The Turtle Moves! (26 page)

Lots of cheap humor was derived from the clever substitutions of animals for machines, and the occasional snide asides these critters made—-most of them spoke, a fact that the human characters generally ignored. Mr. Pratchett isn't above this sort of humor in the Discworld stories, except he uses imps rather than birds and beasts, and their comments are more likely to be dismayed or angry than merely snide. The imps in iconographs often provide a little extra commentary on events, as when one runs out of black paint in a particularly dark moment, and the imp in Vimes's Dis-Organizer is a character in its own right in its pitiful frustration with its employer's refusal to cooperate with it.

The Flintstones
would sometimes rely on Rube Goldberg devices of wood, string, and hide to make up for the lack of metal and electricity, and the Disc's people also improvise when necessary, as in Otto Chriek's easily-shattered vial of blood that would restore him to life when his iconograph's flash turned him to dust. It's definitely some of the same sort of ingenuity; Mr. Pratchett just does it better.

And the purpose of this ingenuity, of course, is to allow the presence of familiar technological devices without the technology.

In some cases, the author doesn't bother; after all, there's no reason movable type and semaphore towers couldn't be built with ancient technology. Gutenberg's printing press didn't require steam or electricity, so there's no need for imps, either.

At any rate, in the second half of the Century of the Fruitbat (and the dawn of the Century of the Anchovy), Ankh-Morpork survived the arrival of several of these new technologies. Some of them, such as the iconograph and the Dis-Organizer, are treated as mere background details, but a few form the basis for entire novels: movies, in
Moving Pictures
; newspapers, in
The Truth
; and the clacks, or semaphore towers, along with postage stamps, in
Going Postal
.

The clacks actually appear before
Going Postal
, and both clacks and newspapers have permanent effects, as seen in
Monstrous Regiment
. That makes
Moving Pictures
the odd one out, in that movies appear and then disappear in the course of the novel, and there's no attempt to revive the movie industry in later books, no one making the odd little film.

In
Moving Pictures
, people are caught up in the story of Hollywood, out of their own control, not understanding their own actions, even while they spread their own stories of Klatchian sheiks and sword-wielding heroes to eager audiences. That's a story that has to be
stopped
.

In
The Truth
and
Going Postal
, though, the stories are unleashed and then tamed. William de Worde discovers the power of the press, the ability of the printed word to manipulate the masses, and does everything he can to direct that power in beneficial ways. The swindler and con artist Moist von Lipwig already knows how to use stories on a small scale to get what he wants, and when he's given control of the Post Office, he discovers that can scale up, that it's possible to sway not just individuals but the entire city with a good song and dance—and like de Worde, he strives to turn this power to the benefit of the entire city, rather than just himself.

De Worde does what good he can because he's determined not to be like his father; von Lipwig does so because he's determined to better
himself
, rather than his family, though admittedly he also has the bad example of Reacher Gilt to inspire him.

(Of course, we don't yet know anything at all about von Lipwig's family; it may also be motivating him.)

And one interesting feature of all of these isn't in the characters of the ostensible protagonists, but in the character of Lord Havelock Vetinari. The Patrician does not try to suppress these new technologies.

Your classic fantasy tyrant would have smashed de Worde's presses and executed de Worde when the
Times
started disrupting things. He would have sent troops to burn Holy Wood to the ground. He would have hanged Moist von Lipwig permanently, and either nationalized or destroyed the clacks.

Vetinari doesn't do any of that.

It's not that he's incapable of it, as any mime hanging in the scorpion pit could tell you; it's that he has the imagination to see that sometimes change is an improvement, sometimes a risk is worth taking, and sometimes suppressing something isn't practical. A printing press isn't a hard thing to build, really, not when you have a few dwarf artificers around; smash the
Times
, and you might find the
Tribune
appearing on the streets from somewhere deep beneath the city. The clacks change how things are done, but they do so by making people richer, and more wealth is a good thing.

Vetinari prefers to let matters play themselves out, and perhaps give them a few nudges in the right direction—or let Vimes give them a few nudges.

He
does
suppress some things, when he determines them to be too dangerous, to be a net loss to the city. He does keeps Leonard of Quirm sequestered. He's happy to see the end of the gonne in
Men at Arms
. But when something may be a net benefit, or may be more trouble to suppress than it's worth, Vetinari lets it exist.

Vetinari is a
smart
tyrant.

In a way, Vetinari is the real hero of
The Truth
and
Going Postal
and
Making Money
and several of the Watch stories. He wants what's best for Ankh-Morpork, and has mastered one of the hardest parts of governing: choosing the right man for the right job, and then letting him do it. He doesn't care whether the people he chooses like him; he doesn't care whether
anyone
likes him. He cares whether they want the same things for Ankh-Morpork that he does. He gives Vimes his head because he knows that Vimes wants peace and justice, and detests the ruling classes—and Vetinari also wants peace and justice (within reason), and knows that the ruling classes are the biggest threat to his own position.

He lets de Worde run the
Times
because he prefers the honest press
that de Worde is trying to provide to the propaganda that someone else might produce.

He puts von Lipwig in charge of the Post Office because he knows he needs someone smart and unorthodox if he's ever to have a working postal service again—and at that, von Lipwig isn't his first attempt, he's just the one that works. And because it works, Vetinari moves Lipwig on to the Royal Bank.

Clearly, Lord Vetinari is the best thing that ever happened to Ankh-Morpork. It's not a coincidence that the city flourishes so spectacularly under his rule, as it did not under Lord Snapcase or Lord Winder or any of the previous Patricians, nor under any of the later kings. This is a man for whom Sun Tzu's
Art of War
is just stating the obvious, Niccolò Machiavelli's
The Prince
is a child's primer, and Peter Anspach's “Evil Overlord list”
¹⁶⁹
is his morning reminder. He's a man who has transformed Ankh-Morpork's story from an ongoing soap opera and political intrigue with occasional episodes of war into a science fiction saga of new inventions transforming society.

In many stories, and many aspects of real life, it's taken for granted that change is a bad thing. In most fantasy novels, in particular, change is a bad thing—we start out with the happy little forest creatures and the cheerful peasants and the benevolent rulers all in harmony; then an evil wizard or a sarcastic dragon or a Dark Lord comes along and messes everything up, and Our Heroes spend a few hundred pages removing the disturbance and putting everything back the way it was, removing as many of the changes as possible and bringing back the Good Old Days. Even some of the Discworld novels follow that basic plot outline: Things are good, a problem arises, the problem is removed, things go back to being good.

But in the Ankh-Morpork series, things generally
don't
go back, and no one really expects them to. It's not just the big advances like newspapers or clacks, either; no one really expects the dwarfs and trolls and vampires to go back to Uberwald, or wherever they came from. Golems become a part of the city's every day life. Things change, and people
adapt
to the changes.

That's the science fiction model, rather than fantasy. In science fiction stories, something comes along—alien invaders, atomic war, time travel, teleportation, death rays, matter duplicators, flying cars, whatever—and
the world changes to accommodate it, and Our Heroes are the ones trying to make sure that accommodation's a good one. No one ever manages to put the genie back in the bottle; the aliens may be defeated, but that doesn't bring back the Good Old Days. The world has been changed forever.

And that's what usually happens in Ankh-Morpork. Oh, not always—Victor and his friends
did
manage to get the movie genie back in the bottle, so to speak, and the fad for Music With Rocks In passes—but usually. The city absorbs the changes, makes them its own, and goes on, not quite the same as before. It's the science fiction mindset, rather than the fantasy one, despite the wizards and dragons and trolls.

I find that fascinating.

T
HE EXACT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN children's stories and stories for adults isn't really very clear. Some people seem to think that all fantasy is aimed at children, since after all, sensible grown-ups don't want to read about all that silly magic stuff; in fact, in Britain there are special editions of several of the Discworld novels with “serious” covers so that readers who are embarrassed to be seen with that childish fantasy stuff can look as if they're reading something important and grown-up while they enjoy that childish fantasy stuff.

And it's not as if children's books these days are written with simpler language, or with simplified morals—modern kids aren't very fond of being condescended to, and that sort of “good for you” children's book, if it gets published at all, generally sells like crap.

Nor is it a lack of sex, as plenty of adult novels (including most of the Discworld books) don't contain any significant amount of sex, nor is it a lack of violence, as children's stories have always been chock-full of beheadings, witch-burnings, man-eating ogres, and whatnot.

Nor are children's books necessarily shorter, as J.K. Rowling
¹⁷⁰
has demonstrated more than decisively.

One wonders, then, exactly what the difference might be between an “adult” Discworld book and a “children's” Discworld book.

Mostly, it seems to be the age of the protagonist.

Some might argue, I suppose, that this would make
Equal Rites
a children's book, since Eskarina Smith is a child, but since the actual protagonist of the book is probably Granny Weatherwax, who is anything but, I reject that argument. I know childishness when I see it. So there.
Nyah-nyah
.

The other key ingredient is marketing—if it's labeled a children's book, then it is one. Some publishers have used this very cleverly, publishing the exact same book with two different covers, one labeling it as for adults, one as for children. This has often resulted in lots of additional book sales. (See what I said above about the “serious cover” Discworld books.)

At any rate, Mr. Pratchett decided some time back to get into the children's market, and he wrote
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
, then followed it up with the Tiffany Aching series.

Maurice
wasn't really all that traditional a children's book, since Maurice and the rats are adults, and it's a pretty dark story. Tiffany Aching's story, on the other hand, fits right into one of the standard children's story niches: a girl finding her path to adulthood.

In
The Wee Free Men
, she realizes she's going to be a witch, and eventually take Granny Aching's place as the witch of the Chalk. She moves from the relative carelessness of childhood to responsibility, saving her brother from the Queen.

In
A Hat Full of Sky
, she learns to be a witch, and hits adolescence and peer pressure in the process.

In
Wintersmith
, she comes of age, facing young womanhood in her relationship with the Wintersmith.

Where Discworld stories usually involve a subversion of traditional stories, though, the Tiffany Aching stories pretty much follow the old stories as they are, without parody, and with very little satire. Saving her brother from the fairies is a classic fairy-tale plot, and if this were an adult Discworld novel I'd expect to see some twist on it—a “Ransom of Red Chief”
¹⁷¹
story where the Queen is desperate to get rid of Wentworth, perhaps. Instead, the author plays it straight. Tiffany faces down the Queen's magic with the magic of her grandmother's stories in a fashion I find reminiscent of nineteenth-century authors like George MacDonald.
¹⁷²

These are classic coming-of-age stories, rather than satire, that just happen to be set on the Disc.

One can see how Mr. Pratchett might consider these a change of pace. One can also see why he created a new part of the Disc, the Chalk, as the setting—he presumably wanted somewhere that didn't have the accumulated satirical baggage of Lancre or Ankh-Morpork.
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
was set in Uberwald, and at first glance it might seem as if Tiffany Aching could have been set in Lancre or the Sto Plains—in fact, Mr. Pratchett has mentioned that when he first started developing the story it
was
set in Lancre—but creating a new place avoided any concerns about continuity, any assumptions readers might have made.