Talk:Discworld/Archive 1

First posts

Discworld is similar to Middle Earth as it is a creation by a single author. But unlike Discworld is linked off Terry Pratchett, Middle Earth is not linked off JRR Tolkien. This will be a moot point anyway once subpages no longer exist. -- Ap

Anyone planning to write pages for individual books? I'd do it except, uh, I don't want to. :). AW

I have written a few and plan to do more (I've just read the whole series). I also plan to rewrite the main page a bit and do more on the characters and such. -- poco poco 10:48 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Short Stories

Why are the short stories "Turntables of the Night" and "Hollywood Chickens" not mentioned? They appeared in the anthologies "The Flying Sorcerers – More Comic Tales of Fantasy" and "Knights of Madness" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.47.183.195 (talk • contribs) .

Err, because they're not Discworld short stories? :-) Stephenb (Talk) 18:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

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no point in making the title longer: does anything else need to be at "Discworld"?. And don't do "cut&paste" moves, please (see the FAQ for more) -- Tarquin 22:02 Dec 21, 2002 (UTC)

Classification

Is Thief of Time a Death novel? Yes, susan and death appear, but as side characters - the book is mainly about the history monks. Daveryan 06:06 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

For me this is a Susan novel, Susan is a relative of Death, so the book can be added to the "Death" novels. If there will be more Susan novels (I am look forward to that! ;-) , then we can group it to "Susan", if the History-monks get more novels, then they could also be used as a new group. Fantasy 06:40 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I listed it as "or arguably miscellaneous" - Susan shows at the end, yes, but none of her family do. I also wonder whether the Nac Mac Feegle books should be listed under "witches" - but I haven't read the latest of those. Pakaran. 23:44, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd say the Tiffany books are probably witch books; Hat Full Of Sky features Granny Weatherwas in a major role, and is almost as much a sequel to The Sea And Little Fishes as it is to Wee Free Men. I'd also say that Thief of Time is a "Death" novel; Susan is one of the main characters, just like she was in Hogfather and Soul Music (she's just as significant relative to Lobsang as she was relative to Buddy, IMO), and her grandfather plays a significant supporting role, just like he does in the earlier books (Reaper Man is the only one that's really about Death himself).

On the other hand, I'd say The Last Hero is a Rincewind book, so maybe I'm to easy with the categories 8-). Daibhid C 23:24 24 August 2004 (UTC)

When I have to classify the Discworld books, I'd double-classify some of them, Thief of Time for one could be Death and miscellaneous, The Last Continent could be the Wizards and Rincewind...--SmegEd 7 July 2005 17:33 (UTC)

Perhaps rather than "death" books, we should be talking about "personification of great natural forces" books. I'm thinking of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortallity books. TP has done death and time. War and Fate -- well, one is a god, and one was peripherally mentioned in Thief of Time. And Gia, possibly, is the great turtle herself. Thus the book about Om kind of belongs here.

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On a related note, could Moving Pictures be classed as a Wizards book? It does introduce the personalities of most of the figures who are prominent through the rest of that group. -FZ 00:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Would it be reasonable to argue that certain books such as 'Small Gods' and 'Pyramids' could be classified as the God books? They have, after all, at one point been published in a trilogy under that name, I believe. See: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0575070366/ref=si_1_1/026-7441268-9440401 for more details. - Featherfin 30 Aug 2005

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The article lists Carpe Jugulum as a Vimes/Uberwald book, but in fact it takes place in Lancre and features the witches.

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Would an addition including Vetinari among the main characters in the Watch books be appropriate? I know he isn't a member, but he seems to play a bigger role in that arc than any other.Varlet16 06:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Children's books

I hotly dispute the claim that A Hat Full of Sky is a childrens' book. To be fair, though, I just finished it and haven't come down from whatever's the literature equivalent of being high yet. -- Kizor 22:45, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

To quote the author (during a discussion yesterday on the use of chapters in the new book... "A Hat Full Of Sky is a children's book, just like The Wee Free Men, Truckers and the Johnny Maxwell series". Sorry! --Dan Huby 11:11, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Righto. --Kizor 15:49, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

It's a Very Pratchett Children's Book (tm), to paraphrase the man himself, You can tell it's a children's book because it has more blood and guts than normal; It's the type of book kids want to read, not the type their parents want them to... --JeffUK 15:19, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

help, please

There's a query at Talk:Great A'Tuin in re H-R diagrams. Can anyone help with this?

It's been answered now. --Paul A 06:46, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Last Hero: mass market edition?

Does anyone know if there are plans to release The Last Hero in a mass-market paperback format (i.e. normal sized paperback)? --Phil | Talk 10:52, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

From the man himself:

There are currently no plans for TLH to be published sans pix, as happened with Eric. I think the novel would need to be considerably lengthened to make that work, and I'd rather spend the time on something new.

List of Novels

I've added a couple of possible future novels talked about in 'The Art of Discworld' to the list of novels - maybe it might be better to put these into a [new] future novels section. --NeilTarrant 20:50, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I take issue with the listing of "first novel in the series". At least some mention of Strata, published in 1981 should be mentioned. It is missing from the complete article. Strata provides a background that is the foundation of much of the remaining Discworld series. ChadC 21:47, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Strata doesn't seem to share too much with Discworld, apart from the idea of the disc-shaped world. Still, I can't remember the plot too well. Nethertheless I have added something about it to the 'novels' section. --Neo 22:04, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Strata is a hard science fiction novel about Discworld. It features a disc shaped world sitting on elephants sitting on a turtle. Talking animals, flying dragons, etc are all featured, but not as comedic elements in a fantasy novel, but as participants in a interstellar joke among planet building entities. The machinery that makes Discworld work is exposed and explored as a straight-faced adventure novel. The odd part is that Strata predates the other novels, and I'm not sure if Pratchett intended it to become Discworld or not. -ChadC 15:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Strata is not Discworld; it's Terry first exploring the ideas that later became Discworld. It belongs on the TP page and not here. --dllu 16:13, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Change focus of this article

I think that it might be best to change to focus of this article to the Discworld itself, taking out all the novels (and related work) information to something like Discworld publications and works (been trying to think of a decent title for ages!). There is plenty to say about the Discworld itself and I think it should be written separate from the novel/play/etc. information. violet/riga (t) 11:19, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please see User:Violetriga/inprogress for a rough general idea (needs a lot of work so feel free to play around there). violet/riga (t) 11:48, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that the idea of splitting the article into two isn't a bad one, but I think that the article about the novels, etc. should be the one at Discworld. Information about the novels is of a much wider interest than the specifics about the world itself. If I were a random reader who had never before heard of Discworld, I'd be much more interested by the fact that it was a best-selling series of 30+ books and various spin offs than I would be to read about various fictional continents in a context withe very little to establish notability.

I think we should keep the "real world" elements where they are, possibly expanding to cover, for instance, sales figures, awards won, longevity, literary themes, or so on. This can establish notability to the casual reader, who can then go on to read the minutiae of the world itself at a different page -- possibly something like Discworld (world) -- if they so wish. Rho 12:41, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Very good suggestion - I reckon we should do that. I'm thinking of merging some of the continent articles together as shown in a very rough draft here and expanding it to cover different aspects of the world. violet/riga (t) 12:47, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Right, this has all been done:

• Discworld contains all the information about the books etc.
• Discworld (world) contains all the information about the world itself

I think that any reference to the former should be italicised and any reference to the world shouldn't be; that will allow some form of disambig between the two. That may involve quite a bit of work and I by no means think all the Discworld articles are brought together properly quite yet - WikiProject anyone? violet/riga (t) 19:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm up for it. I've found a lot of stuff that I want to change since I started poking at the discworld articles. Rho 01:51, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject

There is now a WikiProject for the Discworld articles – please lend your support at Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld. violet/riga (t) 00:12, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stealth Philosophy

I recently added the section on Stealth Philosophy. This is my first wikipedia entry, so I'm not certain as to how good it was... still, I felt it should be added. =)

The Nth novel in the Discworld series

Hello. I love the series and happen to own quite a few the books, and one thing I have noticed--as I tend to read the sort of "inner blurb" or whatever you call the piece of writing next to a rather dark picture of Terry right at the beginning of the books--is that they usually say something to the effect of "Moving Pictures is the tenth novel in the phenomenally successful Discworld series". This is alright up until Nightwatch which the book says is 27th, Monstrous Regiment 28, Going Postal 29th, but the articles on wikipedia seem to differ because, as I figured out, they include the 3 Young Adult novels and the 1 Illustrated novel in the numbering scheme. Would it be possible to rather have a scheme for Discworld novels like this:

Novels: 1-29... Illustrated novels: 1.. Young adult novels: 1-3... ?

