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| The Discworld |
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| This is the Discworld...
It travels through space carried on the shoulders of four elephants (Berillia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen) who in turn stand on the back of the Giant Star Turtle, Great A'Tuin (sex unspecified). The Discworld is the fantastical setting for a series of books by Mr. Terry Pratchett (PTerry to his fans). It is on this world where magic is real (if unpredictable) and where light travels only slightly faster than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping that we meet some of the greatest heroes, villains and monsters of all time. For a bibliography of the Discworld books go here. To meet some of the Characters go here.
Official Description of the Discworld from the Discworld Companion (thanks to Finn who I nicked this off and didn't tell - forgive me?!). As all will know, the Discworld is a flat planet - like a geological pizza, but without the anchovies. It offers sights far more impressive than those found in uni-verses built by Creators with less imagination but more mechanical aptitude. It exists right on the edge of Reality; the least little things can break through from the other side. It is allowed to exist either because of some impos-sible blip on the curve of probability, or because the gods enjoy a joke as much as anyone else. More than most people, in fact.It was the Ephebian philosopher EXPLETIUS Who first proved that the Disc was 10,000 miles across. At the Rim it is about thirty miles thick, although it is believed to be con-siderably thicker towards the Hub, possibly to accommo-date the internal layer of molten rock which powers the volcanoes and allows the continental plates to move. Exactly how this molten state is maintained, and how the water that pours ceaselessly over the rim from the CIRCLE SEA is replaced, are but two of the unfathomable mysteries of the world. A tenable theory is that the heat is generated by vast masses of OCTIRON under pressure. The octiron theory also accounts for the Disc's vast standing magical field. Whatever the explantion, the fact is that the surface features of the Discworld uncannily mirror those of spher-ical rocky worlds, as though the Creator had seen one somewhere but had to go ahead without a chance to examine the works. The continents have certainly moved around (possibly on wheels of some kind, if the molten rock theory is discounted). Discworld time is always a tricky thing to mea-sure, but by inference it must have been several hundred million years ago that the supercontinent of Pangola was struck by a giant meteorite, which may have killed off those life forms not equipped by a neglectful Nature to survive impact with flaming rock travelling at several thousand miles a second, and also instigated the break-up which led eventually to the Discworld of today. Inspection of residual magic in deep sea rocks and very old trolls suggests that it was also around this time that the Discworld first changed its direction of spin, a phenomenon that appears to occur every hundred thou-sand years or so, possibly for the comfort of the elephants. About one hundred million years before the present day, in the period described by the wizard and geologist BORASS AS the Borassic era, the proto-continent had clearly split into two vast land masses - HOWONDALAND (named after the continent where his researches were largely carried out) and Lauragatea (partly named after the empire that occupies much of the COUNTERWEIGHT CONTI-NENT, and partly after his mother). A generally confused banging-about as the spin direction changed raised most of the mountain ranges visible today. It was the second, smaller continent of Lauragatea which, some thirty million years before the present, lost the even smaller and deeply mysterious continent known only as XXXX, which wandered off by itself (according to Borass) in search of the geographical equivalent of a cool drink. Of course, it is only a theory. The truth might be stranger. Of course, none of this explains the sheer beauty of the whole thing ... Viewers from space can appreciate in full the Discworld's vast, 30,000-mile circumference, garlanded by the long Rimfall, where the seas of the Disc drop endlessly into space. It gives the impression, with its continents, archipelagos, seas, deserts, mountain ranges, that the Creator designed it specifically to be looked at from above. The Disc revolves at a rate of about once every 800 days. This means that, except at the Hub, a full astronomical year contains eight seasons, or two each of the classical four. Its tiny orbiting sunlet, with prominences no bigger than croquet hoops, maintains a fixed elliptical orbit, while the Disc revolves beneath it. The little moon shines by its own light, owing to the cramped and rather inefficient astro-nomical arrangements. The Hub, dominated by the spire of CORI CELESTI, is never closely warmed by the weak sun and the lands there are permanently locked in permafrost. The Rim, on the other hand, is a region of sunny islands and balmy days. From the RAMTOPS' highest peaks you can see all the way to the Rim Ocean that runs around the edge of the world, since the Discworld, being flat, has no horizon in the real sense of the word. There