User:Old Dickens

Verse

What if the stories were true? What if there really were Vampires and Werewolves and Wizards and Witches who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose Nick and Nora Charles were the most powerful couple in the country...

There is a story that the world is a disc borne on the backs of four elephants which stand on the carapace of an enormous turtle. In one corner of the Multiverse (the one farthest from Reality) this, too, is true. This is where the story creates the history and a one-in-a-million chance turns up nine times out of ten and the ocean falls into space around the rim without depleting itself. On the Discworld, "what if?" must be answered, the stories lived, the myth made real.

Tales from this remote universe arrive regularly via inspiration particles intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of L-space. Just don't forget your ball of string.

Bridge

Wanting to smoke a cigar in the Canadian winter drove me to my car one evening in December, where I found on the radio a CBC1 discussion of a modern dilemma. (More than that, I think. Is there a multilemma?) The problem was the fragmentation of attention in modern society and the difficulty of separating the important from the frivolous in the barrage of information provided by the various media, both honest and propagandising. The point was that people have too much to think about and that more and more everyone knows more and more about less and less and few have time to think about the general state of society and that the media, especially, encourage disengagement with an array of bread and circuses. I was particularly impressed with the statement of the problem by the former Finance Minister ¹ of my home province, but no one came up with a means of getting the huddled masses of muddled asses to think about important matters now and then.

Future Shock was written in 1970. We need to get working on a cure.

The frustration felt in the discussion was mirrored by the promisingly tasty cigar that burned reluctantly and irregularly. Sometimes you could almost believe in gods.

(1) Political correctness prohibits calling her "Ministress", impeding communication once again.

Chorus

I sometimes sit and laugh giddily at the mere existence of some Pratchett characters (Carrot Ironfoundersson, say) and the reality he creates out of the absurd stereotype. This is often toward the end of the bottle of wine, but still, it suggests how he's different from other writers I have followed. There are now 1035 Discworld characters described here, and that's not all.

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Made a sysop for the many good contributions --Sanity 01:34, 19 August 2006 (CEST)