I'm equal parts amused and bewildered that this author with so many interesting thoughts has managed not to see what pretty much every other serious reader of Lord of the Rings has pointed out over decades - the entire story is about a weak and almost completely unknown set of people who were "chosen" only by the most inexplicable series of events anyone could imagine - who through no inherent power of their own manage to save the world by nothing more or less than the choice to be kind to a pitiful (though clearly treacherous) creature... and who then go right back home where they belong, dismissing any notion of chosenness beyond the ordinary sort where everyone is chosen to do what is good for their neighbors.<p>the Hobbits pursued not greatness or destiny, but took the only path toward life available to them and then returned to let the rest of the world get on with living.
>> I have a rule-of-thumb: The more seriously you take Discworld, the smarter you get about Roundworld.<p>Oh come off it.<p>I've read all the Discworld novels. I've also read every other book that Terry Pratchett ever wrote [1]. All, that is, except for one that I've left for... later [2].<p>If Pratchett were still with us and heard anyone making such pompous statements about Discworld he'd slap the culprit in the face [3]. See, the thing to understand about Terry Pratchett is that he was quintessentially British, and by that I mean the good British [4]. As such his greatest fear was that someone might take what he wrote seriously and try to follow it like some kind of life advice.<p>Remember what he quipped when he was knighted for "services to literature":<p><pre><code> "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any"
</code></pre>
And that, as they say, is that.<p>______________<p>[1] Yes, even "Where's my Cow?".<p>[2] Problem is, I don't remember which one so I'll have to read them all again to be sure. Hey, win-win.<p>[3] Gently. He was a gentle man.<p>[4] Think Lord Byron, not Lord Elgin. But without all the drinking and womanising, just the big heart.
As someone who deeply loves LOTR - if you try to apply the rules of LOTR to this world, you will make this world worse. This is true. Inheritance and monarchy does not make for a good government, and we know this.<p>But LOTR is about vibes not facts. Friendship, loyalty, hope, doing the right thing with what power you have, appreciating what is good and green and gentle in the world, etc.<p>> the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld<p>The more seriously you take the rules of LOTR, yes. But you can take LOTR seriously without taking the rules seriously - by taking the vibes seriously.
> I won’t get into whether Discworld is better or worse as a fictional universe than Middle Earth.<p>"I won't get into which book is better, today I am only evaluating these books according to a set of rules I am making up, to see which succeeds at something neither author set out to achieve, and which most readers don't know or care about, and which is ultimately just an analogy for something else. Intrigued? Read on!"
The author alludes to a general problem with popular culture - the cult of the Chosen One.<p>Pixar has some in-house rules for stories. One of them is:<p><i>Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___</i><p>That sums up a Chosen One story. Chosen One protagonists do not work their way up. They are special snowflakes.<p><i>Star Wars</i> is an extreme case of Chosen One popular culture. So is the Marvel Overextended Universe. (Note that <i>Star Trek</i> is not. Starfleet people start at the bottom and work up.)
The top 8 highest grossing films of all time, unadjusted for inflation, [1] are all Chosen One movies.<p>Overexposure to Chosen One stories predisposes people to look for a Strong Leader, one who is somehow special.
This seems to be a problem. Historically, the United States didn't work that way, having rebelled against a European monarchy which did. But I digress.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films</a>
I always loved Sir Terry's depictions of Ankh-Morpork.<p>It was a crazy, deeply dysfunctional city, full of crazy, dysfunctional people, but he obviously loved it, and the reader ends up loving the city, as well.<p>I think that's a fairly accurate way to look at the world around us.<p>I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI, so I'd argue that LOTR actually has some fairly significant reflection on the real world.
Please don’t let the few who have co-opted LOTR ruin it for the rest of us. It is a shame though, I wear my Palantir shirt very infrequently now.<p>I’m currently on book 2 of Discworld and finding it ludicrously enjoyable. Its absurdity makes it feel like an antidote to many things.<p>It feels more fantasy than “hardest of hard sci fi” to me though? And I think the space suit was broken so is it a good model for tech?
As I scroll through the various discworld commentaries here, one of the things I haven't seen surface much yet is Pratchett as a dialog artist. My dad and I were both discussing just the other day how we’re honestly happy just picking up any Discworld book, opening it anywhere, and having a listen on what the characters are saying to each other at the moment. I’m not sure what others have created dialogue like that. Maybe Michael Sullivan in his Theft of Swords series.
“The more seriously you take Discworld, the smarter you get about Roundworld.”<p>Love that.<p>I love LoTR too. I would never feel the need to pick one OR the other. It’s not about WHICH. Much better to love BOTH. AND is the correct operator to place between these two great sets of works.<p>I think an under appreciated subset of Discworld is the Tiffany Aching series. If you really want to see Pratchett’s notions of “good morality” on display, these model it the best IMO.
