From: leo@unseen.u.A-M.edu (Leo Breebaart)
Subject: The Annotated Pratchett File, v4.0, part 2 of 2
Followup-To: alt.fan.pratchett
Summary: This file documents and explains some of the more obscure
    	jokes and references in Terry Pratchett's novels. It is 
    	updated and posted every month. It contains many SPOILERS.
Originator: leo@galaxy
Supersedes: <anno2_719035203@ph.tn.tudelft.nl>
Reply-To: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl
Organization: Unseen University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:27:49 GMT
Expires: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 21:27:01 GMT

[ This is the second and last part of the APF. The first part was posted
  at the same time, don't miss it. ]

***************************************************************************

GOOD OMENS

- [p. 3] "[...] he was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon
  were".
  The Queen song "Killer Queen" contains the line: "She keeps the Moet et
  Chandon in a pretty cabinet". Freddie Mercury's pronunciation is indeed
  such that if you don't *know* what he's singing this phrase can be
  extremely puzzling.

- [p. 28] The three lost Shakespeare plays. "The Trapping of the Mouse"
  refers to Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" (which has now been running
  for more than 30 years in London), who in turn named her play after the
  play-within-a-play that occurs in ... Hamlet. "Golde Diggers of 1589"
  refers to the movie musical of similar name made in 1933, 1935 and 1937.
  [Does anybody know if "The Comedie of Robin Hoode, or the Forest of
  Sherwoode" also refers to something modern?]  "The Mousetrap" is also the
  name of the play-within-a-play in Hamlet.

- [p. 40] The nursery rhyme Nanny Astoreth sings to Warlock:

  "Oh, the grand old Duke of York
  He had ten thousand men
  He marched them up to the top of the hill
  And crushed all the nations of the world and brought them under the rule
  of Satan our master."

  is a parody of the English original:

  "The Grand old Duke of York
  He had ten thousand men
  He marched them all right up a hill
  And marched them down again

  And when they were up they were up
  And when they were down they were down
  And when they were halfway up the hill
  They were neither up nor down"

  Accompanied (in some versions) by fingers marching up the small child
  appropriate and stopping to tickle for the last line.

+ [p. 46] The scenes of Adam growing up in Tadfield are an affectionate
  parody of the 'Just William' books by Richmal Crompton.

  [ I'd like some more info on this. Any British folks remember these
  books?]

- [p. 52] 'Another One Bites The Dust', 'We Are The Champions', 'I Want To
  Break Free' and 'Fat-Bottomed Girls' are all songs by Queen (see the
  explanation on p. 3]. Queen fans have pointed out that at the time Good
  Omens was released, there was no (or at least no easily available) Queen
  greatest hits album that actually contained all of these songs.  A
  recently released double album has remedied this situation.

- [p. 98] "Sable signed for it, his real name -- one word, seven letters.
  Sounds like examine."
  But 'famine' only has six letters. Terry says: "Oh, yeah.  The famous
  seven-lettered six letter name. [...] It's like this. In the original MS,
  it was six letters, because we can both count.  And it was six letters in
  the Gollancz hardcover.  And six letters in the Workman US hardcover.
  And became seven in the Corgi edition. No-one knows why."

- [p. 112] American readers should be aware that English tabloid papers
  traditionally show a photo of a topless girl on page three. Hence: "Newt
  [...] blushed crimson as he performed the obligatory nipple- count on
  page three".

- [p. 126] "Newt's car was a Wasabi"
  'Wasabi' is, in fact, a kind of horseradish used in sushi

- [p. 127] "[...] the world's only surviving Wasabi agent in Nigirizushi,
  Japan."
  'Nigirizushi' is a kind of sushi.

- [p. 152] "The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, [...]"
  'Kappamaki' apparently is a Japanese cucumber roll.

- [p. 158] "Hi. This is Anthony Crowley. Uh. I --"
  Up to this point in the novel, we have only been told Crowley's first
  name begins with an 'A', leading to the false expectation that his name
  might be *Alistair* Crowley, as in the famous British mystic,
  theosophist, black-arts practicioner and "most evil man on Earth".

- [p. 180] The name Citron Deux-Chevaux refers to the Citroen 2CV, or
  deux-chevaux as it is commonly called in Europe ("chevaux" means horses
  -- 'CV' has an (very loose) connection with horsepower).

