Discworld Rules
270 comments
·March 8, 2025ledauphin
DennisP
Exactly. Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron."
> What I have a problem with is people trying to live forever as part of a Chosen One script which involves them trying to carve up all of the world into the dead empires of a dystopian Great Game world run according to a totalizing script.
I'm confident Tolkien would agree.
I also think any evaluation of LoTR should take into account Tolkien's background as a veteran of the trenches in WWI. In 2025 America, maybe that makes LoTR seem less relevant to our world. To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.
t-3
> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.
You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with, especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano?
The black-and-white starkness of LotR is what makes it unfit for use as an analogy to the real world! There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing, even if it may be a comforting and inspiring story to tell ourselves.
variaga
>> To someone living in Ukraine, it probably feels like a much closer fit.
> You may be right, but is it a better fit? Is there any hope left when you face overwhelming hordes of evil orcs that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with
"The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate? ... I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid men sound Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter.
'I will ride with you', said Aragorn"
-The Two Towers
Seems like it fits to me...
m4rtink
For one the demographic curve for the Russia vs the Orcs is much more dire - it was bad already when they started the senseless war and it is much worse now. Their soldiers are not made in spawning pits & they will run out of the willing/forceable sooner or later. With all the consequences for their country which they gambled for the imperial fever dream.
Muromec
>especially when there's no convenient ring to throw in a volcano?
We tossed the ring away in the 90ies, it turned out to be not the smartest idea
lolinder
> There is very rarely ever a situation in which Good vs Evil is a correct or useful framing
This may or may not be true, but Ukraine vs. Putin is absolutely one of those times where it's 100% accurate and useful.
Putin invaded Ukraine unprovoked, motivated by visions of restoring an empire to its former glory. He cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be appeased. The only hope that any of the formerly-occupied countries have is to defeat him, and any and all efforts to make the issue appear to be more grayscale than that will necessarily lead to disappointment and to further wars and bloodshed.
DennisP
Aside from the lack of convenient ring I'd say that sometimes it's quite a useful framing. To avoid derailing into politics I'll use Nazi Germany as another example.
swiftcoder
> Here for example, the author's point seems to just be "don't be Sauron."
Sadly, it seems like this particular point was missed by several prominent tech folks who took notes from LotR...
notahacker
A more accurate reading of LOTR would give us startups with names like Nazgul and Saruman...
Quite apart from not wanting people to try to be Sauron, Tolkein just didn't like industry very much.
wat10000
One could instead take the point to be, if you’re Sauron, keep a better hold on your ring.
jon_richards
My favorite analysis of lotr is this:
> good does not need to destroy evil; good needs only to resist evil, and when it does that, evil destroys itself
xandrius
In LotR, good did indeed destroy evil (or rather its boss) by destroying the one ring.
lolinder
No. Good took the ring all the way to Mount Doom, resisting its Evil all the way up until the end, and then once more the Good person failed to destroy the Ring. Frodo stood at the precipice and took the Ring for himself.
The only way the Ring was destroyed was by accident when Gollum attacked Frodo to claim the Ring. The Evil that the ring stoked in the hearts of those it touched is what ended up destroying it in the end, not the Good people who took it to Mount Doom.
Cornbilly
If you read Tolkien’s other works, you’ll find that evil cannot be destroyed as Melkor/Morgoth corrupted the very nature of the world and that evil will remain until the end of the world.
vitus
> and who then go right back home where they belong, dismissing any notion of chosenness
Well, except for Aragorn, who turns out to be the true king of Gondor.
allturtles
Aragorn can't defeat Sauron, though, and he knows it. His role in the final victory is to distract Sauron, who assumes that the ring will be used against him by a "somebody" like Aragorn, rather than destroyed by nobodies.
hollerith
And Gandalf, who is not a man, but rather an angelic being or minor god (Maiar) sent to Middle Earth to oppose Sauron.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
Their point seems to be strengthened by these facts. The story is about these people without any inherently powerful qualities performing a duty and going home without aggrandizing themselves. The fact that this happens in a world which has a “true King of Gondor” and these angel-wizards drives home how mundane and down-to-Middle-Earth Hobbits are.
Swizec
> And Gandalf, who is not a man, but rather an angelic being (Maiar) sent to Middle Earth to sort out Sauron
But that’s just what all wizards are and always have been. It’s the only way to be a wizard. It isn’t, like, a hidden fact or anything. Wizard is a race not a profession. Like elf or dwarf or hobbit.
protocolture
I think its got to do more with the whole "Im a sad king in exile" thing Aragorn has going on rather than the hobbits story.
lukev
This exactly.
