Tildes Book Club discussion - Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
This is the sixth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Our next book will be This is How You Lose the Time War around the end of September.
I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.
For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.
In honor of the one and only Cut Me Own Throat (CMOT) Dibbler and his Omnian equivalent, here are the list of his counterparts in the books:
Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala
Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah
Al-Jiblah
Fair Go Dibbler
May-I-Never-Achieve-Enlightenment Dhiblang
Dib Diblossonson
May-I-Be-Kicked-In-My-Own-Ice-Hole Dibooki
Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dhlang-Dhlang
Is this your first Terry Pratchett book? What do you think of his distinctive style?
I've read the Death books (Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, and Hogfather) as well as the first two Witches books (names escape me). While his style is layered with satire in all cases, this book felt less "cheeky" and to have a more serious tone than the others. Maybe it is the weight I attach to religion that I am bringing to it, but it felt much more "on the nose" than the others. I enjoyed it very much regardless.
My reading experience was that Pratchett became less madcap or zany and more thoughtful and targeted with his humor as he grew as a writer.
I've tried pratchett before (mort, I think?) and couldnt quite get into it, even though his stories theoretically sound like something I'd enjoy.
I gave this bookclub read a miss because of that, but I thought I'd pop in to read what others here have to say. Sometimes others positive perspectives can bring a new appreciation :)
If you ever want to try again, going Postal would be a good test case. Pratchett's early work can be rough, but some people just bounce off his style altogether.
Same here. The book finally became available to check out but, again, I just can't get in to it. I feel like I'm trying to watch a movie I might like while some old guy keeps getting in front of me and talking about how great the story is. I tried to read his first book, something about dwarven carpet dwellers, and didn't make it 30 pages in.
Reading up on Pratchett, I had no idea that he was inducted into the Order of the British Empire. He seems to have been a wonderful person.
In one of his books the people that work on the "clacks", signalling towers that pass messages like telegrams, use a code to say where messages go when received. G means pass the message to the next tower, N means the message doesn't get logged, and U means turn the message around when it reaches the end of the line, and send it back. They send the names of dead clacks workers up and down the line, prefaced with GNU, because "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken."
And that's why you'll see fans type GNU Terry Pratchett or GNU Sir Pterry (itself a reference to a book), but also a number of websites tossed it into the code.
So Sir Pratchett isn't dead, as his name is still spoken.
Yeah, he was a pretty great dude.
Always a huge fan of the style, it was harder to follow in audiobook format, but that's mostly because I lose track of the non-Brother plot.
This was my first time reading Pratchett, I really enjoyed his writing style. I think the reason why I haven't really picked him up before, especially the Discworld series, is I get clueless as to where to start reading it because it seams that everyone and their mother has different opinions as to where to start. The reason for this is that everyone has a favorite book in this series and that is where people want other people need to start.
There's also the reason that they generally work as stand alone books, and there's multiple different "plotlines" of books.
I can't vouch for it's full accuracy (I've read maybe a dozen of them and it was some time ago), but on the wiki page for Discworld there's an image of a Discworld reading order guide (.jpg). If you just want some guidance on where to start, pick one of the "starter novels" you think sounds interesting, then either keep going down that branch or jump around as you like and you'll be fine.
It might help to know that there are several subseries and a number of stand alone books like this one.
Guards Guards,
Equal rites,
Mort,
The Wee free men
And going Postal,
And color of magic,
Each begin a character arc or subseries.
I had this same option paralysis myself and just decide to read them in published order.
I figured if I wanted to I could go down any of the “paths” of connected books but never did.
I read back to back up to Hogfather and took break. I will def pick them back up soon though.
I first discovered Pratchett ~10 years ago and immediately devoured three of his books in the span of a month or two. I fell off of him (and really off of reading almost entirely) due to life stuff for a while there, but have recently come back around to him and have re-read a few entries and grabbed a few new ones, including the first couple of Wizards books, "Guards! Guards!", "Equal Rites", and "Pyramids" before reading "Small Gods."
I love reading Pratchett because it feels like I'm watching a movie. I don't know how else to describe it; his flow is just so natural with a great pace that it's incredibly easy to lose myself in his books for hours on end. I like reading, but I often find myself pulling my head out of books to check the time, think about a good stopping point, see if I ought to call it a night, etc... whereas with Pratchett, I'll just keep reading and reading, then accidentally catch the time on my phone and realize I've read 150 pages in a single sitting and it's 2:00 AM. That said, I would agree with others in that his tone is definitely a little more focused on this one vs. the near-slapstick that I noticed in his earlier novels, especially the first two Wizards novels.
This was my first of his books. I have heard his name before, but never tried to read anything before.