- [p. 191] "Sprechen Sie Deutsch" and "Parlez-vous francais" are German
  resp. French for "Do you speak German/French", but "Wo bu hui jiang
  zhongwen" is Chinese for "I can't speak Chinese". Terry blames Neil
  Gaiman for this one.

- [p. 203] "'Heigh ho,' said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway."
  This refers to an old British topical song about the Italian opera-singer
  Antonio Rolli, well-known in London during the Regency. The song was
  called "A frog he would-a wooing go", and The chorus has the lines:

	     With a rolypoly, gammon and spinach,
             Heigh ho, said Anthony Rowley.

  This was intended to be a highly amusing satire on the way Italian people
  speak. It has only survived to this day as a children's rhyme (because of
  its references to talking animals and despite a totally confusing
  chorus).

- [p. 203] "What she really wanted to be was an internationally glamorous
  jet-setter, but she didn't have the O-levels."
  This has to do with the British education system. After the 8th grade you
  decide how many two-year O (Ordinary) level courses you are going to take
  (each with an exam at the end). Most non-minimum wage jobs ask for at
  least 5 O levels, people in college usually have 7 or 8. After your O
  levels you can either leave school or go on for A (Advanced) level
  courses, which take another 2-3 years.

- [p. 248] Dick Turpin is the name of a famous British highwayman. Hence
  the joke about Newt's car being called "Dick Turpin": "'Because
  everywhere I go, I hold up traffic,' he mumbled wretchedly."

+ [p. 262] The "Necrotelecomnicom" appears in the Discworld books as the
  "Book Of Talking To The Dead", i.e. the Phonebook of the Dead, as a
  parallel to the more accessible Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead.
  There is also the famous Necronomicon that appears in the Chthulhu Mythos
  of H. P. Lovecraft.  (see also the entry for p.145 of "Moving Pictures")
  
- [p. 262] The "Malleus Maleficarum" is the name of an existing 15th
  century guidebook for witch-hunters, written by Heinrich Kramer and
  Jospeh Sprenger (one a Dominican Inquisitor, the other the Major of
  Cologne), two high-ranking officials of the Catholic church. This book
  apparently became Europe's first bestseller after the invention of the
  printing press, and the (early 20th century) English translation of this
  book ("The Hammer of Witches") was still in print as late as 1971.

+ [p. 262] "Liber Fulvarum Paginarum" is dog latin for "Book of Yellow
  Pages"... This book also appears in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"
  comics, where it is used to summon Death (although the colorist didn't
  get the joke and simply colored the pages brown). Terry says:

  "Libre Paginarum Fulvarum is a kind of shared gag. It's in the
  dedication of Equal Rites, too.  Although I think we've got the shade of
  yellow wrong -- I think there's another Latin word for a kind of yellow
  which is closer to the Yellow Pages colour."

  [ Does anybody have any idea what colour Terry is talking about? ]

- [p. 267] "And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot...  no,
  imagine a trainer, laces trailing, kicking a pebble;[...]"
  From George Orwell's "1984": "If you want to imagine the future, imagine
  a boot stamping on a human face forever".

- [p. 268] "Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield."
  From Yeats' poem "The Second Coming": "What rough beast, its hour come
  round at last / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

- According to Terry, the U.S. edition of Good Omens has about 700 extra
  words in it, because: "The Workman editor wanted...how can I put
  this...some things explained more carefully."

+ Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman did have the title "668 - The neighbour
  of the beast" on hand for a Good Omens sequel, but since Neil Gaiman
  lives in the US now, Terry says: "I can't see it ever being written".

  There are many documented occurences of this joke in other contexts,
  by the way (recently including an actual novel with this name), some
  of them predating Good Omens. Terry again points out that it's only
  to be expected since the joke is so obvious.

+ There is a British KitKat chocolate bar TV commercial that predates Good
  Omens, and which involves an angel and a devil who are just starting
  their respective coffee breaks. Both exit from separate elevators, the
  angel accompanied by several pure-white animals, while the devil turns
  back into his elevator and screams, in a British accent, "Shut up!" to
  whatever demons are causing a ruckus behind him.

  If you are now thinking that this is an extremely unlikely, farfetched
  annotation -- well, so did I, until Terry Pratchett himself gave us the
  following piece of information (when some folks were having further
  discussions on how old this ad exactly was):

  "I'm pretty sure [this ad] started about the same time as Good Omens,
  because:

  One night I was sitting there typing away when I looked up and there the
  angel and the devil were, having a teabreak (it's not really a
  particularly GO idea, but I know why people like it...)  And I though,
  hey, great...
  