It is also what http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Terry_Pratchett.htm (and the books themselves) seem to use. --Ajshm 14:21, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I wouold include the illustrated novels with the novels because of the I believe that Eric has both been released with and without illustrations. I don't think that it makes sense to make a differnce between them here. L-space puts all Discworld novels in the order they have been realesed. My personal oppinion is that we should number the books as they appear in the template – that we should count the children's novels separtly. Jeltz talk 15:16, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

About Eric, it has indeed been released first with illustrations as a "Discworld story" (?) and later without illustrations in the vain of previous books. The Last Hero has never been released without illustrations, in fact, the paperback has more illustrations than the hardcover. It's not as if I want to somehow snub TLH, it is a great and very special book. But somehow I think that something that is written in the books takes precedence "x is the nth novel in the...", or at least it would seem strange to ignore this.

I have changed the template a little bit, which incidentally makes it more compact. All Discworld novels (Discworld themed novels by Pratchett) are under the Novels: heading, not separating YA Novels, they are a "sub-list" along with the illustrated novel TLH. --Ajshm 16:05, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Spoiler warning?

The discussion of Rincewind stories includes what I suppose is a major plot point in Sourcery. Shouldn't there be a spoiler warning? Or, better, remove this detail as not particularly relevant to the discussion? Phiwum 11:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that it should be removed as an unnecessary spoiler. Jeltz talk 17:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

More motifs to the list of novels.

I think that several motifs must be specified for each novel. For example to "Soul Music" motifs one can add Family Entertainment Copyright Act, FUD and some more.

I added the 'Blues Brothers' motif for soul music as the book mimics scenes from the film frequently. (I think there were about 5 large scenes and several other smaller mentions). - Icecradle 12:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I added in the bit about the Hermes/Moist parralel. In many stories about Hermes he started out as a thief and a scoundrel that Zeus finally clamped down on. To keep Hermes out of trouble, he was made to be the god of messengers. Shocked that it wasn't in here already - the hat with wings, sandals with wings on and fig leaf with wings on was a dead giveaway. 12.13.158.117 17:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Lesley

Joan of Arc.

"Joan d'Arc" (in the description of _Monstrous Regiment_) should be either Joan of Arc or Jeanne d'Arc. Is she actually mentioned in the book? If so, I would think it best to go with whichever Pratchett uses. If not, I vote for Joan of Arc since the article's in English.

Making Money?

Much to my delight I find a new Discworld book on the list, but it was added by an anon user. Can anyone find the source of the info? Thegreatloofa 13:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

This seems to be legit, as the source of the rumor is Paul Kidby himself (scroll down to January 6th)...great news indeed :) -- Ferkelparade π 15:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Image:Discworld_Map.jpg

I've reverted the image addition, as I suspect the map, which was commercially released, is still under copyright. The website the user took the image from is a fan page, which I suspect illegally scanned the image. Whether it is fair use, given that the map is the product, is doubtful. Does anyone have any info about whether the image is free for "promotional" use, though? Stephenb (Talk) 09:58, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe that we could use this under fair use because it is a low resolution copy of the map, and it definitely adds to the article. If someone had never heard of the "discworld" then this would be a necessary encyclopedic tool. Fosnez 11:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's a commerically produced product. We need permission to use it. It would be nice, yes, but so would most of the images that get deleted from wikipedia. - DavidWBrooks 11:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm still getting my legs for the fine line of copyright... The Map also appears inside the front cover of the Unseen Library reprintings of the books. Could we use the Book cover copyright tab? Fosnez 01:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

They would presumably have payed for its use - if you have a copy, see if there's an attribution on the credits page. Stephenb (Talk) 09:47, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it be worth emailing Terry Prachett & asking if he would approve its use? He has frequently stated he has no objections to the use of his books as plays if people ask permission. This is diffent but the use of a low res image would seem somthing he might consider Nate1481 17:53 27 July 2006

It would be whoever holds the copyright - it might be Pratchett, but it's more likely to be the artist (Stephen Player, IIRC) and the publishers (Gollanz?) who would need to be asked. Stephenb (Talk) 19:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Citation

I believe that Scotsman.com has citation for Terry Pratchet as the most shoplifted author in Britain. (look in the first paragraph) If nobody objects, I will go ahead and add it into the article.

