that rings when there was the greatest to and huge and ponderous and pocket with craters. That was the little disc moon. There was a distant gleam that could only be the potent Voyager. And there were all the stars looking remarkable like powder diamonds spilled on black velvet, to stars that lured and ultimately called the boldness towards them. The whole creation was waiting for rinse swim to drop in. He did so. It didn't seem to be any alternative.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai