Terry Pratchett spent more than half of his six decades on Earth writing Discworld, a sprawling fantasy series where, among many other threads, Death begins as a villain, drifts into heroism and ends as something very near to a friend.
This is not because Pratchett was insensitive to the tragedy of death. He coined the term “Embuggerance” to describe his own diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy (a rare form of Alzheimer’s), and lobbied for death with dignity as a way of wresting control from the macabre final phases of terminal illness.
But Pratchett’s great strength as a writer — and as a human being — was empathy. More than his humor, although he’s hands down one of the funniest authors to ever do it, empathy is the beating heart of his work: Even when depicting the grim and inescapable terminus of all life, he couldn’t resist making Death feel human.
To fans of his books, the striking thing about Pratchett’s biography is how familiar so much of it sounds. The only child of an engineer and a secretary, he grew up in a rural English village digging holes for the privy (Granny Weatherwax!) and walking above ancient fossils in the chalk (Tiffany Aching!). He met and married a girl a few rungs up the social ladder (Vimes and Lady Sybil!) when he was just 20, and thereafter became “the most married person you were ever likely to meet,” according to his biographer and longtime assistant, Rob Wilkins. He went to sci-fi conventions in the 1960s, dabbled in early computers and accumulated a gaggle of the kind of mismatched jobs many writers inhabit before they get down to novelisting full time: newspaperman, interviewer, press agent for a nuclear power station. A series of utterly ordinary events — except that they happened to a mind we know dreamed up extraordinary things.
A few precociously early short-story sales eventually gave way to larger works, including the first Discworld books, and some enthusiastic press. Then, around the time the fourth Discworld novel, “Mort,” was released in 1987 — after years of writing, multiple publishers and a bit of old-fashioned, right-time-right-place luck with a BBC radio serialization of the first two books — something clicked. Discworld took off, and pretty much never stopped: The series eventually ran to 41 full-length novels, plus an assortment of companion volumes, graphic novels, film and television adaptations, and the children’s book “Where’s My Cow?”
And while Pratchett occasionally tried on other worlds and genres — plays, alternate history, dialogue for a fan-made “Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” mod — it’s this fantasy realm that remains his most enduring masterpiece.
Discworld is a flat planet that sits on top of four elephants on top of a tortoise. There are gods and tentacular temples; a teeming, grimy city called Ankh-Morpork; and arcane rules governing magic. At first, the series is a slapstick adventure story about a cowardly wizard, in which Pratchett takes well-aimed shots at J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft and Anne McCaffrey (to name just a few). But around Book 3 he starts opening things up. This is where the fan-made flow charts come in, explaining which books to read for the witches arc, which ones are the Sam Vimes novels, which ones follow Death and his granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit.
Book by book, Discworld expands and deepens, pulling in elements from our world that Pratchett tempers in surprising ways: Shakespeare, vampires, police procedurals, musicals, Australia, high finance. Then come even bigger ideas: war, revolution, justice.
By the time we reach Book 29, “Night Watch,” Pratchett is writing comic fantasy the way Martin Luther offered theological critique to the Catholic Church: sharp and tough as nails, with a hammering moral force.
Not all the jokes have aged well, and the final books are a bit haunting — more sketches than full-color paintings, as the progression of Pratchett’s disease took its cruel toll. But the overwhelming sense, even in the posthumously published “The Shepherd’s Crown,” is of a man rushing to tell us something vital — about ourselves, about one another.
Discworld is not about how to be good, but about how to do good, and why even the smallest acts of kindness matter. Empathy — like humor or creativity or hope — is a muscle. You don’t train for a marathon by running around the world: You start with small distances and work your way up.
It’s cringe, as the kids say, to talk seriously about funny books. It makes me the wettest of blankets to say we’re starving right now for virtue, for everyday goodness, for people who care about one another. But 10 years after Pratchett’s passing — announced in the all-caps voice of Death himself — his clarity of vision may be what our world needs most: Vimes observing, “As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.” Granny Weatherwax reminding us, “Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.”
And Death, of course, having the last word: “THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.”
Where do I start?
If you find the flow charts daunting — and who could blame you? — “Monstrous Regiment” (2003) is your best bet for a stand-alone, as it happens far away from Ankh-Morpork or the witchy Ramtop Mountains. We meet young Polly Perks, from a small country forever at war with its neighbors, as she cuts her hair, dons trousers and joins the army in hopes of finding her missing brother. The troops are untrained, the fields are barren, and the government insists it’s treasonous to even ask which side is winning the war. The only authority is Sgt. Jack Jackrum, a jovial nightmare in a coat “the red of dying stars and dying soldiers” — as if Falstaff were reborn as a god of war.