No objections, so I added it in jf 00:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Pratchett Portfolio

In the list of discworld books, we have listed "The Discworld Portfolio" as being a collection of Paul Kidby's art. This is not the case - when you click on the link, it brings you to the correct page, because that particular book is entitled "The Pratchett Portfolio," whereas "The Discworld Portfolio" is a completely separate book along the same lines. The correct title for that book is "The Josh Kirby Discworld Portfolio," and it contains the late Josh Kirby's art. They should be listed separately.

Unless, of course, I have gone completely nuts, and I am mixing things up.

Great A'Tuin

I seem to recall as a kid learning about a myth about the Earth being held on the back of elephants, which in turn are on the back of a turtle. When I first was introduced to Discworld, I thought Prattchet had used that ancient myth as the basis of his novels. However, the only myth I could find that was similar was an Iroquois myth that had the earth on the back of a turtle. I have yet to find a myth that has both the turtle and elephants. I thought that perhaps I was just confusing Discworld with this myth, but the Discworld (world) article indicates that it was in "reference to popular mythology." Can anyone help me out here? What was the myth? If it exists, it should be mentioned in the article.

-- Fogelmatrix 16:10, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The world on the back of a turtle is a reasonably common myth (see the delightful article Turtles all the way down) - I've always assumed that's what Pratchett meant. I've never heard of a world-on-the-back-of-an-elephant, and certainly not both elephants and turtles, but that's a possibility. - DavidWBrooks 18:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops - I should read my own links better. Turtles all the way down contains a secondary reference that says the elephant/turtle mix is describes as being "the Hindus' view" but nothing more. - DavidWBrooks 18:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, now I've read even farther in the same article. (Gotta curb this impatience-to-post) which points to Chukwa, which says "In Hindu mythology, Chukwa is the first and oldest turtle, supporting the Earth. In some accounts, she supports the elephant, Maha-pudma, who supports the Earth. The turtle swims in Ksheera Sagara (the primordial ocean of milk)." ... definitely worth adding to the article! - DavidWBrooks 18:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Last post, honest. We're too late: All this material is already in Discworld (world), an article about the world as compared to the book series. - DavidWBrooks 18:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Josh Kirby

I think Corgi are releasing the new black and grey paperbacks alongside the "traditional" ones rather than replacing them. ICBW, but I haven't noticed any bookshop run out of stock on the Kirbys, and the new ones have been around for a while. I'll check the publication details next time I have the chance. Daibhid C 19:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading order

I think this should be a resource to help new people discover the prefered reading order. However that reading order is open for debate becuase its a farily open universe to start into. The image graphic that is included as a foot note is good, but my reading group would not agree with everything that is on it. We are often trying to identify which would be good start points for the series to new users. And there is more than 1 good start point. Specifically, Wee Free Men could be a good start point. But the graphic stipulates that it is in the middle of the witch arc. And the image content is not wiki-able. I propose to make a wiki-ediable table of some type to describe to new readers the many and varied reading order. Editable by all in the spirit of Wiki. Tbmorgan74 22:20, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure we really need something like this in the article (the "series" each book is in is already listed in the other table), but if it is going to be here then there should at least be some reason to it. Why, for example, is Monstrous Regiment, which takes place wholly in the nation of Borogravia, in the "Ankh-Morpork" series, while Reaper Man, featuring a horde of shopping carts and a mall which threatens to devour Ankh-Morpork, not in the "Ankh-Morpork" series? What makes Moving Pictures any more of an AM book than Soul Music?

I also don't like the "Rincewind and the wizards" column. There are many some which feature mainly Rincewind without mentioning UU much (Colour of Magic) while others don't feature Rincewind at all. For example, someone wanting to read the Rincewind series can definitely skip books like Lords & Ladies and Hogfather.

