This is not your standard Discworld book. Yes, it has words, and it even has the wizards of the Unseen University. With both of those ingredients you’d expect it to be Discworld. And it is, but it isn’t. This is a book about the science that goes into making the world, and ice ages, then there’s a little evolution thrown in for good measure.
We start off with an explanation of what the book is. It makes far more sense than I can because they’re real writers, and they have more space. This introduction takes five pages. I’m trying to do this in only a couple of paragraphs. If you’re confused I suggest you visit a friend with the book and borrow it while they’re not looking. The wrath of someone might be inflicted upon you, but it’s your fault for not asking.
The book then starts in earnest with a chapter based on Discworld and a chapter explaining what you’ve just read, but in science terms. That’s where I had problems. I struggle to understand science. There are some things that I come close to understanding, but the creation of the world challenges me. That is what Ponder Stibbons is doing, so that is what two real-world scientists then explain.
As well as being a popular science and science fiction writer, Professor Ian Stewart is a British mathematician. While Jack Cohen worked as a consultant for science fiction television shows and also science fiction books, but was also a British reproductive biologist. Throw Terry Pratchett into the mix and you get something very different.
You get some second thoughts mixed in with all the first thoughts. We’re talking about the development of nuclear fission in WWII, the sentence is ‘Given the choice between our blowing up the world and the enemy blowing up the world, it was obvious what to do.’ This text is fully self-aware of how dangerous some of the thoughts we have are and the last sentence in this section illustrates that perfectly. ‘That is, on reflection, not a happy sentence.’
Some things I’m impressed with
How Pratchett shows us things happening without actually telling us. It’s good writing technique and some people find it hard to muster the skills. I’ll give you one example.
As the warm clouds of sleep ebbed, it dawned on Ponder that he had left the Project entirely in the hands of the senior faculty. The Librarian was impressed at how long the door kept swinging.
In this instance we’re told that Ponder Stibbons left the room at great speed. Not with the words that I’ve used, but with the Librarian being impressed by the swinging door. It shows speed without telling us that it had been used.
I love how Hex is now his own character. We see him actually thinking to himself about various things. And yes, I do see Hex as male, but that’s just me. Most of what we see Hex say is just printouts, but there is some actual thought there. Some thoughts that involve not telling the wizards everything they want to know. It’s on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, or as is specified in this book as ‘lies to children’. Tell them the little things until they get older and more intellectually mature to understand before explaining things in a little more detail.
I could write much more than this, but I won’t. I will finish off with a word used in this book that Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart coined in 1997 in their book Figments of Reality. Extelligence. It’s essentially defined as knowledge outside of one’s head. That could be in myths and legends, nursery rhymes, books, or the internet although there are a number of other places of knowledge external to one’s head.
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