Not Kicking the Kitten
Jul. 27th, 2014 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselFeb 2014
Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday, 2013
* * * *
I shall never forget reading The Colour of Magic when I was a teenager. The combination of laugh-out-loud one-liners, the gentle satire of well-known fantasy series (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, Anne MacCaffrey's Pern and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos) and an original setting where the consequences were thought through (for example, that a world that was a disc would have an edge that you could explore, and if you were unlucky, fall off) was like nothing else I had encountered. This tension between humorous invention and world-building has permeated every one of the subsequent thirty-nine books in the sequence, and the various admixtures have led to the different strands, with the greater social realism of the Ankh-Morpork-based Vimes and Moist von Lipwig novels being balanced by the funnier and more whimsical "witches" and "death" novels. Being a fan of anything that can make me laugh, I generally much prefer the latter to the former, and it is a sadness to me that Pratchett seems to have chosen to focus exclusively on the realistic mode (a case in point - Discworld has become so real that it now has a proper map showing where Quirm, the Ramtops and Uberwald are in relation to each other, which does not accord with my imagined version of it). But Pratchett is a genius, and even without the jokes and the invention that characterise his best work, this take on the coming of steam and its consequences is an interesting read with important things to say.
The story revolves around Dick Simnel, a stereotypical northern engineer who has managed to tame steam by means of slide rules, quadratic equations and blueprints (though there are strong hints throughout the book that steam wanted to be tamed). He builds a Stephenson's Rocket equivalent with the inelegant name of Iron Girder and brings it Ankh-Morpork, where he catches the attention of Sir Harry King, the no-nonsense mogul of the city's sewage collection system, and of the Patrician, who orders his go-to conman/manager Moist Van Lipwig to ensure that this innovation is developed in a responsible fashion. For everyone can see that rapid transport of goods and people is a benefit - except for the pseudo-religious dwarven grags, who will stop at nothing to prevent the railway from being built.
The delight of this book is in the way that it captures the childlike wonder that steam trains evoke. Even someone as hard-bitten as the Patrician succumbs to the smoke, sounds and smells. And for someone from a country where the default response to any innovation is resistance and cynicism, it is inspiring to see a society reconfigure itself to embrace the hope and opportunities that a new technology offers. Everyone works together to make the railway a success, regardless of their background or racial origin. Even the wealthy landowners on whose lands the tracks will run willingly allow this to happen (historically, acts of parliament and compulsory purchase were necessary).
It is a shame, therefore, that Pratchett has chosen for his threat an ill-defined but obvious group of antagonists in the grags, particularly as he has been unusually lax in applying the Discworld disguise to them. They are more obviously than ever a cognate of Islamist extremist leaders, with their repertoire of tactics straight from the Al Qaida playbook and their challenge to Low King Rhys, the moderate leader with which the West - err, Ankh-Morpork - can do business. Although there are long scenes of debate between him and grag-in-chief Ardent, we never really understand what it is about steam that the grags object to, other than that it is new and "undwarvish". It would have been quite easy to have come up with a very practical threat to grag traditions in the form of steam-powered mine pumps and ventilators, but Pratchett does not do this, preferring to make the grags seem pantomimishly unreasonable.
And it must also be said that there is an irritating absence of the female in this book. Adora Dearheart gets the occasional scene, Effie, Harry King's wife, is instrumental in making train facilities civilised, and an adventurous widow called Georgina Bradshaw makes a memorable cameo, but all of the main characters are men. This is a pity. Dick Simnel is a likeable character, but a female version would have been something really special and a younger Pratchett would have done it.
Still, to dislike this book would be akin to kicking a kitten. The laugh-out-loud one-liners of his earlier books are sadly missed, but the wide-eyed wonder and delight that so many of the characters evince on first seeing Iron Girder reminds me of how I felt when I read The Colour of Magic. And that is something special.
Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday, 2013
* * * *
I shall never forget reading The Colour of Magic when I was a teenager. The combination of laugh-out-loud one-liners, the gentle satire of well-known fantasy series (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, Anne MacCaffrey's Pern and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos) and an original setting where the consequences were thought through (for example, that a world that was a disc would have an edge that you could explore, and if you were unlucky, fall off) was like nothing else I had encountered. This tension between humorous invention and world-building has permeated every one of the subsequent thirty-nine books in the sequence, and the various admixtures have led to the different strands, with the greater social realism of the Ankh-Morpork-based Vimes and Moist von Lipwig novels being balanced by the funnier and more whimsical "witches" and "death" novels. Being a fan of anything that can make me laugh, I generally much prefer the latter to the former, and it is a sadness to me that Pratchett seems to have chosen to focus exclusively on the realistic mode (a case in point - Discworld has become so real that it now has a proper map showing where Quirm, the Ramtops and Uberwald are in relation to each other, which does not accord with my imagined version of it). But Pratchett is a genius, and even without the jokes and the invention that characterise his best work, this take on the coming of steam and its consequences is an interesting read with important things to say.
The story revolves around Dick Simnel, a stereotypical northern engineer who has managed to tame steam by means of slide rules, quadratic equations and blueprints (though there are strong hints throughout the book that steam wanted to be tamed). He builds a Stephenson's Rocket equivalent with the inelegant name of Iron Girder and brings it Ankh-Morpork, where he catches the attention of Sir Harry King, the no-nonsense mogul of the city's sewage collection system, and of the Patrician, who orders his go-to conman/manager Moist Van Lipwig to ensure that this innovation is developed in a responsible fashion. For everyone can see that rapid transport of goods and people is a benefit - except for the pseudo-religious dwarven grags, who will stop at nothing to prevent the railway from being built.
The delight of this book is in the way that it captures the childlike wonder that steam trains evoke. Even someone as hard-bitten as the Patrician succumbs to the smoke, sounds and smells. And for someone from a country where the default response to any innovation is resistance and cynicism, it is inspiring to see a society reconfigure itself to embrace the hope and opportunities that a new technology offers. Everyone works together to make the railway a success, regardless of their background or racial origin. Even the wealthy landowners on whose lands the tracks will run willingly allow this to happen (historically, acts of parliament and compulsory purchase were necessary).
It is a shame, therefore, that Pratchett has chosen for his threat an ill-defined but obvious group of antagonists in the grags, particularly as he has been unusually lax in applying the Discworld disguise to them. They are more obviously than ever a cognate of Islamist extremist leaders, with their repertoire of tactics straight from the Al Qaida playbook and their challenge to Low King Rhys, the moderate leader with which the West - err, Ankh-Morpork - can do business. Although there are long scenes of debate between him and grag-in-chief Ardent, we never really understand what it is about steam that the grags object to, other than that it is new and "undwarvish". It would have been quite easy to have come up with a very practical threat to grag traditions in the form of steam-powered mine pumps and ventilators, but Pratchett does not do this, preferring to make the grags seem pantomimishly unreasonable.
And it must also be said that there is an irritating absence of the female in this book. Adora Dearheart gets the occasional scene, Effie, Harry King's wife, is instrumental in making train facilities civilised, and an adventurous widow called Georgina Bradshaw makes a memorable cameo, but all of the main characters are men. This is a pity. Dick Simnel is a likeable character, but a female version would have been something really special and a younger Pratchett would have done it.
Still, to dislike this book would be akin to kicking a kitten. The laugh-out-loud one-liners of his earlier books are sadly missed, but the wide-eyed wonder and delight that so many of the characters evince on first seeing Iron Girder reminds me of how I felt when I read The Colour of Magic. And that is something special.