I really like his style of writing and now can see how many other creators he has inspired!
But for now, I started watching Good Omens have been loving the show so far as well!
I hadn't read much of his work before this year. I was gifted Good Omens years ago and loved it, but only started listening to the Discworld series while on a roadtrip earlier this year. I love that the series is made up of smaller series that you can pick up or put down as needed (I've only read The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites).
I absolutely love his style - it's unique and really entertaining to read/listen to.
I've read Small Gods before, and this time I listened to it by audiobook. I listened to the one narrated by Andy Serkis and thought he did a fantastic job. The voice he used for Om in particular was not the voice that would have occurred to me, but fit him extremely well and was quite funny.
After reading a Discworld book I always like to go and read the Annotated Pratchett entry for it. It's a list of references made in the book, especially helpful for the Britishisms that some of the rest of us might not be aware of.
I really want his Om voice as a Waze navigation narration
I can just picture it! "Left a bit... left! You missed it, you bleedin' cactus!"
YES!
Pratchett is known for making subtle references to real world science, philosophy, culture, history and entertainment in his fantasy stories. Were there any instances of this in this book that you thought were insightful or clever or fun? Or did you dislike it when he did this?
I liked the inversion of the "Round Earthers" being the ones insisting on something that was demonstrably not true.
References to the (in)quisition seemed not much changed from the original.
I wondered if Om was a reference to the meditation chant or some subtler reference to El that I can't quite connect.
Edit: forgot about the jab at the technological arms race with the invention of the turtle.
There was a bit with some play on Om being "Om"-nipotent and "Om"-niscient, and I wondered if maybe that was the source of the name.
I think it was probably a mix of all of the above tbh!
I also enjoyed the inversion of the "debate" of what shape the world is. With the Round Earthers are the weird ones believing that their world is round because a sphere is a more perfect shape. But everyone else knows that the world that they are living on is on a turtle that is swimming through the solar system.
I love it because it's been so established at this point that The Great A'Tuin is bopping along across the ocean of space, hatching eggs, it's shown up multiple times before this. So we as readers know how ridiculous it is to think the world could be a sphere!
Also I love that light moves very differently on the Disc.
The 'Round Earther' was one of my favorite parts!
I also loved all the philosophers' little pieces of wisdom and the discussion between Om and Brotha about the prophets and things Om definitely did not say.
This reminds me of a story I read once. The following is a paraphrase since Google failed to turn up a source.
I personally love his use of Latin or "Dog-Latin" throughout the series
Ego Video Liber Deorum which he translates as Gods: The Spotters Guide (and which the annotations translate as The I Spy Book of Gods)
I'm personally a fan of Carpe Jugulum (Seize the Jugular) and FABRICATI DIEM, PVNK (Make my Day, punk)
It requires a decent knowledge of the language to misuse it appropriately.
For me, at the end where Brutha was negotiating with OM, it reminded me of the history around the Magna Carta where the power of the king was formally constrained.
This is a rich book with a lot to talk about. Where do you want to take this discussion? Feel free. Go nuts!
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What did you think of Om and or the 'small gods' phenomenon that the book explores?
I've always liked the "gods are created by human belief and gain/lose power based on the number and strength of those believers" sort of world building. It's more played for laughs here but one of my favorite small gods is
Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers.
Prayers to her involve rattling a drawer and saying things like
She used to be a volcano goddess. She's always just been one of my favs
What is your reaction to Brutha as a character?
Maybe this will change as time goes on and I read more of Pratchett's later works, but this is the first book of his that I've read that fast-forwards to the end of the protagonist's life and discusses his death (and his very characteristic entry into the afterlife). In a way, it's the first book of his that I've read in which the central protagonist dies. I'm sure it won't be the last, but at least for me, it was quite unexpected, and it left me feeling a little sappy! Sure, Brutha is not a terribly deep character, but it was nice to see a bow tied on his story and see him treat Vorbis in the afterlife the same way he treated him in life.
What are your thoughts about Ephebe as a culture? What about Omnia?
I liked it as a parody of the philosopher's age of Greece. It does feel very much one note in that way but it works well as a contrast to Omnia.
Yelling Eureka and running around naked being the thing to do does make me laugh.
Are there characters besides Om and Brutha that stood out to you as interesting or well written or striking and what is your reaction to them/ thoughts about them?
What are your thoughts about the story/ plot arc in this book?
So I really do like this story but I found the bits that didn't focus on Brutha between the visit to Ephebe and the end of the book to really add a lot of length and less plot movement. The end of the book felt really long for it. Part of this is I lost track of a few characters and voices listening to audio and it's been a long time since I read it, so I may go back through the ebook afterwards.
