Once More With Footnotes

moment was magic.
     
                  And I went on reading; and, since if you read enough books you overflow, I eventually became a writer.
     
                  One day I was doing a signing in a London bookshop and next in the queue was a lady in what, back in the '80s, was called a "power suit" despite its laughable lack of titanium armor and proton guns. She handed over a book for signature. I asked h er what her name was. She mumbled something. I asked again ... after all, it was a noisy bookshop. There was another mumble, which I could not quite decipher. As I opened my mouth for the third attempt, she said, "It's Galadriel, okay?"
     
                  I said: "Were you by any chance born in a cannabis plantation in Wales?" She smiled, grimly. "It was a camper van in Cornwall," she said, "but you've got the right idea."
     
                  It wasn't Tolkien's fault, but let us remember in fellowship and sympathy all the Bilboes out there.
     

Oh lord, who keeps track of this stuff? In the UK, once an author has reached a certain level of availability, requests to write something "which will only take a few minutes of your time" sleet in endlessly from newspapers. They're known in the busines s as "My Favourite Spoon" items, and someone somewhere thinks they are good publicity. But a light-hearted survey to find the nation's favourite word was part of the hype for a large British literary festival a few years ago, and this was mine. * ( *I manage d to get it on the first page of The Wee Free Men, too. I can't remember what the nation's favourite word turned out to be. It was probably "Beckham." )
     
     
     
     
     
T he C hoice W ord
     
                  I like the fortuitous onomatopoeia of words for soundless things. Gleam, glint , glitter, glisten ... they all sound exactly as the light would sound if it made a noise. Glint is sharp and quick, it glints, and if an oily surface made a noise it would go glisten. And bliss sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate.
     
                  But I' ll plump for:
     
     
                  SUSURRATION
     
     
                  ... from the Latin susurruss, whisper or rustling, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It's the noise, in fact, made j ust after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.
     

Bookcase (W.H.Smith), 17 September 1991.
     
    They wanted about 4-500 words "on fantasy". Imagine the start of this being uttered in the same tone of voice Dr. Elizabeth All away uses to the recalcitrant grants committee in the movie Contact.
     
    Besides, it's true.
     
     
     
     
     
W hose F antasy A re Y ou?
     
                  You want fantasy? Here's one ... There's this species that lives on a planet a few miles above molten rock and a few miles below a va cuum that'd suck the air right out of them. They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface. As far as they can tell, there's nowhere else in the universe where they could st a y alive for ten seconds.
     
                  And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time? They call it real life. In a universe where it's known that whole galaxies can explode, they think there's things like "natural justice" and "destiny". Some of t hem even believe in democracy ...
     
                  I'm a fantasy writer, and even I find it all a bit hard to believe.
     
                  Me? I write about people who live on the Discworld, a world that's flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle. Readers think the books are funny — I can prove it, I get letters — because in this weird world, people live normal lives. They worry about the sort of things we worry about, like death, taxes, and not falling off. The Discworld is funny because everyone on it believes that they're i n real life. (They might be — the last I heard, physicists have discovered all these extra dimensions around the place which we can't see because they're rolled up small; and you don't believe in giant world-carrying turtles?) There are no magic swords or m ighty quests. There are just people like us, give or take the odd pointy hat, trying to make sense of it all.