Interesting to note that Peter Thiel has never named a company "Hobbiton"
kulahan
The entire LOTR trilogy is meant to be “unapologetically Christian”. The intended point was basically the concept of having a cross to bear, as well as the importance of apost— er, friends.
null
majormajor
There's a whole lot more going on in the story than just the hobbits.
And I think movie-LOTR-fans in particular are there at least as much for the Great Big Hero Chosen People Of Destiny aspects and battles as for the hobbits.
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I have a rule-of-thumb: The more seriously you take Discworld, the smarter you get about Roundworld.
Oh come off it.
I've read all the Discworld novels. I've also read every other book that Terry Pratchett ever wrote [1]. All, that is, except for one that I've left for... later [2].
If Pratchett were still with us and heard anyone making such pompous statements about Discworld he'd slap the culprit in the face [3]. See, the thing to understand about Terry Pratchett is that he was quintessentially British, and by that I mean the good British [4]. As such his greatest fear was that someone might take what he wrote seriously and try to follow it like some kind of life advice.
Remember what he quipped when he was knighted for "services to literature":
"I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any"
______________
[1] Yes, even "Where's my Cow?".
[2] Problem is, I don't remember which one so I'll have to read them all again to be sure. Hey, win-win.
[3] Gently. He was a gentle man.
[4] Think Lord Byron, not Lord Elgin. But without all the drinking and womanising, just the big heart.
qqqult
4 foot notes?
This guy Pratchetts.
swyx
god i love the way you write. you Get Pratchett more than vgr.
you dont seem to have a blog. please have a blog.
crowselect
As someone who deeply loves LOTR - if you try to apply the rules of LOTR to this world, you will make this world worse. This is true. Inheritance and monarchy does not make for a good government, and we know this.
But LOTR is about vibes not facts. Friendship, loyalty, hope, doing the right thing with what power you have, appreciating what is good and green and gentle in the world, etc.
> the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld
The more seriously you take the rules of LOTR, yes. But you can take LOTR seriously without taking the rules seriously - by taking the vibes seriously.
fc417fc802
> Inheritance and monarchy does not make for a good government, and we know this.
Monarchy makes for some of both the best and worst governments on record. The problem isn't that you can't get good results, but rather the extreme variance.
quink
Which can be mitigated by making the monarch powerless.
I’m in Australia and the Trump presidency will be the thing for the next century that we can point to and say that this is why we are not going to ever, ever, ever get rid of the king or queen, in favour of a local president. I suspect that Canada and other countries feel much the same.
etothepii
I agree that Monarchs are great if they realise their long term legacy is best served by doing very little-to-nothing but still bringing the Prime Minister to account once a week (the A/UK/CA/NZ evolutionary model). However, even the ceremonial power is proving problematic in a world where the government of UK wants King of UK to have Trump for tea and the government of CA wants King of CA to spit in it.
cyberax
> Monarchy makes for some of both the best and worst governments on record.
The best monarchs were the ones deposed by the revolutionaries, or the ones who abdicated the real power. There are 2 problems:
1. _Nobody_ should be ruling for more than 8-10 years.
2. You can't have a real monarchy without feudalism. And feudalism _always_ sucks.
quink
lol. I lived under the same monarch, QEII, who has ruled for seventy years, and I assure you that I and my compatriots feel far, far, freer in practice and guided more well than any single American ought to feel currently.
crowselect
[flagged]
Ichthypresbyter
Or to a slave in a Republic (whether that's the Confederacy, Rome or Athens).
paulddraper
LOTR+universe was meant to be a mythology for Western Europe. Purposefully impractical/fantastical.
King Arthur vibes. Royalty, wizards, magical objects, heros and villains, destiny, romance, fealty, etc.
But obviously dispensing swords from lakes is no sound system basis for government.
tombert
At least in the Once and Future King, the only real King Arthur story that I've read, I got the impression that Arthur pulling the sword from the stone was more of a metaphor of him "being ready" to be king more than just genealogy or anything like that.
When Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone, he was remembering all the stuff that Merlyn taught him about the different ways that animals run their societies and how it informed how he would lead if he were in charge.
That might be TH White's flavoring to it though.
paulddraper
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Howard Pyle) is in my mind the most "classic" King Arthur telling. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_King_Arthur_and_H...
andrepd
It's also notably light on the "prosaic" aspects. It just says that elves "dwelt" here and made a kingdom there. But as GRRM said: what was Aragorn's tax policy?