Like I said, though, I feel that the article would be better off without the whole table. We've already got the main themes in the first table -- you can find the Rincewind or Lancre books easily enough -- and the other themes, such as Ankh-Morpork, are fairly subjective. There are other sites which catalog reading order guides, and an encyclopedia shouldn't be one of them. Chrismith 19:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Since I haven't heard any more about this, I'm going to be bold and remove this table. As I stated above, it adds no new useful information, and the article is long enough as it is. (Plus, the addition of a CMOT Dibbler column crossed the line of reason.) Chrismith 22:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that, as a new reader to the series within the past month, that table has been of great use to me following storylines of personal interest and I think it's a huge mistake to remove it. User:annon 02:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Then I will point you to the L-space's reading guides, which I used when I was first reading the series. This image in particular contains more information than the chart from the article, and does so in a more graphical manner. (Incidentally, you might want to check out the rest of the site if you're enjoying the Discworld books...it has a lot of good resources.) Chrismith 03:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I object to relying on third party websites to document content which at least 2 people find important, May be hundreds would. That third party graphic is not editable by the consensus. Is Chrissmith the author of that graphic? How do we change the graphic if it is wrong?

For these reasons I have created the discworld_reading_order article. I put it out there for the community to improve. I just ask that it not be deleted too quickly before it has a chance to mature.Tbmorgan74 21:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

You need to accept that we are always going to have to rely on third party websites to some extent; all the world's content can't be hosted by Wikipedia, and besides, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. If you want to start a discworld fan site and post a reading order guide, knock yourself out. But the fact that you think you need to change the reading order means that it's not objective information, which means that it's not encyclopedic. But in any case, I don't have strong enough objections to delete the article, seeing as how it's not on the main page anymore. Chrismith 05:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

A somewhat misleading link in the references section

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld#References

In this section line 4 there is this link: ^ The Discworld Reading Order Guide 1.25 - 30kB GIF showing the interrelationships between the books and series within Discworld, with suggested starts

This is old and dated version. I added a link to the newer version (1.5) and this link was moved to the extrnel links sectiuon. However keeping the link to version 1.25 in this section is misleading. (the 1.5 version has among other things the novel "thud" and the children book "where's my cow" in the proper place. I would have replace the reference myself only there is no access to this section.

71.146.25.149 21:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)Oren71.146.25.149 21:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. Removed the External Link version and updated the References to the 1.5 version. GJD 21:14, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

ISBN column in novels table?

It appears that the page for each individaul novel includes its ISBN. Is it necessary/helpful to also have a column for ISBN in the table of Discworld Novels? Do people like to compare ISBNs of different novels? Is there perhaps some other use that this column could be put to? or eliminated for simplicity? Do booksellers need a column of ISBN on this page? -Gomm 03:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. The ISBNs are already listed in the individual book articles, there is no need to reproduce them all here. Eliminating the column would also be a start on getting the size of that massive table under control. Chrismith 05:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, here goes. Maybe we can find somebody who needs ISBN in a table. -Gomm 21:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Historical novels,Les Misérables motifs in Night Watch?

Okay, I'll ask. What are the Historical novels (esp. Les Misérables) motifs in Night Watch? -Gomm 23:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Read the Les Misérables article, in themes it mentions "politics, moral philosophy, law, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love"! I don't know Les Mis well but had heard the comparison before I'd seen it on wiki, a few other bits would include, revolution & barricades, weather 'the law' is justice and moral ambiguity of prostitutes. At least as worthy as some of the other mentions in that section. --Nate1481 17:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point. And I agree about your assessment of many of the other mentions in this section. But most of his literary references are much more blatant than this one. I have to wonder if this is more coincidence than motif. Aren't all of these things discussed in other Ankh-Morpork stories? And there is nothing like an inflexible cop doggedly chasing after a basically good criminal. I have to admit that the similarity had not even occurred to me until reading your reply. -Gomm 00:05, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree there's no dodgy cop (unless you count the whole of the cable street peculiars) and it's not as blatant as say Macbeth in Wyrd Sisters but it is set in a historical context, it's worth a mention. When you consider the length of Les Mis you could argue that the watch series as a whole reflects the book!. --Nate1481 00:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Good job!

I don't know exactly where to put this, but good job in general on the Discworld series of articles. They are explanatory and capture a little bit of the humor while still keeping it encyclopedic. --Imp88 23:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

News

According to this bit of news from Paul Kidby's website, Nation isn't a Discworld story and there's a few other tie-ins in the pipe-line. I shall edit accordingly. HornetMike 12:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal of the Book Table

It seems strange to me that the Discworld article contains a table containing pictures, motifs, characters and publishing notes, when no other article that I can think of does. For example:

