From: killip@csc.liv.ac.uk (Mr. L.T. Killip)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett
Subject: Re: The Annotated Pratchett File, v2.0
Date: 7 Sep 92 17:23:00 GMT
Organization: Computer Science, Liverpool University

In article <annotated-pratchett_715386709@ph.tn.tudelft.nl>, leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart) writes: [most deleted of course]
> WYRD SISTERS:
>
> - This whole novel brims with Shakespearian references (to the Scottish
>   Play in particular). I am *still* waiting for someone out there to collect
>   and submit some of the more obscure ones.
>
Okay, so noone has mentioned the sequence about the `knocking without the
door' which is another Scottish play reference, in this case to a scene where
a doorkeeper brimming with alcohol and incomprehensible Shakespearean puns
spends an unconscionable length of time not answering the knocking at the
door.
>
> REAPER MAN:
>
> - The title of this book is a pun on the 1984 cult movie "Repo Man".
>
Rather the other way round, I would have thought. Death has been referred
to as the Reaper Man for longer than the Diskworld has been around. I think
you'll find that if you ask Alex Cox, he'll tell you that he was the one
doing the punning.
>
> GOOD OMENS:
>
> - [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). "Golde Diggers of 1589" refers to
>   the 1935 musical of that name. [Does anybody know if "The Comedie of
>   Robin Hoode, or the Forest of Sherwoode" also refers to something modern?]
>
The Mousetrap is far from being a lost Shakespeare play. It is the
play-within-the-play in Hamlet, and, again, the Agatha Christie one is
named after the Shakespearean one. There were at least 3 Gold Diggers
movies with year-number included. I have a VERY vague memory of their
having been a forgery of a `lost' Shakespeare about Robin Hood. The
Shakespeare play that IS lost is the (unfinished) sequel to `Love's Labours
Lost' surprisingly entitled `Love's Labours Wunne'.
>
> - [p. 203] "'Heigh ho,' said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway."
>   This is a double joke. To begin with, it 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
>   was intended to be a highly amusing satire on the way Italian people speak.
>   The chorus has the lines:
>
>            With a rolypoly, gammon and spinach,
>              Heigh ho, said Anthony Rowley.
>
What you have failed to steal (your welcome) from my posting on this
subject is that the song survives to this day as a children's rhyme (because
of its twee references to talking animals and despite a totally-confusing
chorus). If you don't tell people this they might wonder why Terry makes
jokes about Regency broadsides.
>
> - [p. 262] The three books in the Witchfinder Army library. The "Necrotele-
>   comnicom appears in the Discworld books as the "Book Of Talking To The
>   Dead". The "Malleus Maleficarum" is an existing guidebook for witch-
>   hunters. The "Liber Fulvarum Paginarum" is dog latin for "The Book of
>   Yellow Pages"...
>
The many postings on the subject of the Necrotelicomnicon fail to
appreciate that this is `The Phone Book of the Dead', a parallel to the
more accessible Egyptian and Tibetan ones.
>
> 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. 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."
>
As someone else pointed out (very appositely) we have here a parody of a
parody. Sheckley's `Dimension of Miracles' includes a very similar robot.


--
______________________________________________________________________
Les Killip                JANET     : killip@uk.ac.liv.csc
Computer Science Dept,    Internet  : killip@csc.liv.ac.uk
University of Liverpool,
P.O. Box 147,             Phone     : 0(or 44)-51-794-3700
LIVERPOOL L69 3BX
United Kingdom
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