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Terry Pratchett: Titan of Technomancy
Together, my lord
Sauron
, we shall rule this Middle-earth.
The old world will burn in the fires of industry.
Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the
machine of war with the sword and the spear
and the iron fist of the
orc.
Sauron
, we shall rule this Middle-earth.
The old world will burn in the fires of industry.
Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the
machine of war with the sword and the spear
and the iron fist of the
orc.
âSaruman in
The Two Towers
137
The Two Towers
137
Buzz through a novel by Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, or Clive Cussler and you'll usually find enough gizmos to run or destroy a small planet. These are your techno-thriller writers. But would you place Terry Pratchett in that group? You would if you read the Discworld novels closely enough. They're all about the gadgets.
Technology shows the advancement of a civilization. Some would argue that it also shows its imminent destruction and separates the haves from the have-nots. Whatever the case may be, technology reveals where we are at as a society.
So, what about Discworld? Who would've thought that a world without computers or TV, and with watchmen patrolling with bells, would have any kind of technology? But it does. There's enough technology to almost rival a Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton novel. No, we're not drunk. Think of
The Flintstones,
the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series of the 1960s, which featured a prehistoric setting but technology akin to the 1960sâhence the car run “through the courtesy of Fred's two feet” as the closing song of each episode goes. In Discworld, technology is what Pratchett calls
technomancy.
The Flintstones,
the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series of the 1960s, which featured a prehistoric setting but technology akin to the 1960sâhence the car run “through the courtesy of Fred's two feet” as the closing song of each episode goes. In Discworld, technology is what Pratchett calls
technomancy.
First, let's look at some of the inventors.
Inventors
Many of us take for granted the labor-saving devices we have, such as the computer, the DVD, the microwave, Ginsu knives, or that thing you throw in the microwave that helps you hang and cook bacon. (You know. That thing.) But they all came from the brain of someoneâsometimes the kid just down the street or in your own home, the one who dreams of winning the science fair. Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Mary Phelps Jacob, George Washington Carver, Sara Goode, Thomas Alva Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, and many others left a legacy of innovation. Discworld has several inventors, the most well known of which are Leonard of Quirm and Bergholt Stuttley (Bloody Stupid) Johnson. Judging by Johnson's inventions, his nickname seems apt.
Â
Leonard of
Quirm
.
Leonard da Quirm or Leonard of Quirm is the Leonardo da Vinci of Discworld. Naturally. He's a gentle genius with an amazing knack for inventing killing machines, including the gonne (
Men at Arms
) and flying machines, such as a flappingwing-flying-device (
Men at Arms
) reminiscent of the ones Leonardo da Vinci (see sidebar
here
) and Daedalus (the artist/inventor
from Greek mythology) invented. Alas, he's terrible at naming them. He's so dangerous, he has to be locked up in the Patrician's Palace for the good of humanity.
Quirm
.
Leonard da Quirm or Leonard of Quirm is the Leonardo da Vinci of Discworld. Naturally. He's a gentle genius with an amazing knack for inventing killing machines, including the gonne (
Men at Arms
) and flying machines, such as a flappingwing-flying-device (
Men at Arms
) reminiscent of the ones Leonardo da Vinci (see sidebar
here
) and Daedalus (the artist/inventor
from Greek mythology) invented. Alas, he's terrible at naming them. He's so dangerous, he has to be locked up in the Patrician's Palace for the good of humanity.
Â
Bergholt Stuttley
(Bloody Stupid) Johnson.
Johnson, an inventor and landscape gardener, parodies Lancelot (Capability) Brown, the renowned eighteenth-century British landscape gardener whose parks decorated England. Although Johnson doesn't actually appear in any of the Discworld books, being dead and all, his legacy is described. He has a kind of genius, tooâa genius for errors. In other words, he's IN-capable. (Ha, ha!) His inventions, for instance the sorting engine in
Going Postal,
turn out flawed but still brilliant in other ways. Although this machine was designed to sort mail, it winds up affecting the space-time continuum. Not something you'd want at your local post officeâor maybe you would.
(Bloody Stupid) Johnson.
Johnson, an inventor and landscape gardener, parodies Lancelot (Capability) Brown, the renowned eighteenth-century British landscape gardener whose parks decorated England. Although Johnson doesn't actually appear in any of the Discworld books, being dead and all, his legacy is described. He has a kind of genius, tooâa genius for errors. In other words, he's IN-capable. (Ha, ha!) His inventions, for instance the sorting engine in
Going Postal,
turn out flawed but still brilliant in other ways. Although this machine was designed to sort mail, it winds up affecting the space-time continuum. Not something you'd want at your local post officeâor maybe you would.
Â
Â
Okay, with that said, let's get on with the stuff.
Communication Pieces
The clacks.