• The Harry Potter article doesn’t have one, it just has a list at the bottom.
• The Charles Dickens article doesn’t have one, again, it just has a list of his collected works down the bottom
• The Lord of the Rings doesn’t have one (mind you, there are only really three books, so I can see why).
• The Chronicles of Narnia has a small table listing the books and their preferred reading order, but it doesn’t contain information like cover pictures, motifs or publication notes, it merely clears up a common misconception about the reading order. I realise that the Discworld series also has this issue, but there is a separate article dedicated to this issue. Not only that but the table we had previously on this page for that exact purpose was a disaster in itself, and any attempt to bring it back would probably result in the same. Narnia also has a little sub-heading for each book, however, considering that the Discworld series contains over 30 novels, this would not, on the whole, be appropriate.
• Goosebumps has a separate article as a dedicated list, however, Goosebumps has 100+ books, whereas we only have 30+ books, so probably not necessarily a good thing to do.

As you can see, there is a common thread. Displaying the books in the table format that we have is unique entirely to this article, and I think I know why. All the information on the table is essentially irrelevant to the Discworld article, except for the list of books.

• The cover column isn’t really all that helpful, if you really want to look at the cover of an individual book, you should really go to the individual page that the book has. Also, this column does not include the images of later released editions, which have different covers.
• The motifs column is highly debatable, how can one column contain all the themes and motives in an entire book, and who is to decide what are motifs in a book and what aren’t, sounds like original research to me. This information, at least, a generalised version of it, can be found at each books individual article and doesn’t really add anything to the main article at all.
• Again, like motifs, doesn’t really add much information in table form, as dates can be found at each novel’s individual page, as well as the various awards that it won. However, I also believe that showing information about the awards a book may have won IS important, and maybe a separate list is required to show these awards, such as “Awards won list”.
• The Group column is essentially useless as we have a Discworld reading order article already, and, as I said earlier, is extremely debateable.

The “Book” column is the only really useful piece of information in the entire table, and that can be displayed in a list format, like so many other articles do, and at the bottom of the page, instead of right in the middle, where 99% of users madly scroll past anyway. To this end I will move the table down to the bottom of the page after I post this message, but I think the best move to make is to completely remove the table entirely and replace it with a list, like every other article about a series of books seems to be doing. It should also reduce the page size significantly as their will no longer be any pictures to clutter it up. Gnarly Goat 13:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The narrative of the article doesn't make any sense now. Information on plays and short stories before anything on the novels??? That table was perfectly fine, and very informative. Indeed, it's what I come to this page for! Barbara Osgood 10:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely - the novels are much better listed under the Novels heading! I have moved them back. Stephenb (Talk) 11:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I've also removed the book covers - they took up far too much space, dominating the table, and can be found in the articles for each individual book anyway (only the original cover ought to be illustrated in this article. Stephenb (Talk) 11:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it really necessary that the "Novels, series, and reading orders" section has to contain the table directly below it? I think that the section is important and needs to be close to the top of the article, but I don’t think the table does. The reason why I moved the table down to the bottom was because it was frustrating having to scroll past it just to read the information below, and it still is, even without the pictures (although it does help). I believe that that particular section doesn’t actually need the table to remain meaningful, and that the table alone should be moved back to the bottom of the page.

Barbara Osgood’s comments are of interest to me, could you perhaps expand on what it is about the table that you found informative? Also, I see on your talk page that you are a member of the novels project, so maybe you know of other articles simular to this one that use this type of table. The way I personally see it, is that we should be consistent with the other wikipedia articles of this nature, which to my knowledge, don’t include this kind of table at all. I’ll appreciate any of your comments. Gnarly Goat 05:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The article is about Discworld and the novels are the main reason for the article, so yes, I'd say they should take primary position in the article and section about the novels. The other stuff is more secondary. How can we be "more consistent with the other wikipedia articles of this nature" if they "don't include this kind of table at all"? That argues for removing the table altogether, rather than moving it! As for scrolling down, its frustrating to have to scroll down the article to find the novels, which, being what the article is mostly about, seems more wrong than finding secondary stuff at the bottom. Stephenb (Talk) 08:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, besides which, it seems wrong, weird even, to break the information about the novels into two sections. Stephenb (Talk)

Would a separate article with details of the Novels be more sensible 30+ is going to interrupt the flow of the article even if just the names are listed. --Nate1481 09:44, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea! Better than shifting the table up and down the article, anyway Stephenb (Talk) 09:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this article has probably gone in the opposite direction to the one that I hoped it would. It seems to me, that instead of decreasing the importance the table has for this article, we have in fact increased it. The “Novels” section now seems totally dependant on the table, making its removal difficult.

