Once More With Footnotes

parks. Those false frontages, those artful backlots, those false-perspective streets, they were built for no other purposes than to look like something which in turn was built to look like something. Built to look like some t hing that isn't real.
     
                  Whoever would have thought it?
     
                  Here in America — and in England, to a lesser extent — you can read newspaper articles and buy alleged books which treat the characters played by TV stars as if they were real people. The world has gone strange. You can't tell the reality from the fantasy anymore. Think I'm kidding? On the racks at the supermarket are "newspapers" like the Sun, the Midnight Star, the Weekly World News. Typical lead story: Elvis has been found alive in a UFO dredged from t he Bermuda Triangle. People read this stuff. It's not even good sf. They have a vote, same as you.
     
                  This is all "escape from" stuff — the Disney rides, the elves, the stupid stories. It goes nowhere. The best stuff does take you somewhere. It takes you to a new place from which to see the world. An interest in fantasy when I was a child gave me an interest in books in general, and I found in books on astronomy and palaeontology a deep sense of wonder that not even Middle Earth could beat.
     
                  Let's not just le ave here. Let's go somewhere else. And if we ran trample over some elves to do it, so much the better.
     

Written for the 2002 Discworld Convention programme book.
     
     
     
     
     
M edical N otes
     
                  From Household Medicine, Hair Care, and Simple Surgery, published by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Barber-Surgeons, AM$2.
     
                  Discworld, while hosting a large number of well-known plagues and other ailments, also boasts — if that is the word — a number of medical conditions of its own. In Ankh-Morpork in particular, population pressu re has helped create a whole range of completely original yet curiously familiar complaints, such as:
     
    -
     
    Attention Surplus Syndrome
     
                  Teachers find this just as bad as the other sort. No one likes a child who pays attention too hard, whose eyes follow you r every move, and who listens very carefully to everything you say. It's like talking to a great big bottomless ear.
     
                  Advanced cases correct spelling and pronunciation in a clear piping voice, and point out errors of fact to the rest of the class. They al so have the infuriating habit of reading all the way to the end of the classroom reader on the first day of term, instead of having the decency to read at the geological speed considered correct for the rest of their age group. Expel at the earliest oppor t unity.
     
    -
     
    Florabundi's Syndrome
     
                  Erratic and uncontrollable attacks of politeness and good manners. This may not at first sight appear to be an affliction at all, but can be deadly if you are a fish porter, a prisoner, a trooper, or a member of some othe r profession where incivility is bloody well expected. So-called after Sergeant-Major Charles "Blossom" Florabundi, who in times of stress lost control of his vocabulary and, for example, refused to fire on any enemy that he hadn't been introduced to. He w as pensioned off when the entire barrack mutinied after being called "you quite vexing gentlemen". As Corporal Harry "Sharpey" Pointer said afterwards, "No one minds being called a '-ing -er of a — ing — ', but that sounded like he -ing meant it! What does — ing 'vexing' mean, anyway?"
     
    -
     
    Annoia, or Paranoia Inversa
     
                  The belief that you are out to get everyone. This is extremely rare amongst people who are not Dark Lords or similar, since those that by profession are indeed "out to get everyone" do not coun t. However, Mrs. Everita Pewter, of Dolly Sisters, did visit her doctor complaining of feelings that she was oppressing people, spying on them, reading their mail, picking up their thoughts via strange waves, and so on.
     
                  After extensive tests at Unseen Un iversity's Department of Invasive Medicine, it was found that Mrs. Pewter had in fact been born as one of Them but had never been taught to use her powers. It was then explained to her that doing so would involve wearing hooded black robes, secret meeting s in vast underground