I advice everyone not to follow the TFA's author's example and do read Tiffany Aching series, which is one of the best. Yes, it's marketed as YA fiction, but disregard: it's exactly the same style and themes as the rest of Discworld, and as good or better.<p>Also, the author does a disservice to Small Gods (also, oddly names the god Om as GamesStop, was that humor?), but this novel is one of the best ones in my opinion -- self-contained and both humorous and strangely moving.
> Now, for those of you who haven’t read the Discworld series, it is basically the anti-LOTR.<p>This seems very wrong. Discworld heroes value the power of legends, LOTR heroes live for everyday life and sillines. While different on the outside, the essence of these books can be quite similar.
Tolkien himself said to beware allegorical readings. He said had he sought allegory, by book III the rings of power would have been seized for good or ill, and the Hobbits discarded as irrelevant or enslaved. Likewise the palentir (!)<p>Tolkien also faced extensive criticism from Christians for a non catholic fictive world, something he easily disregarded as trite. He was a loyal devout catholic in every respect.<p>His biography by Humphrey Carpenter goes into all this.<p>J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, 1977
> Roundworld isn’t even modeled in the Middle Earth cosmology<p>Middle-earth is a fantasy history of England and we're in sixth age (or something like that) of it.<p>It <i>becomes</i> round with the third age.
I love Discworld, both its universum and characters like Death and Vimes, yet author first proves that they lack cognitive abilities to understand and position Tolkien's work, then gives hints that their understanding of Roundworld is as superficial as is the character of Discworld, which is no less a work of escapism as is Middle-Earth.<p>People tend to mistake sarcasm and satire with realistic and valuable insight. If, for example, you want to understand something about war in our Roundworld, do not read LotR or Jingo. Read Thucidydes.
1) inconsistent argument: Frodo is just as mediocre as Rincewind.<p>2) I don’t respect the bald claim that all chosen ones are bad, or the implicit claim that we can somehow avoid them. Universals always have exceptions. If we’re being “real” here about our agential change, we must admit that species evolve by natural selection we might say genetic chosen ones. And anyway I do think there are some special people so sue me.<p>3) consider the names of Peter Thiel’s companies: palantir, mithril. Thiel, I’m sure ironically, named his companies after objects possessing exactly that moral ambiguity that the author claims does not exist in Tolkien’s world. Thiel is telegraphing it straight to you via Tolkien: do not trust me, I will use these objects for my own gain.<p>4) Discworld can afford to be light and playful because it was written in easy times. In one preface, Tolkien wrote that all the world’s great powers would obviously have tried to turn the ring into a weapon if it really existed.
The inherent misconception of the author is about “seriousness”. His hypothesis is that taking Discworld serious is “good”, while taking LOTR as serious is “bad”.<p>No, it’s really about taking either universe at face value, which is the problem. And with Discworld, its overt absurdity and humor forces you to think about it more deeply.<p>LOTR doesn’t make an effort to explain what it is about. But knowing just a little about history and the author goes a long way.
I mean addressing the initial proposition - of <i>course</i> a work of satire/parody of the real world is going to be a better basis for thinking about the real world than a work of escapism!<p>The rest of it, I think, won't persuade anyone to read Discworld novels who's resisted them so far. Those who have and love them will find it a pleasant enough survey.<p>Oh and I personally think that Equal Rites is the best entry point to the series rather than Sourcery. But then I was reading them in publishing order anyway and eagerly waiting for each new one to come out. Damn I miss being able to look forward to a new Pratchett novel; he was a Wodehouse for my generation.
I love discworld and prosetyilize its virtues when and where I can, but two thoughts about this:<p>1 - why not both?<p>2 - via MST3K “If you're wondering how he eats & breathes, And other science facts...(la! la! la!) Then repeat to yourself its just a show, I should really just relax...”
Reading LOTR as about technology is like reading Alice in Wonderland as about tea time ettiquette. For fuck's sake.<p>LOTR makes its theme and conceits explicit - it is about the appeal of power to the ego. Industrialization is an expression of that will to power, and its ability to magnify man's already-present distorted relationship with nature. That industry relies on technology does not make technology the central topic or even the target of critique.<p>Bone-headed take.
The stories in Discworld books are character driven. LOTR is much more plot driven. I feel like this is an apples and oranges comparison.<p>It also feels a bit like the false dichotomy arguments from my teenage years, where you could like either Star Trek or Star Wars, but not both.
