This is an experiment. I wonder if anyone will stop in? I'll keep bumping it, maybe it'll catch on. (Or maybe I'm just talking to myself. Wouldn't be the first time...)

I, also, just started reading the Disk World books. I've only read three so far (the first two and the Santa Death one).

Just like Adams' books, I find that I can only take so much of them. But they are splendid to read. I plan on reading more (and going to try to read them in order of printing)

Right now, I am revisiting DUNE. I am just finishing Brian Herberts 1st prequel and plan on reading the whole series through...

I've never heard of Diskworld, but since I've never seen you post an article I thought I would just give a fun bump!

First post from a long time lurker. I have read and reread all the diskworld books. It is my favorite series, always a good mood lightner. Here is a webpage that lists all of his books and annotates them. I found this helpful in explaining some of his more subtle references. http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html

I have read every Discworld novel currently available over here and two which my bookstore happened to have imported from Canada. They're not Tolkien, but they are a good way to relax, very funny, and once in a while, a bit more than that. My sister and I have argued whether or not Death is the coolest character in the books (I admit that I lean toward the Unseen University staff, collectively, as my favorites.)

All the Discworld books are funny but I'd advise first time readers to start with, say, "Hogfather", or "Guards! Guards!" as the first three novels (especially the third, which was just kind of boring) are a bit slow.

I've all the novels. I've ordered the Mapps.
He's the only author who can make me laugh out loud in public while I read his work.

My favorite characters are:
The Bursar
Death Of Rats
Bill Door (Death)
and:
Commander Vimes

I like trying to figure out all the little jokes and literary references. I believe the three Discworld books I do not have will be published early next year - the publisher is bringing them out, three at a time, every six months or so. BTW, have you seen the new illustrated book, "The Last Hero"? For $35, it's a bit expensive, but if you're at all a quick reader. it's not as long as a usual novel so you can read it at the bookstore. Very impressive artistry in that one.

I was introduced to them when I re-upped with the SF book club after several years of not being subscribed to it. One of the "featured selections" was a compendium of the first four novels which featured Rincewind the Wizzard. That was a great introduction. From that point I find I have not been "on the outside" of the in jokes in the subsequent novels I have read.

Aside from the first four, I've read "Mort," "Hogfather," "Grim Reaper," "Thief of Time" (which I believe is the most recent) and am now reading "The Truth."

I never get tired of his stuff. It's simply impossible, because he has the knack of Shakespeare, to change the mood just as you are settling in to the prevailing one.

They are always comical, but by turns absurdly, ironically, mordantly, darkly, and spritely comical. His evil characters are DARKLY comical. His goofy characters are clowns.

He deals with "heavy" and "light" subjects with equal facility.

Collective Bump and Flag!

My sense.........Pratchett aspires to be a latter day Jonathan Swift.
Plot devices utilized as social commentary woven into fantastical worlds, characters, stories......

Along with Niven's Ringworld series and Chalker's Well of Souls line. Also the Childe,(Childe Rolin to the dark tower knock-off) series from, uh? crap, senior moment. Wrapping social commentary into the plot-line is the mirror used to shine light onto the authors politics and philosophy. Check out Heinlein's Lazarous Long stuff also.

I haven't heard of the discworld series, but I'll check it out. DA is a riot, what is the answer?

I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right. Of course Pratchett has the advantage of a Late Twentieth Century education, including knowing intricate details about Hindu mythology (which is where the "flat world on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle" thing came from, IIRC).

But his send-up of a lot of things we hold to be "fundamental" is just so funny, it really illuminates just how comical a lot of things we take for granted--like children's lives being gay and whimsical, or the powerful and wealthy having gotten there by being especially clever.

Discworld is unlike the other series you've mentioned--which are for the most part intended to be serious, not really satyrical. Even Lazarus Long is firmly grounded in reality for all the "fantasy" about a bunch of folks that live for many, many centuries.

The funny thing about Discworld is, since it's set in a "parallel universe"--the hook is that it is a Universe "very far out on the edge of the probability curve"--you run across all sorts of things that are "familiar" but alien at the same time, like the "Hogfather" who travels the world every Hogswatch Night, driving his sleigh pulled by huge tusked boar-hogs, bringing gifts to good children.

Or death as the "Grim Reaper," bound up in the fate of each individual human but totally NOT human himself, always trying to figure people out.

All together with trolls and dwarves to make you think you're in "Shannara", except these trolls and dwarves are unionized.

Just fabulous, rich-textured stuff. I cannot get enough of 'em! Luckily, unlike most of my favorite writers--Niven, Vernor Vinge, Michael Shea--Pratchett is about the MOST prolific SF/Fantasy author out there! By the time I finally get caught up with him, he'll likely have written five or six more!

Wrapping social commentary into the plot-line is the mirror
used to shine light onto the authors politics and philosophy.

......and also to cause social change.....

The formost utilizer of fiction as social commentary?

Charles Dickens - who caused massive social change in mid-Victorian England with exposes of child labor,
degradation of the poor - in poignant, powerful stories - A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and so many others.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right.

Thank you, kind sir.

Of course Pratchett has the advantage of a Late Twentieth Century education.......

.....such is the world ever turning on its axis - a continuing panorma -
.....newer, more polished perspectives from one generation to another -
.... each contributing his/her worth....fascinating, isn't it?

The only book I've read of his is a novel called Good Omens about the end times co-written with Neil Gaiman.
Beyond a doubt, the funniest book I have ever read.

Never heard of 'em.

I read mostly non-fiction books, but I will give Discworld a shot.