In many ways this is not one of my favorite novels. I vastly prefer Monstrous Regiment. But that it's about 11 years later in his writing or
Monstrous Regiment spoilers
That it's all about women and pointless war rather than religion and patriarchal evil.
Is there even a woman who speaks in this book? A couple of deities and unnamed grandmother are it I think.
This is very much a middling one for me in hindsight. I think it hits home for people who've experienced a lot of religious trauma, and because it's essentially a standalone in the series. But I prefer Death and Vimes and The Witches and eventually Moist to this entry.
Agreed - the story itself was fine, but as a vehicle for a lens on religious belief, I enjoyed the read. I didn't dislike any of the beats, but I appreciated its take on religion in general. I was raised Catholic, then sort of just fell off into an apathetic Agnosticism in high school, then veered hard back into general Christianity in early college, and finally settled back into proper Atheism in my mid-20s.
I felt that my journey helped me relate to Brutha in a strange way. Here was a person dealing with the dissonance of quite literally meeting his god face to face while also realizing that he's not all that he's cracked up to be, in addition to the fact that his message has been entirely re-appropriated and bastardized over centuries of folks making things up under the pretense of Om's wishes, coupled with the simultaneous discovery that other gods very much exist outside of Om. Granted, I don't think any of us are going to literally meet the physical manifestation of God (or a god(s)) anytime soon, but the perspective still struck a cord with me.
Perhaps I don't relate as strongly because I didn't want to stop believing. I might have hit that point eventually had I not lost faith first, but I call myself an unwilling agnostic for a reason. I want to believe in more, but I don't... A talking 🐢, even an asshole of one, would have been something I'd have appreciated deeply. Probably still would..I want the world to be more than matter most days.
I can appreciate that perspective! I really like your term "unwilling agnostic," and in some ways, I'd call myself an unwilling atheist. I do feel like Atheism carries a little more black-and-white weight to it (it brings to mind Pratchett's quote about Simony "believing" in Atheism in a way that's as fiery as religious belief itself), but I suppose my mindset is more like "there's no possible way of fully knowing how the world works, I just don't think the answer lies with any sort of omnipotent (or even relatively powerful) being or set of beings that shape the direction of it." But I'm a major dreamer and escapist, and the world would be a whole lot cooler if it did work that way, or least, if it worked that way and we were able to recognize it at this time and place as a matter of fact and not supposition and faith!
Yeah the part of me that wants magic and deities and such in the world does want it closer to the way it works in fiction, even in Discworld, though certain favorites do get ill treated by their gods (Poor Rincewind) but some of me misses having the boundaries and clearcut set of rules. I wouldn't have agreed with the rules I grew up with, but if I knew those were in fact the rules I'd probably try to work with them.
Instead it's a lot of people in the way. And a lot of "faith" wrapped up in a lot of societal bias and I just don't trust it. If a god, any god, wants to give me some certainty, I mean I can get behind Freya, or whomever. Nyx? Gimme something, ya know?
I do think a lot of our modern mythological retellings are embracing this same vibe of gods serving humanity - I see some classicists get frustrated at, say, romantic Persephone and Hades retellings, but taking a story from a culture where fathers controlled their daughter's lives, where men lived to tell the story, where cults that worshipped chthonic deities in particular were generally secret , and saying well what we have doesn't serve us today.... So what we need is a god who sits apart from the pettiness and frequent sexual assault of those who sit on Olympus, a goddess coming of age and ultimately making her own choices no matter how the story started, whose mom is a bit overprotective....
It's no wonder that there's an appeal.
What do you think about how Pratchett portrayed an underground political/religious/philosophical revolutionary struggle?
I think it's interesting to see the revolutionary upheaval as the emergent outcome of a bunch of selfish actions. Basically everyone is just flailing around trying to figure things out and out of that chaos you get a dramatic shift in the course of society that looks in retrospect like there was Intent behind it. Even the retconning of the actual events is also the product of a bunch of selfish actions.
Although Vorbis stands out as more focused in purpose than other characters, I don't think he's really a significantly deviation, just more sure and single minded about his own ends.
I feel this is reminiscent (though not derived from) what Robert Jordan used to say about how much selfishness should play out in the behavior of a hero of a story.
Somewhat tangential to your question, but the crowd's disappointment when Didactylos was finally propped up in front of the disgruntled Omnians and he didn't try to strike up a religious fervor was just *chef's kiss* in my opinion.
It's played as if the Omnians weren't looking to be shown the facts, or the way things are--they wanted an almighty replacement, capital-T Truth with which they could replace their belief in Om. Whereas the Ephebians, who are ironically a lot more scientific in their philosophical musings, simply share what is and what is not. The reality of the world was still too messy for them.