Whenever they're not queuing up at the Post Office, sending pigeons, or consulting Mrs. Cake's crystal ball, the Discworldians send messages to one another via the clacksâa variation on the telegraph and also the semaphore (optical telegraph) network, which has been in place in our world for, oh, a couple hundred years, especially in France, thanks to semaphore stations set up by French engineer Claude Chappe back in the late eighteenth century.
Whenever they're not queuing up at the Post Office, sending pigeons, or consulting Mrs. Cake's crystal ball, the Discworldians send messages to one another via the clacksâa variation on the telegraph and also the semaphore (optical telegraph) network, which has been in place in our world for, oh, a couple hundred years, especially in France, thanks to semaphore stations set up by French engineer Claude Chappe back in the late eighteenth century.
If you read
Going Postal,
you know that Adora Belle Dear-heart's father, Robert, is the one who helps develop the clacks
and the Grand Trunk. Unfortunately, he is rooked out of the company by embezzlers and Reacher Gilt. (More on Gilt in
chapter 12
.)
Going Postal,
you know that Adora Belle Dear-heart's father, Robert, is the one who helps develop the clacks
and the Grand Trunk. Unfortunately, he is rooked out of the company by embezzlers and Reacher Gilt. (More on Gilt in
chapter 12
.)
The clacks system also involves c-mail like the Internet's e-mail. How? We're not sure. It just does.
Â
Speaking tubes.
In the
Hogfather,
Lord Downey makes use of a speaking tube. In this phoneless era, this is undoubtedly the receiver /microphone to an intercom such as those of the late nineteenth centuryâthe kind used to communicate from one room to the nextâcutting-edge technology back in the day. (You can see these in use sometimes in old TV shows.) Sometimes you had to blow into them (or at least people thought you had to) for sound to carry through. Even today, with technology so much more advanced, you still see people blowing into microphones and asking, “Is this thing on?”
In the
Hogfather,
Lord Downey makes use of a speaking tube. In this phoneless era, this is undoubtedly the receiver /microphone to an intercom such as those of the late nineteenth centuryâthe kind used to communicate from one room to the nextâcutting-edge technology back in the day. (You can see these in use sometimes in old TV shows.) Sometimes you had to blow into them (or at least people thought you had to) for sound to carry through. Even today, with technology so much more advanced, you still see people blowing into microphones and asking, “Is this thing on?”
Â
Dis-organizers/PDAs and Iconographs.
Vimes has a number of organizers, or Dis-organizers as they are referred to, Dis being an allusion to the name of a city in Dante's
Divine Comedy.
Unlike the organizers before PDAs such as Palm Pilots and BlackBerry products came on the scene, Vimes's Dis-organizers are powered by tiny imps. (More about them in
chapter 10
.) He starts off with the fifteenfunction imp-powered Dis-organizerâa gift from Sybil (
Feet of Clay
). In
Thud!
Vimes gets the Dis-Organizer Mark Five, the Gooseberry
âanother imp-powered product. We don't have to tell you that this is an allusion to the BlackBerry and iPod/iTunes (Pratchett's iHUM
). But we did.
Vimes has a number of organizers, or Dis-organizers as they are referred to, Dis being an allusion to the name of a city in Dante's
Divine Comedy.
Unlike the organizers before PDAs such as Palm Pilots and BlackBerry products came on the scene, Vimes's Dis-organizers are powered by tiny imps. (More about them in
chapter 10
.) He starts off with the fifteenfunction imp-powered Dis-organizerâa gift from Sybil (
Feet of Clay
). In
Thud!
Vimes gets the Dis-Organizer Mark Five, the Gooseberry
âanother imp-powered product. We don't have to tell you that this is an allusion to the BlackBerry and iPod/iTunes (Pratchett's iHUM). But we did.As for the iconographsâthe magic cameras of Discworld that Pratchett made upâthe imps run them as if they were computer chips. Like iconography, which involves the painting of religious icons, the iconograph involves recording images by painting instead
of recording them on film. If you've seen
The Flintstones,
you know this is the way of many of that series' labor-saving devices. Wilma's camera might simply be a bird painstakingly pecking a picture on a small piece of marble.
of recording them on film. If you've seen
The Flintstones,
you know this is the way of many of that series' labor-saving devices. Wilma's camera might simply be a bird painstakingly pecking a picture on a small piece of marble.
Timepieces
As we mentioned in
chapter 17
, the monks of history use procrastinators. These devices store and release time. Many are stationary, but some are portable. They differ from the time machine used by the Time Traveller in H. G. Wells's 1895 novel
The Time Machine,
or the DeLorean, the 1980s car that runs on plutonium in the
Back to the Future
trilogy, in that you can't program it to go to a specific time or place and appear there instantly. Using portable procrastinators enables Lobsang and Lu-Tze to travel around Ankh-Morpork once time had stopped. Handy when you want to avoid traffic.
chapter 17
, the monks of history use procrastinators. These devices store and release time. Many are stationary, but some are portable. They differ from the time machine used by the Time Traveller in H. G. Wells's 1895 novel
The Time Machine,
or the DeLorean, the 1980s car that runs on plutonium in the
Back to the Future
trilogy, in that you can't program it to go to a specific time or place and appear there instantly. Using portable procrastinators enables Lobsang and Lu-Tze to travel around Ankh-Morpork once time had stopped. Handy when you want to avoid traffic.
