save for the buzzing of a few expectant flies
Water on the disc has an uncommon fourth state, caused by intense heat combined with the strange dessicating effects of octarine light; it dehydrates, leaving a silvery residue like free-flowing sand through which a well-designed hull can glide with ease. The Dehydrated Ocean is a strange place, but not so strange as its fish.
in tones that made Rincewind imagine submarine chasms and lurking Things in coral reefs
Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals, which were sown this year to come up later this year, biennials, sown this year to grow next year, and perennials, sown this year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare re-annuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up last year. The vul nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown. Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut’s point of view, the past. Strange but true.
having developed hydrophobia to an astonishing degree
precisely what physical features made her beautiful they could not, definitively, state
,
This line is interesting not only because it foreshadows The Light Fantastic (as in fact the entire prologue does), but also because it is about the only time the narrator really commits himself to A’Tuin’s gender without hedging his bets (as e.g. on the first page of The Light Fantastic). Note the capital ‘H’, which Death also rates in this book and loses in the later ones.
In real life determining the sex of turtles is no easy task. Unlike mammals, reptiles don’t have their naughty bits hanging out where they can be easily seen, and the only way to really tell a turtle’s gender is by comparison: male turtles are often smaller than females and have thicker tails. Since there are no other Chelys Galactica to compare A’Tuin to, the attempts of the Discworld’s Astrozoologists are probably futile to begin with.
Puns on the ‘steady state’ theory of explaining the size, origin and future of the universe. The best-known other theory is, of course, the Big Bang theory, referred to in the following sentence.
Terry has said that the name ‘Ankh-Morpork’ was inspired neither by the ankh (the Egyptian cross with the closed loop on top), nor by the Australian or New Zealand species of bird (frogmouths and small brown owls, respectively) that go by the name of ‘Morepork’.
In The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and The Discworld Companion we are shown an illustration of the Ankh-Morpork coat of arms, which does feature a Morepork/owl holding an ankh. But from Terry’s remarks (see next annotation) it’s safe to say that neither bird nor cross were explicitly on his mind when he first came up with the name Ankh-Morpork.
Finally, many readers have mentioned the resonance that Ankh-Morpork has with our world’s Budapest: also a large city made up of two smaller cities (Buda and Pest) separated by a river.
The two barbarians, Bravd and Weasel, are parodies of Fritz Leiber’s fantasy heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The Swords series of books in which they star are absolute classics, and have probably had about as much influence on the genre as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
The Swords stories date back as far as 1939, but more than sixty years later they have lost none of their appeal. Both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic are, in large part, affectionate parodies of the Leiberian universe, although I hasten to add
