

The success of The Colour of Magic prompted Pratchett to put the story aside in favour of working on The Light Fantastic.


The original basis for the series was Pratchett's then-unpublished short story "The High Meggas", which he wrote as a starting point for a potential series while his first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was undergoing publication. Īt the time of Pratchett's death (12 March 2015), three novels had been released, with a fourth published on 23 June 2015 and the fifth published on 30 June 2016. The Long Earth is a collaborative science fiction novel series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. There are some nice unpatronising ruminations on the nature of belief, myth, right and wrong for those who like a moral but not entirely Christian worldview.Print (hardcover & paperback), eBook, and audio Book Good performances from the famous faces, but it is Michelle Dockery as Susan who is the highly pragmatic, utterly bewitching star of the show. Who has been naughty and who has been nice? And can Susan save the Hogfather before it's too late? Like all the best 'children's' stories, there are a slew of adult jokes - from Ian Richardson's asides about House of Cards, to the 'Ant hill Inside' ('Intel Inside') visual jokes on the, er, 'computer' - modernity is folded subtly into this wonderfully alternate world of yore. But where is the Hogfather to deliver the presents? What on earth is Death doing? Just how DO you subdue the monsters in the basement with a poker? Not to mention those in the Tooth Fairy's castle. 'Tis the night before Hogswatch - a solar festival not dissimilar from our Christmas. How else can they become?Ī very silly festive fairytale for children of all ages, with a no-nonsense (in the primmest, properest sense of the word), kick-ass heroine, set in a world that looks remarkably like ours, in a thaumaturgical, Victorian Gothic kind of way, considering it's actually a disc balanced on some elephants, which are balanced on a turtle. Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?ĭeath: You need to believe in things that aren't true. some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged. you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. That sort of thing.ĭeath: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.ĭeath: Yes. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.ĭeath: Yes. You're saying that humans need fantasies to make life bearable.ĭeath: No. Death: What would have happened if you hadn't saved him?ĭeath: A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world.