Another innovative timepiece is the great glass clock Jeremy Clockson builds in
Thief of Time.
It uses crystals and the cosmic quantum tick (Newton's tick of the universe) to measure time. But because it also destroys the universe (you see now why Jeremy has an Igor working for him), we can't see the marketable value of such a timepiece. A Rolex is preferable.
Thief of Time.
It uses crystals and the cosmic quantum tick (Newton's tick of the universe) to measure time. But because it also destroys the universe (you see now why Jeremy has an Igor working for him), we can't see the marketable value of such a timepiece. A Rolex is preferable.
Qu, the inventing monk who is an allusion to the Q of the James Bond series, talks about yet another timepieceâan exploding Mandala. The Mandalaâ“colored chaos” as Pratchett refers to it in
Thief of Time
138
âis a roomful of sand, but not one in which you'd set a toddler to play. These are the sands of the universe according to Hindu beliefsâthus far more potent than the sands of
the timekeepers Death uses. Exploding Mandala is exploding sandâsort of like having time blow up in your face.
Thief of Time
138
âis a roomful of sand, but not one in which you'd set a toddler to play. These are the sands of the universe according to Hindu beliefsâthus far more potent than the sands of
the timekeepers Death uses. Exploding Mandala is exploding sandâsort of like having time blow up in your face.
Other Magical Items
The wizards have their hands in the technological stew with the omniscope (
Going Postal
)âa magical mirrorâand Hex, a “thinking” machine Ponder Stibbons monitors, which controls thaumarhythms. With Hex, we can't help thinking of the old-fashioned computers of the 1950s and 1960sâthe ones that used to take up a whole room and spit out keypunch cards. Gone are those days, since the invention of the personal computer. He also reminds us of K9, the robot dog who was a rolling fount of information in the
Doctor Who
series.
Going Postal
)âa magical mirrorâand Hex, a “thinking” machine Ponder Stibbons monitors, which controls thaumarhythms. With Hex, we can't help thinking of the old-fashioned computers of the 1950s and 1960sâthe ones that used to take up a whole room and spit out keypunch cards. Gone are those days, since the invention of the personal computer. He also reminds us of K9, the robot dog who was a rolling fount of information in the
Doctor Who
series.
The magic mirror is a staple of fairy tales. Consider the “mirror, mirror on the wall” of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and new tales such as
Fairest
by Gail Carson Levine. Lily Weatherwax uses mirror magic in
Witches Abroad,
just as the Evil Queen did in
The 10th Kingdom.
Fairest
by Gail Carson Levine. Lily Weatherwax uses mirror magic in
Witches Abroad,
just as the Evil Queen did in
The 10th Kingdom.
If you saw any of the
Lord of the Rings
movies, you saw some of the weapons or machinery ancient civilizations might have used in times of war (the trebuchet, bows and arrows, the crossbow, the battering ram, the sword). Fancy.
Lord of the Rings
movies, you saw some of the weapons or machinery ancient civilizations might have used in times of war (the trebuchet, bows and arrows, the crossbow, the battering ram, the sword). Fancy.
If you're a Clancy aficionado, you're used to major machines of war, such as tanks, guns, fancy ammo, chilling chemical weapons, and nukes aplenty. Well, a whole arsenal of weapons is mentioned throughout the Discworld series, especially in the City Watch books. After all, the watchpeople come armed with a truncheon, sword, and a crossbow.
Many of the weapons used by the Watch were developed by
Burleigh and Stronginthearm. Of course, when we read about Burleigh and Stronginthearm, we thought immediately of Smith & Wesson, the famous U.S. gun manufacturing company founded by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson back in 1852. Burleigh and Stronginthearm make the Discworld weapons of choiceâcrossbows such as the ominous Streetsweeper or the Shureshotte Five mentioned in
Jingo
. If Dirty Harry, the magnum-carrying police officer popularized in the 1970s by Clint Eastwood, existed in this series, he would probably carry either one of those or the Locksley Reflex 7 crossbow (reminiscent of Robin Hood's nameâthe Earl of Locksley), also mentioned in
Jingo.