  And about half an hour later there was an ad (some UK viewers might
  remember it) for an insurance company which showed a businessman with
  wide angel wings walking down the street...
  
  And then, just when I was doing the bit where Crowley muses that people
  are much better than demons at thinking up horrible things to do to one
  another, I switched on the radio; there was a performance of The Tempest,
  and someone said "Hell is empty and all the devils are here". It was a
  weird evening, really."


STRATA

- The whole book is, in a very general way, modeled on Larry Niven's
  classic "Ringworld" novel: a group of differently-raced beings explore an
  improbable, artificial world and try to find its mysterious builders.


DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

Just as "Strata" borrows from Larry Niven, so does "The Dark Side Of The
Sun" pay homage to the famous SF-writer Isaac Asimov.

- [p. 27] The robot Isaac is obviously modeled on Asimov's well-known
  positronic robots, and less obviously inspired by a similar robot that
  appears in Robert Sheckley's "Dimension Of Miracles". Isaac [the robot]
  follows a more extended version of Asimov's equally famous 'Three Laws of
  Robotics' though: on p. 53: "[...] Eleventh Law of Robotics, Clause C, As
  Amended,' said the robot firmly."


DIGGERS

- The American version of the Nome trilogy is not word-for-word the same as
  the original one. Terry says: "The Truckers trilogy has a fair amount of
  changes of a 'pavement=sidewalk' nature which is understandable in a book
  which should be accessible to kids.  They also excised the word 'damn'
  so's not to get banned in Alabama, which is a shame because I've always
  wanted to be banned in Alabama, ever since I first heard of the place."
  
- [p. 60] "iii. And the Mark of the Dragon was on it.
	   iv. And the Mark was Jekub"
  'Jekub' was the Nomes' attempted pronunciation of JCB, the name of a
  well-known manufacturer of tractors, diggers, and the like, whose logo of
  course appears on all their products. Jekub, incidentally, appears to be
  a 'back-hoe loader'.  In the American version of the Nomes trilogy 'JCB'
  was changed to 'CAT', presumably standing for 'caterpillar'.

- [p. 142] "Jcb? Jekub? It's got no vowels in it. What sort of name is that?"
  This is also a play on YHWH, the classical Hebrew spelling of Yahweh,
  i.e. Jehovah.


WINGS

+ [p. 135] "'The other humans around it are trying to explain to it what
  a planet is' 'Doesn't it know?' 'Many humans don't. Mistervicepresident
  is one of them.'"

  I don't think anybody in the Western world would not have gotten this
  reference to Dan Quayle, but let's face it: in twenty years people will
  still be reading Terry Pratchett, and hopefully this APF -- but who'll
  remember Misterexvicepresident?


ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND

In order to fully appreciate this novel it may not be necessary, but
I think it will greatly add to your enjoyment and understanding, if you
have seen at least one of the 'Alien' movies, and have played at least
one computer shoot-em-up game.

+ [p. 13] "My dad brought me back 'Alabama Smith and the Jewels of Fate'
  from the States."

  Puns on 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'. Alabama and Indiana are
  both U.S. states.

+ [p. 19] "Hey, I really need a computer because that way I can play
  'Megasteroids'."

  'Asteroids' is the name of an ancient, very famous computer game.

+ [p. 27] Johnny's nickname for his friend: 'MC Spanner', spoofs
  our world's pop-rap star 'MC Hammer'.

+ [p. 40] This may be way off base, but Terry's 'Cereal Killers' sound
  very much like a Philip K. Dick-inspired idea.

+ [p. 42] "'I saw this film once, right, where there were these computer
  games and if you were really good the aliens came and got you and you had
  to fly a spaceship and fight a whole bad alien fleet,' said BigMac."

  Terry is decribing an existing movie here. God, I have seen it on TV a
  couple of years ago -- but for the life of me I can't recall the name.
  Anybody?

+ [p. 109] "What's your game name?' 'Sigourney -- *you're laughing!*'"
  Signourney Weaver is the actress who plays the main heroine in all 
  three 'Alien' movies.

+ [p. 118] "On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say 'Um'"

  The now famous slogan used in the advertising campaigns for the first
  'Alien' movie was: "In Space, No-one Can Hear You Scream".

+ [p. 133] "'I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a
  spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked,' said
  johnny reproachfully. 'Doubtless it had a map,' said the Captain."

  The movie Johnny refers to is, of course: 'Alien'.

+ [p. 158] "'You're thinking: He'll be in there somewhere, hiding.'"

  In 'Alien', the alien creature eventually hid itself in the escape
  capsule Sigourney Weaver tried to escape in at the end.

+ [p. 162] "'If we find a cat I'm going to kick it!'"

  In 'Alien', Sigourney goes *back* into the mother ship because she
  did not want to leave the cat behind.



THE DISCWORLD IDEA

Many people think the appearance of the Discworld as described in the
novels was an invention of Terry Pratchett's. This is not the case: in
Hindu mythology, for instance, we find the idea of a lotus flower growing
out of Vishnu's navel. Swimming in a pool in the lotus flower is the world
turtle, on whose back stand four elephants facing in the four compass
directions. On their back is balanced the flat, disc-shaped world.  See
also Josh Kirby's magnificent drawing of the Discworld in the illustrated
version of "Eric" (but please read the FAQ first if you are American and
wondering where you can get that book).


THE HEDGEHOG SONG

Michael Green's book "Why was he born so beautiful and other Rugby songs"
(1967, Sphere UK) contains a song called "The Sexual Life of the Camel",
(possibly dating back to the 1920s/30s), which goes:

        The carnal desires of the camel
        Are stranger than anyone thinks,
        For this passionate but perverted mammal
        has designs on the hole of the Sphinx,
        But this deep and alluring depression
        Is oft clogged by the sands of the Nile,
        Which accounts for the camel's expression
        And the Sphinx's inscrutable smile.

        In the process of Syphilization
        From the anthropoid ape down to man
        It is generally held that the Navy
        Has buggered whatever it can.
        Yet recent extensive researches
        By Darwin and Huxley and Ball
        Conclusively prove that the hedgehog 
        Has never been buggered at all.

        And further researches at Oxford
        Have incontrovertibly shown
        That comparative safety on shipboard
        Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
        But, why haven't they done it at Spithead,
        As they've done it at Harvard and Yale
        And also at Oxford and Cambridge
        By shaving the spines off its tail!


MORRIS DANCING (this section written by Rich Holmes)

STRATA, GUARDS! GUARDS!, and REAPER MAN

All three of these books refer to morris dancing. (In _Strata_, Kin
remembers seeing robots do a morris dance and, later, hums an "old
robot-Morris tune, _Mrs. Widgery's Lodger_." In _Guards! Guards!_ Nobby
turns out to be a folk dancer in his spare time; morris isn't mentioned by
name, but bells and hankies are cited. _Reaper Man_ begins with a page or
so about the universality of morris dancing -- _Mrs. Widgery's Lodger_ is
mentioned again -- and late in the book the "other dance" is described.)

All this may be lost on the typical American reader. Picture, then, six men
in white shirts and trousers, decorated with ribbons, wearing bells on
their legs, in a two-by-three formation -- the men, not the bells. To a
tune played on fiddle or squeezebox, they dance up and down, back and
forth, gesturing with big white handkerchiefs in their hands -- or, maybe,
clashing yard-long willow sticks with one another.  That's morris dancing,
as it was done in the late 19th century in the Cotswolds region of England.

It's also done these days, throughout the English-speaking world (though in
America it's not exactly an everyday sight), these days by women's teams
and mixed teams as well. As for where it came from, and when, and what it
all means, no one really knows. Its roots seem to go back to the European
continent sometime in or before the 15th century.  Similar, possibly
related dances were and are found in Europe and even as far away as India.
For a while in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was commonly
claimed by folklorists to be the remnant of a pre-Christian fertility rite
performed by a male priesthood; there's really no hard evidence to support
(or refute) such a theory, though.

None of which stops people from doing it. It used to be the case -- maybe
still is -- that morris dancing was taught in English schools as part of
physical education, thus leaving most English people with about the same
kind of impression as we Americans mostly have of square dancing, somewhere
between amusement and nausea. Enough have not been soured on the whole
thing, however, to staff (reportedly) several hundred morris teams in
England as well as 170 or so in the U.S. and God knows how many in
Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and other odd places.

Terry Pratchett tells us he's "never waved a hankie in anger" nor knows any
morris dancers personally, but that he finds the morris kind of
fascinating.

For those interested, contact Tom Keays (libhtk@suvm.acs.syr.edu) or Rich
Holmes (suhep.phy.syr.edu) about the Morris Dancing Discussion List. You
knew there was an ulterior motive here, didn't you?