Polly soon discovers she’s not the only soldier in disguise. Everyone has their reasons for fighting, and they’re being tracked by more enemies than they know. It’s trench humor at its blackest, and burns like a wound being cauterized.
Take me directly to his greatest hit
“Night Watch” (2002) is not only a great Discworld novel: It is one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. Sam Vimes, a former drunken street cop who has become a sober and reluctant duke, is the commander of the City Watch — until he gets caught in a lightning storm and finds himself magically transported 30 years back in time. He quickly assumes the identity of a police sergeant in charge of training and mentoring his 16-year-old self, on the eve of a famous late-May rebellion that Vimes knows the sergeant does not survive. (Astute readers will have noted the glorious, and specific, publication date of this article: not accidental.)
This salty, poignant and brilliantly strange novel is “Terminator 2” meets “Les Misérables.” It also retcons a lot of familiar Discworld characters — Lord Vetinari, Sergeant Colon, Nobby Nobbs, the zombie Reg Shoe — so before you pick it up, you should read “Guards! Guards!” (1989) to learn your way around the city and its inhabitants. Vimes’s arc from a hopeless drunk to an honorable civic leader is one of Pratchett’s greatest literary triumphs, turning his gift for reinvention onto one of his own comic creations and effecting something remarkably tender in the process.
I like sexy, sinister elves and women saving the day
The author’s note for “Lords and Ladies” (1992), Pratchett’s riff on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” warns that this is the first Discworld book to build episodically on what came before … and then immediately gives you all the important context you need, in brief, with no homework necessary.
A coven of witches return to their small mountain kingdom, Lancre, to discover that some glamorous elves with a taste for magical manipulation have invaded. But the trio — the dreamy Magrat Garlick, the meddling Nanny Ogg and the formidable Granny Weatherwax (maiden, mother and … the other one) — are not going down without a fight. Magrat is also shocked to learn that, in her absence, Lancre’s king has been busy planning their wedding. Pratchett never wrote what I would call a romance, but this is one of his best romance-adjacent works (2001’s “Thief of Time” is another).
Enough fantasy. Got any science fiction?
Although I am fond of some of Pratchett’s early science fiction, such as “Only You Can Save Mankind” (1992), his best sci-fi is a Discworld book, where the science is garbed in fantasy cosplay. “Going Postal” (2004) is the story of a con artist, Moist von Lipwig, who is reluctantly redeemed as he takes charge of the failing Ankh-Morpork postal service.
The book is unusual for Pratchett in that most of the plot revolves not around magic, or even around magically inflected technology (as in 1990’s “Moving Pictures” or 2000’s “The Truth”), but around ordinary mechanical innovation. Moist and the mail must compete with the clacks network — a code-based semaphore communication system — and the clash upends social patterns and leads to political upheaval in ways fans of hard sci-fi will find gratifying. There are also plenty of references and fun Easter eggs for old-school coding nerds.
I’m more of a horror reader
“Carpe Jugulum” (1998) nails the true creep factor of the vampire genre. It’s not the blood-drinking: It’s the way they mess with your mind. Another Lancre witches book, and one of the best, this story begins with King Verence (now married to Magrat) accidentally inviting a family of modern-sounding vampires to his daughter’s christening. Once there, the hypnotically powered creatures are quick to insist they should be running things.
Our witches have to fight them off while figuring out their own changing roles: The newcomer Agnes Nitt assumes the position of the maiden, Queen Magrat is now the mother, and Nanny Ogg is being pushed unwillingly into Granny Weatherwax’s spot as Granny herself begins to physically fade. Luckily, witches are most dangerous when cornered, and Granny has at least one more trick up her sleeve.
Got any deep cuts?
“A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction” (2012) is full of bite-size gems from Pratchett’s prodigious, sometimes meandering career. Longtime readers will find plenty to enjoy here, including glimmerings of future stories and several unlikely surprises (one story includes a particularly delightful illustration of a “large, fat, ugly brown bird with big eyebrows”). The illuminating and conversational introductions to each piece — where Pratchett adds context, memories and, sometimes, self-deprecating disclaimers (“I was playing with the words to see what happens. It’s a thing that authors do sometimes.”) — make it feel as though the writer is right there with you, reading over your shoulder.
A final note:
Time was I would have included “Good Omens” (1990) on this list: It’s an excellent first approach to Pratchett’s work and a personal favorite. But considering the sexual assault allegations against Pratchett’s co-author, Neil Gaiman, I’m not interested in sending new fans down that road. (Gaiman has denied the allegations.) Instead, I’d recommend one of the many angel-and-demon stories haloed by its influence, such as “When the Angels Left the Old Country,” by Sacha Lamb; “The City in Glass,” by Nghi Vo; or the whimsical “Small Miracles,” by Olivia Atwater.
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