The problem that I see is this, that for an article that is all about the Discworld novels, this article doesn’t actually tell the reader much of what the books are actually about, only that it’s on the Discworld, and that it has a newspaper. If people want to know what the books are about, then they can look in the flimsy table and see that Wyrd Sisters is related to Macbeth, which is only useful if you have read Macbeth, which many people haven’t. Even if you have read Macbeth, it still doesn’t tell you anything about the book, or the witch’s story arc. It doesn’t mention that it is the first book in where we meet the three witches together, or how Discworld witches are different from witches in other fantasies, or anything about Granny and her headology, or about Nanny and her army of relatives, or anything about the story at all in any way shape or form.

The only information we are told about the entire “Witches” sub-section is that Granny is a good witch and that she appears in Carpe Jugulum and is decisive, which appears in the “Stealth Philosophy” section. For an article all about the novels, this is a bit of a let down. Given that there are six “Witches” novels in the series, and that they are a significant portion of the series, surely we should dedicate a bit of this article to explaining who they are and what they do. If each story arc is given a detailed paragraph or two to explain their role in the Discworld series, then we should be able to finally remove the table, as it should render the “motifs” column totally obsolete (which I believe it is anyway).

I think I’ll post an example of what I mean later this week so that what I said here makes a little more sense. Anyway, that’s my rant for now, more will surely follow.Gnarly Goat 13:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a good argument for writing descriptive passages about what the novels are about (though not each novel individually, which has its own page anyway), and a good reason for moving the table to its own page (List of Discworld novels perhaps?), but not for moving information (i.e the table) about the novels below information that is just Disworld-related, which is simply illogical. Stephenb (Talk) 15:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

To add to the reason to alter this thing, is that it is claimed to be a list of Discworld novels, while the Last Hero, Amazing Maurice and the Tiffany Aching books are not actually part of the Discworld series, but a project done on the side - therefore the numbering displayed becomes inaccurate - for instance, Going Postal is the 29th Discworld novel according to itself (it's said at the end of the Terry Pratchett bio), yet is here listed as the 33rd. Note how the subtitles of the aforementioned books that are not Discworld novels is "A story of Discworld" as opposed to "A Discworld novel" with the actual novels.

As a result, the 'reading order guide' at the bottom of each article concerning a specific book turns out to also be inaccurate.

Fantasy Steampunk?

Lately, Mr. Pratchett's Discworld series has started to bear more and more similarities to the steam punk genres. Ankh-Morpork garners more and more Victorian attributes, especially in "Night Watch," and "Going Postal," and looks less and less like the Sword and Sourcery setting it was in earlier novels like 'The color of magic,' There is mention of industrial revolution factories in "Feet of Clay," and in the latest book, yet to be published "Making Money," Ankh-Morpork now has a banknote currency. Unless I'm confused about the genre, Steampunk is either fantasy or sci-fi that takes place in Neo-Victorian settings, and as of late, the Disc can certainly fit that discprition. Am I just confused, or can Mr. Pratchett's Discworld series be filed under the steampunk sub-genre? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.234.66.205 (talk) 23:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC).

I think your right about Discworld resembling more and more steampunk, but Discworld has always been associated with fantasy, and for the time being al least, probably shouldn't be categorised under steampunk. Sturm55 12:04, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Pratchett himself calls it Fantasy, I think it should stay like that. Maurauth 09:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Discworld has always been a combination of different times, and Ankh-Morpork more than anything. It mixes every century from the 10th to the 21st, and while I agree that it's been more consistently 1800sish as opposed to the earlier books' general 1400sishness, labeling it steampunk would be a misnomer. (Besides, they haven't invented the steam engine yet.)

Novel Table

Either link to all the seperate people in the table, eg. Rincewind in first entry, or none I think. Maurauth 11:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Timeline?

Does anyone else think the timeline section is (a) perfunctory and (b) unnecessary? 80.176.254.67 12:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes - I have removed it. It was neither verifiable externally, nor really very encyclopaedic. Stephenb (Talk) 13:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Wee Free Men in Film

I can't find any news releases on Google since the original Jan 2006 ones, and 18 months later this project is still not listed on the Raimi or Pratchett imdb.com pages. Has this project died? Was it ever anything more than just a press release? -Gomm 02:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)