The Colour of Magic

that Vetinari does not know who Rincewind is).

However, Terry has always denied this interpretation:

'I’m pretty certain that the same Patrician was in all the books. […] He’s clearly lost weight and got more austere. It must be the pressure. As for racehorses and so on—Vetinari is not the first Patrician, and no doubt the earlier ones, like Lord Snapcase, were often crazed, greedy and acquisitive. So he has inherited all sorts of things. But he doesn’t change anything without a reason.'

When the people on afp were not immediately prepared to take his word for this (after all, what does he know—he’s only the author…), Terry conceded:

'How about: maybe he was Vetinari, but written by a more stupid writer?'

Which was grudgingly accepted. Still, discussion about the differences between the “early” and the “recent” Patrician continues to flare up regularly. When some people on alt.fan.pratchett questioned whether Vetinari would really be the type of man to throw the kind of party described in Mort, Terry answered:

'I’ve always thought the Patrician is a party animal. Can you imagine waking up next day and remembering all those witty things you said and did, and then realising that he was listening?'

15

Surprising as it may seem (or at least as it was to me), there are quite a few people who do not understand this cryptification of ‘economics’, even though it is explicitly explained by Terry a bit later ‘echo-gnomics’. Some of the confusion perhaps arises from the fact that we don’t usually associate gnomes with spirits, as in: ghosts. But I think Terry here simply means spirits (as in: souls) living underground, with the emphasis on the word ‘underground’.

16

The Chimera was a fire-breathing monster from Greek mythology. The name is also a pun on Cimmeria, Conan the Barbarian’s mythical homeland, while ‘Chimerical’ has the general connotation of something mythical or imaginary as well.

Ecalpon is ‘Noplace’ spelled backwards. This is similar to Erewhon, which is ‘Nowhere’ spelled backwards (well, almost), the idealistic commonwealth described in Samuel Butler’s eponymous novel. Also, ‘Nehwon’ is the universe where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have most of their adventures.

Go-Nim, finally, is the name of a Japanese board game similar to four-in-a-row.

17

Death and Rincewind are replaying their own version of the well-known folktale Appointment in Samarra. Terry says:

'My mother told me the ‘Appointment in Samarra’ story when I was very young, and it remained. She says she read it somewhere, or maybe heard it…

I’d always thought it was from the 1001 Nights, although I never went looking for it. It’s one of those stories that a lot of people vaguely know, without quite knowing why…'

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, it concerns a servant to a rich Baghdad merchant who goes to the market and encounters Death there, who gestures at him. Convinced that this is a very bad omen indeed, the servant rushes back to his master in a great panic and begs him for a horse, so that he can ride to Samarra and escape whatever calamity will befall him should he stay in Baghdad. The kind master gives the servant a horse, and goes out to investigate for himself. When the merchant finds Death and asks him why he frightened the servant so, Death replies: “I wasn’t trying to scare him, it is just that I was so very surprised to meet him here, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra!”

Over the centuries, countless versions and re-tellings of this story have appeared in books, plays and poems in all languages and cultures. One of my correspondents was so intrigued by the tale that with the help of alt.fan.pratchett he set out to find the original, or at least the earliest known version. After much research, he now believes this to be When Death Came to Baghdad, an old ninth century Middle Eastern Sufi teaching story, told by Fudail ibn Ayad in his Hikayat-i-Naqshia (‘Tales formed according to a design’).

If anyone has a reference to an even earlier version, we would love to hear about it.

18

This is a well-known Laurel and Hardy catchphrase. Hardy (the fat one) always says it to Laurel (the thin one), who then usually responded by ruffling the top of his hair with one hand and whimpering in characteristic fashion.

People have been quick to point out to me that Hardy never actually said “fine mess”, though, but always “nice mess”.

19

Just as the first chapter of The Colour of Magic has many resonances with Fritz Leiber’s Swords series, so can this chapter be regarded as a light parody of the works of horror author H. P. Lovecraft, who wrote many stories in a universe where unspeakable Evil lives, and where Ancient Gods (with unpronounceable names) play games with the lives of mortals. Lovecraft also wrote a story called The Colour out of Space, about an indescribable, unnatural colour.

20

This is the first occurrence of the name ‘Dunmanifestin’ for the home of the Gods at the top of Cori Celesti. It is used again in several places throughout the other Discworld novels.

This is not only a reference to the many British placenames that begin with ‘Dun’ (a Gaelic word meaning castle or fort and hence town) but also a reference to the supposedly traditional name for a twee retirement bungalow in the suburbs. When people (especially the bourgeois middle classes) retire to the suburbs they always, according to the stereotype, give the house some ‘cute’ punning name. Since the Dun/Done association is well- known, one of the more common names (though it is a matter of discussion if anyone has ever actually seen a house with this name) is ‘Dunroamin’—that is “done roaming”—i.e. the owners of the house have finished “travelling the world” and are now settled down to a life of the Daily Mail, golf and coffee mornings. From this, we get that a retirement home for gods not possessing much taste, might just be named ‘Dunmanifestin’.

A correspondent tells me that ‘Dun’ is also an Old English word for hill.