I can't get past the second paragraph, where he introduces "Chiang's Law." I click through for the definition:<p>> This law can be stated compactly as: science fiction is about strange rules, while fantasy is about special people.<p>Anyone who believes that has not read much of either. And the writer admits this immediately:<p>> Whether the story is about spaceships or dragons is irrelevant.<p>I have a hard time listening to someone who use established terminology to refer to some completely orthogonal concept, in a context guaranteed to cause confusion, for no reason except to snipe at a genre they don't like, for reasons they know are neither fundamental to nor unique to that genre.
Tolkien was simply articulating the fact that the distance between non-existence and existence is far greater than the distance between existence and technologically-enhanced-existence can ever be.
How’s about not looking to fantasy books for inspiration on how real world socities should interact with technology?<p>You’re basically basing your whole technology worldview off a fantasy world created by a single person
The idea of crypto as a force for plurality is baffling. Crypto is just as controlled by the “sourcerers” of round world as state controlled fiat currency. Distributed ledgers make no difference here. It’s still just “chosen ones” projecting their power.
And the jab at “wokism” is pretty ironic, as the right has been making a very overt push for rendering culture into a grey goo, by quashing diversity.
> Their ideology is something like the Wokism of Discworld, a deadening, stifling, faceless force of intersectional lifelessness.<p>What? Do words even have meaning anymore? How is that anything to do with being "woke"?
How does it compare to the Culture series? I’ve been reading that lately and enjoying it. Almost done though, so looking for the next series to pick up.
I thought this was going to be about all the physics rules in the discwolrd, like how light travels, the rule of the one chance in a million, or that cats can see the eight color or Death etc. I'd love to see a list of all of them, I haven't noticed any inconsistencies so far but I haven't read that many novels yet.
> And it only gets sillier from there.<p>That’s exactly where it fails for me: it is too cute, like a longer than necessary joke.<p>It’s just not my cup of tea to read and think “oh yeah, I see they inverted the thing, very cute, they even have the elephants and the turtles”. It’s ok but maybe for a short essay or a comic book only.
> The Auditors of Reality are particularly interesting. They are the Discworld edition of what I’ve called the Great Bureaucrat archetype elsewhere. Their ideology is something like the Wokism of Discworld, a deadening, stifling, faceless force of intersectional lifelessness.<p>what<p>Man this dude sure has a definition of “woke” that is completely alien to the roots of that term.<p>> I read one Pratchett novel (Thief of Time I think) in college, but I’m glad I didn’t properly get into it till my mid-forties. These are books you cannot really appreciate if you’re too young. I read through the lot around 2017-19, during the first Trump admin, when I was in my early forties.<p><i>what</i><p>Dude they are comic fantasy, yes Pratchett has Things to Say about the world in them, more and more as the series goes on, but I picked up <i>Equal Rites</i> soon after it came out when I was <i>eighteen</i> and the series was a constant delight through my college years and beyond. Yes there are things in
Discworld that will zoom right by a kid and only land when you come back to it as an adult. That’s part of why they’re <i>good books</i>. There’s things like that in Lloyd Alexander’s <i>Prydain Cycle</i> (Book of Three, Black Cauldron, etc) that hit me like a ton of <i>bricks</i> when I pick up those little books forty years after I first read them as a kid and completely missed those parts. Stories can speak to multiple ages on multiple levels.
“As an extended allegory for society and technology it absolutely sucks and is also ludicrously wrong-headed”<p>> As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical<p>Tolkien himself in the foreword to fellowship<p>This person needs to cool it with the pseudo intellectualism and let people enjoy things
> (except the Tiffany Aching ones)<p>Those are actually some of the better ones among the later books though! If you're going to skip, skip the Moist von Lipwig books. They're substantially worse than the other books in the series, IMO. Not too big a fan of the Watch books after Night Watch either (Night Watch was definitely peak Vimes though!).<p>> These are books you cannot really appreciate if you’re too young.<p>Other than maybe missing one or two sex jokes, not really?<p>> The only story revolving consequentially around gods is Small Gods, about a meme-stock god named GameStop, whose power crashes, and who ambitiously plans to pump himself back up to a new high.<p>Did an LLM hallucinate or is this supposed to be a joke? The god's name is Om.
i've had good success getting ChatGPT to generate new short stories set in the diskworld universe and written in prachett's style. even the jokes were funny.
Exactly. Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron."<p>> What I have a problem with is people trying to live forever as part of a Chosen One script which involves them trying to carve up all of the world into the dead empires of a dystopian Great Game world run according to a totalizing script.<p>I'm confident Tolkien would agree.<p>I also think any evaluation of LoTR should take into account Tolkien's background as a veteran of the trenches in WWI. In 2025 America, maybe that makes LoTR seem less relevant to our world. To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.
I can't take Discworld seriously. It doesn't even take itself seriously. I read the first book, which was full of random deus doing ex machina all over the place, and tapped out.