WORDS FROM THE MASTER

Here are a few excerpts from articles by Terry Pratchett that I think fall
under the heading of 'annotations' but which are either not associated with
one particular novel, or so long they would break the flow of the regular
annotations.

Quotation marks (" ") indicate the beginning and ending of quotes from
different Usenet articles.


- On the lack of chapters in the Diskworld novels:

"DW books don't have chapters because, well, I just never got into the
habit of chapters.  I'm not sure why they should exist (except maybe in
children's books, to allow the parent to say 'I'll read to the end of the
chapter and then you must go to sleep.')  Films don't have chapters.
Besides, I think they interfere with the shape of the story.  Use a
bookmark is my advice."


- On Discworld language use:

"A certain amount of DW slang comes from Palari or Polari, the fairground/
underworld/ theatre 'secret language' (which seems to have a lot of roots
in old Italian).  UK readers with long memories might recall the pair of
gay actors 'Julian and Sandy', in the old Round the Horne radio show in the
Sixties and Seventies (innocent times, innocent times); they spoke almost
pure Palari."


+ On people who get too enthousiastic about finding obscure references
  in his novels:

"Sometimes I... well... I just write stuff which hasn't been piched
from ANYONE (shuffles feet, looks embarassed...)."


- On the writing of Good Omens:

"Neil and I had known each other since early 1985.  Doing it was our idea,
not a publishers deal."

"I think this is an honest account of the process of writing GO.  It was
fairly easy to keep track because of the way we sent discs to one another,
and because I was Keeper of the Official Master Copy I can say that I wrote
a bit over two thirds of GO.  However, we were on the phone to each other
every day, at least once.  If you have an idea during a brainstorming
session with another guy, whose idea is it?  One guy goes and writes 2,000
words after thirty minutes on the phone, what exactly is the process that's
happening?

I did most of the physical writing because:
1) I had to.  Neil had to keep Sandman going -- I could take time off from
the DW;
2) One person has to be overall editor, and do all the stitching and
filling and slicing and, as I've said before, it was me by agreement -- if
it had been a graphic novel, it would have been Neil taking the chair for
exactly the same reasons it was me for a novel; 3) I'm a selfish bastard
and tried to write ahead to get to the good bits before Neil.

Initially, I did most of Adam and the Them and Neil did most of the Four
Horsemen, and everything else kind of got done by whoever -- by the end,
large sections were being done by a composite creature called Terryandneil,
whoever was actually hitting the keys.  By agreement, I am allowed to say
that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine.
And Neil proudly claims responsibility for the maggots.  Neil's had a major
influence on the opening scenes, me on the ending.  In the end, it was this
book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and
wouldn't do it again for a big clock."

"Yes, the maggot reversal was by me, with a gun to Neil's head (although he
understood the reasons, it's just that he likes maggots).  There couldn't
be blood on Adam's hands, even blood spilled by third parties.  No-one
should die because he was alive."


HOW TO GET THIS FILE

You have now finished reading this file. You understand that this file is
updated regularly, and you are wondering: was this the most recent version
of the APF? And if not, where do I get the latest release? This section
lists the possibilities that are open to you, in no particular order.

- Read the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett. The APF 'belongs' to this
  group, and I always post the latest version there once a month.

- The file is available via anonymous ftp from two locations:
  David Jones has a copy on theory.lcs.mit.edu (18.52.0.92) in the
  file pub/dmjones/annotated-pratchett.
  Trent Fisher maintains a copy on potemkin.cs.pdx.edu in the file
  pub/pratchett/annotated-pratchett.

- Send me mail at leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl and ask for the latest copy. You can
  also ask me to add you to the mailing list of people who will
  automatically receive new versions of the APF as they are released (this
  will not get you the APF more often or earlier than reading
  alt.fan.pratchett does, by the way).

- Finally, David Jones has also made the file obtainable through an MIT
  mail-server: to retrieve a copy just send an email message to
  archive-server@theory.lcs.mit.edu with the line
     send dmjones annotated-pratchett
  in the body.

Many thanks to David (dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu) en Trent
(trent@cs.pdx.edu) for their help and their disk space. If you have
problems with the ftp access or the mail server, please contact them
instead of me.

Scheduled release of next version: first week of December 1992.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

;;; And now some information for my editor. Pay no attention...
;;; Local Variables:
;;; mode:indented-text
;;; fill-column:75
;;; End:

-- 
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl)
-- 
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett