Once More With Footnotes

Already, the hard edges of the machinery were being filmed with the grease of fantasy — or whimsy, you might say, which is only fantasy with its shirt undone. I realized then that if ever there is a moonbase, o r a Mars base, or an L5 colony, then our interior decorator minds will furnish the new landscape with reconditioned fantasies; shadowy figures that live in the girderwork and steal electricity, maybe, or dwarves that come out of the computer paneling and c lean your helmet at night, if you leave them a bowl of nutrient soup.
     
                  We spray our fantasies on the landscape like a dog sprays urine. It turns it into ours. Once we've invented our gods and demons, we can propitiate or exorcise them.
     
                  Once we've put fa iries in the sinister solitary thorn tree, we can decide where we stand in relation to it; we can hang ribbons on it, see visions under it — or bulldoze it up and call ourselves free of superstition.
     
                 

The success of The Unseen University Challenge led to a sequel: The Wyrdest Link (compiled by Dave Langford and published by Victor Gollancz in 2002) ... for the cover of which Josh Kirby drew a picture of the orangutan Librarian of Unseen University who, like all orangutans, is red haired. There are those wh o profess to see in the face of the ape a certain caste of expression that, they felt, reminded them of a certain red-headed presenter of a very similar sounding programme on both sides of the Atlantic. I couldn't possibly comment.
     
    This was the introducti on:
     
     
     
     
     
I ntroduction: T he W yrdest L ink
     
                  Not long ago a newspaper, in one of those nice articles newspapers occasionally write to tell people who this Terry Pratchett person is, used the sentence: "He steals blatantly". In an article about Another Auth or, the phrase used was: "draws gloriously on ancient and modern cultural references". Both journalists meant the same thing, but I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if the phrases had been swopped around, and where the wreckage would have l anded.
     
                  Research (for it is that of which we speak, thank you so very much) tends to happen by itself, if you've got your mind right. In the past year or two I've knowingly researched chimney sweeping, chocolate, clock-making, and rats, but God alone know s what else I've picked up. The best research takes place when you think you're doing something else, when information piles up in the attics of the brain and over time ceases to become words you have read and becomes things you can't remember ever not kn o wing. Like volvas — they were Nordic seeresses (very safe ones, possibly with riding lights) who wore catskin hoods and gloves. Or that Niflheim, a sort of Nordic hell, is very dreary and cold, and therefore instantly became Sniflheim to me the moment I read about it, which was probably when I was thirteen and would read anything if I thought it might have runes in it.
     
                  Research is reading, for interest, a book with a multi-typeface title so long that there's a small lay-by halfway though it where soft drink s may be purchased: The 1864 "Cyclopedia of Commercial and Business ANECDOTES comprising INTERESTING REMINISCENCES AND FACTS, Remarkable Traits & Humours, AND Notable Sayings, Dealings, Experiences and Witticisms of MERCHANTS, TRADERS, BANKERS, MERCANTILE CELEBRITIES, MILLIONAIRES, BARGAIN MAKERS, ect., ect ..." and let's stop there for a Vimto, with half the title still to go. But the research there isn't in picking up occasional nuggets of fact to win a round of Trivial Pursuit, it's in getting the sense of the world view of men for whom money wasn't a thing but a process. And the feel of a world where you could have titles like that.
     
                  Do this for long enough and you end up getting an education, or something that passes for one in poor lighting conditions.
     
                  Discworld is full of the results. As Dave Langford points out, some of the weirdest things in Discworld are simply obscure byways of the history of our planet. If you want to see a fantasy world, open your eyes and step outside.
     
                  It's worrying for me to read this book. I have to research Discworld now, mindful of the fact that some throw-away line in The Light Fantastic might prevent a