Burleigh and Stronginthearm. Of course, when we read about Burleigh and Stronginthearm, we thought immediately of Smith & Wesson, the famous U.S. gun manufacturing company founded by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson back in 1852. Burleigh and Stronginthearm make the Discworld weapons of choiceâcrossbows such as the ominous Streetsweeper or the Shureshotte Five mentioned in
Jingo
. If Dirty Harry, the magnum-carrying police officer popularized in the 1970s by Clint Eastwood, existed in this series, he would probably carry either one of those or the Locksley Reflex 7 crossbow (reminiscent of Robin Hood's nameâthe Earl of Locksley), also mentioned in
Jingo.
On an armory visit in
Men at Arms
(a very appropriate title), Nobby Nobbs finds several “toys,” which include the glaive, a siege crossbow, and a morningstar. If you're up on medieval weapons, you know that a glaive is a pole weaponâa blade with a single edge attached to a pole. A morningstar is a macelike club with spikes. Handy for crowd control. The “âMeteor' Automated Throwing Star Hurler” is, of course, an allusion to the throwing stars or
hira shuriken
that ninjas useâthin-bladed metal stars.
Men at Arms
(a very appropriate title), Nobby Nobbs finds several “toys,” which include the glaive, a siege crossbow, and a morningstar. If you're up on medieval weapons, you know that a glaive is a pole weaponâa blade with a single edge attached to a pole. A morningstar is a macelike club with spikes. Handy for crowd control. The “âMeteor' Automated Throwing Star Hurler” is, of course, an allusion to the throwing stars or
hira shuriken
that ninjas useâthin-bladed metal stars.
We already mentioned the gonneâLeonard of Quirm's weapon of destruction. There are other weapons: the clong-clong, dakka, the pika, and the uppsi of the Dojo of the Tenth Djim mentioned in
Thief of Time
. The clong-clong could be
nunchaku
or nunchucksâthe two sticks chained or roped together. The pika could either be an allusion to the pikeâthe spearlike medieval weaponâor one like the feathered spear wielded by Shu Lien in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
. The uppsi could be a throwing star, while the dakka stick could be a tonfaâa wooden shaft about two feet long with a handle. Usually a person wielding the tonfa has a pair. Or they could all be made up by Pratchett. He does that, y'know.
Thief of Time
. The clong-clong could be
nunchaku
or nunchucksâthe two sticks chained or roped together. The pika could either be an allusion to the pikeâthe spearlike medieval weaponâor one like the feathered spear wielded by Shu Lien in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
. The uppsi could be a throwing star, while the dakka stick could be a tonfaâa wooden shaft about two feet long with a handle. Usually a person wielding the tonfa has a pair. Or they could all be made up by Pratchett. He does that, y'know.
Of course, chocolate proves to be the best weapon of all, one
used against the seemingly invincible Auditors in
Thief of Time
. It also beats depression, too. It may not be high tech, but it gets our vote for best weapon.
used against the seemingly invincible Auditors in
Thief of Time
. It also beats depression, too. It may not be high tech, but it gets our vote for best weapon.
The constituent parts of nature are finite, but the works that the eye commands of the hands are infinite.
âLeonardo da Vinci
139
139
I
t pays to have keen observation. While Leonardo is known for lacking a university education, he made up for it by an irrepressible curiosity. Could a man fly like Daedalus and Icarus? Sure. All you need is the right design and a grip on aerodynamics. Thus Leonardo created a hang glider of sorts that hundreds of years later was built and flown. He called it an uccelloâa great bird.
t pays to have keen observation. While Leonardo is known for lacking a university education, he made up for it by an irrepressible curiosity. Could a man fly like Daedalus and Icarus? Sure. All you need is the right design and a grip on aerodynamics. Thus Leonardo created a hang glider of sorts that hundreds of years later was built and flown. He called it an uccelloâa great bird.
He also had a grasp of engineering and the value of a good pulley system. They would've loved him at Home Depot. Like his Discworld namesake, Leonardo had a few weapons and other war toys in his creative arsenal, namely the tank, a giant crossbow, and the steampowered cannon, as well as an apparatus for breathing underwater. Many of these were created under the patronage of the Duke of Urbino. Ironically, Leonardo was against war.
Yet others are also credited in the history of the cannon and the creation of gunpowder before the tenth century. Some form of gunpowder, or at least saltpeter, was in use in China, along with the
precursor to the cannon. Exactly who came up with the ultimate formula for gunpowder is debatable. Thirteenth-century Franciscan friar and philosopher Roger Bacon, whose genius Leonardo admired, had a recipe. And a German monk named Berthold Schwarz may also have invented a type of cannon. Still, you have to give props to the maestro of the RenaissanceâLeonardo da Vinci.
precursor to the cannon. Exactly who came up with the ultimate formula for gunpowder is debatable. Thirteenth-century Franciscan friar and philosopher Roger Bacon, whose genius Leonardo admired, had a recipe. And a German monk named Berthold Schwarz may also have invented a type of cannon. Still, you have to give props to the maestro of the RenaissanceâLeonardo da Vinci.
BOOK: Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld
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