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Special Delivery
Jul. 9th, 2005 11:49 pm14 May 2005
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday 2004
* * * * *
All right, Ms Clarke, Mr Mieville, listen up - this is how to create a convincing and likeable fantasy world. First, spend over twenty years doing it. Second, be prolific (this is the 33rd Discworld book). Third, make it funny. Fourth, when it starts to go stale, liven it up by letting technology and social institutions evolve. Fifth, think through the way in which said institutions work so that they can model and satirise their real-world equivalents. Sixth, have a wise and humane view of human nature that recognises both its nice and its nasty aspects. Seventh, make sure it has a postal system.
Okay okay, I'm overstating the case - as a real place the discworld is not particularly convincing, though it is extremely likeable. But as a third generation member of a Post Office family (my grandfather was co-inventor of the speaking clock and brought television to the Midlands, my father was an assistant director in charge of capital expenditure and my brother, though now outsourced, still helps to maintain its IT infrastructure), there was no way that I wasn't going to like this book. Though it helps that this is one of the better recent Discworld comic novels (which have tended to the novelistic than the comical), and that its theme, which is how to be a good Captain of Industry, is both interesting in itself and ripe for satire.
( Read more... )
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday 2004
* * * * *
All right, Ms Clarke, Mr Mieville, listen up - this is how to create a convincing and likeable fantasy world. First, spend over twenty years doing it. Second, be prolific (this is the 33rd Discworld book). Third, make it funny. Fourth, when it starts to go stale, liven it up by letting technology and social institutions evolve. Fifth, think through the way in which said institutions work so that they can model and satirise their real-world equivalents. Sixth, have a wise and humane view of human nature that recognises both its nice and its nasty aspects. Seventh, make sure it has a postal system.
Okay okay, I'm overstating the case - as a real place the discworld is not particularly convincing, though it is extremely likeable. But as a third generation member of a Post Office family (my grandfather was co-inventor of the speaking clock and brought television to the Midlands, my father was an assistant director in charge of capital expenditure and my brother, though now outsourced, still helps to maintain its IT infrastructure), there was no way that I wasn't going to like this book. Though it helps that this is one of the better recent Discworld comic novels (which have tended to the novelistic than the comical), and that its theme, which is how to be a good Captain of Industry, is both interesting in itself and ripe for satire.
( Read more... )