appear to be at least four major continental masses: The (unnamed) continent of which the STO PLAINS and the Ramtops are a major feature: this stretches all the way to the Hub and finishes, at least in the area of Ankh-Morpork, at the CIRCLE SEA. Less than half of it has been covered in the chronicles, and there must be far more land on the far side of the Ramtops. So far we know only of GENUA And some miscellaneous small countries.There have been other continents, which have sunk, blown up or simply disappeared. This sort of thing happens all the time, even on the best-regulated planets. And there, below the mines and sea-ooze and fake fossil bones put there (most people believe) by a Creator with nothing better to do than upset archaeologists and give them silly ideas, is Great A'Tuin. Chaotic as it sometimes appears, the Discworld clearly runs on a special set of natural laws, or at least on guide-lines. There is gravity. There is cause-and-effect. There is eventuality - things happen after other things. After that, it becomes a little more confusing. The following theory can be gingerly advanced: The Discworld should not exist. Flatness is not a natural state for a planet. Turtles should grow only so big. The fact that it does exist means that it occupies an area of space where reality is extremely thin, where 'should be' no longer has the veto it has in the rest of the universe. The Disc-world creates an extremely deep well in Reality in much the same way as an incontinent Black Hole creates a huge gravity well in the notorious rubber sheet of the universe. The resulting tension seems to have created a permanent flux which, for want of a better word, we can call magic. There are several secondary effects, because the pressure of reality is so weak. Things that might nearly exist in a 'real' world - back up there on the rubber sheet - have no difficulty at all in existing in quite a natural state in the Discworld universe; so here there will be dragons, unicorns, sea serpents and so on. The rules are relaxed. But there are additional factors which make up Disc-world "physics'. These could be called: a) Life force b) The Power of Metaphor and Belief c) Narrative Causality Life, it has been said, has a tendency to exist. It has even been argued that the Universe has been designed in order that this should happen, although of course it is hard for a life that does not exist to look around and declare that the Universe has clearly been designed not to come into being. Certainly on the Discworld life is a very common com-modity. Whatever obstacles there are to life elsewhere are that much weaker on Discworld. Almost anything .can be alive and develop, if not intelligence at least a point of view. Rocks, thunderstorms and even entire buildings can, in the right circumstances, demonstrate their literal vitality. Then there is metaphor. On Discworld, metaphor has a disturbing tendency to take itself seriously. Death as a robed skeleton is not just a metaphor for the process of mortality; he really is a robed skeleton, with a rich existence of his own. On Discworld, belief is a potent force. What is believed in strongly enough is real. (Conversely, what is not believed can't be real regardless of the fact of its existence. For example, the dog GASPODE can talk. But most people cannot hear him when he does because they know, in their soul, that dogs do not talk. Any dog who appears to be talking, says their brain, is a statistical fluke and can therefore safely be ignored.) Discworld gods exist because people believe in them, and their power waxes and wanes with the strength of that belief. There is nothing very magical in this. After all, half the power of witches -and wizards, too, for that matter - lies in the fact that they advertise what they are. The pointy hats are a kind of power-dressing; they're no different from the white coats worn by any actor hawking washing powder. If people believe you can do magic you're halfway there already. Finally there is narrative causality, the power of stories. This is perhaps the strongest force of all and, again, weaker echoes of it are found in this world. Not for nothing do we say: History repeats. History does have patterns, cliches of time. People find themselves again and again in situations where they are playing roles as surely as if a script had been thrust into their hands: the Marital Row, the Job Interview, the Man Behind has Shunted You at the Traffic Lights, the Bastard. And there are the bigger patterns: the rise of empires, the spread of civilizations . . . Again and again humans tread the same dance through life, and with each dance the path becomes deeper and harder to leave. The sense of predestination permeates Discworld. History Monks observe history to make sure that it hap-pens 'according to the book'. When a princess is saved by MORT, History itself conspires to kill her. The process is focused in Lily WEATHERWAX, Who forces the lives of people into stories - and also in DIOS, the high priest of DJELIBEYBI, Who has been practising the same daily rituals for so long that he is incapable of dealing with anything new. On Discworld, the future is set. It's the job of everyone to fight back. Taken from The Discworld Companion by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs (stolen from http://finnfma.co.uk/dd/) |