ChrisMarshallNY
I always loved Sir Terry's depictions of Ankh-Morpork.
It was a crazy, deeply dysfunctional city, full of crazy, dysfunctional people, but he obviously loved it, and the reader ends up loving the city, as well.
I think that's a fairly accurate way to look at the world around us.
I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI, so I'd argue that LOTR actually has some fairly significant reflection on the real world.
rsynnott
China Mieville’s “Perdido Street Station” is also worth reading. It’s set in, essentially, a _bad_ Ankh Morpork; like Ankh Morpork it’s a vast chaotic fantasy city (both are probably based on London) but New Crobuzon is _nightmarish_.
(I’ve always been curious to what if any extent one influenced the other; Discworld is older, but Ankh Morpork gets fleshed out a lot later. Given how small a world UK sci-fi/fantasy is they’d almost certainly have been aware of each others’ work.)
robertlagrant
> I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI
Yes, and the general impinging of mechanisation and automation on rural life.
ChrisMarshallNY
From all accounts, Mordor seems to be a more pleasant place, than 1916 Somme.
Animats
The author alludes to a general problem with popular culture - the cult of the Chosen One.
Pixar has some in-house rules for stories. One of them is:
Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___
That sums up a Chosen One story. Chosen One protagonists do not work their way up. They are special snowflakes.
Star Wars is an extreme case of Chosen One popular culture. So is the Marvel Overextended Universe. (Note that Star Trek is not. Starfleet people start at the bottom and work up.) The top 8 highest grossing films of all time, unadjusted for inflation, [1] are all Chosen One movies.
Overexposure to Chosen One stories predisposes people to look for a Strong Leader, one who is somehow special. This seems to be a problem. Historically, the United States didn't work that way, having rebelled against a European monarchy which did. But I digress.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films
ViktorRay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
The stories you are talking about, also known as The Monomyth, have been part of every recorded culture and civilization.
It seems that the Chosen One stuff is not a result of stories. It is a fundamental part of our species and that is reflected in our most popular stories. From ancient times all the way to today.
YeGoblynQueenne
Allegedly. The monomyth has to be stretched very thin to fit over some of the greatest stories told by humans to each other.
Take the Iliad. Where's the monomyth? Achilles is an asshole, he gets into a fight with his boss, causes his bestie to get killed and then gets killed himself. There's a wooden horse. End of story.
No monomyth there, guv'nor.
Nor in the Odyssey. Smart guy wins the Trojan war with impossile stratagem. He pisses off the God of the Sea and takes 10 years to reach home, losing all his companions along the way. A little massacre to clear the air and they live happily ever after. End of story.
No monomyth.
I could go on. But, you know, that's the Iliad and the Odyssey. Should be enough.
dwighttk
no wooden horse in The Illiad
Detrytus
I fail to see how "Titanic" is a Chosen One story...
dyauspitr
I would love to read a story about a protagonist that is incompetent in spite of being earnest and trying hard.
karaterobot
> I won’t get into whether Discworld is better or worse as a fictional universe than Middle Earth.
"I won't get into which book is better, today I am only evaluating these books according to a set of rules I am making up, to see which succeeds at something neither author set out to achieve, and which most readers don't know or care about, and which is ultimately just an analogy for something else. Intrigued? Read on!"
bix6
Please don’t let the few who have co-opted LOTR ruin it for the rest of us. It is a shame though, I wear my Palantir shirt very infrequently now.
I’m currently on book 2 of Discworld and finding it ludicrously enjoyable. Its absurdity makes it feel like an antidote to many things.
It feels more fantasy than “hardest of hard sci fi” to me though? And I think the space suit was broken so is it a good model for tech?
rsynnott
The first few books are straight-up parody fantasy. The first one which even _verges_ on feeling like Discworld is the third, Equal Rites, but really you probably won’t see what he’s talking about til Wyrd Sisters and Guards, Guards if you read chronologically.
Macha
Yeah, the first two books especially were very clearly intended as "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but fantasy". They're a good read, but they're not quite what the series became
InkCanon
One of the marvelous things about Discworld is that although it is absurd, it is one of those logical abstractions of technology I've seen. For example he describes in an incredibly lifelike way the clacks system (basically a kind of internet) and it's many properties - the network effects of internet infrastructure, it's used in commerce, the importance of information, the "hackers" who manipulate it, etc. Discworld is almost really hard scifi sometimes.
dcminter
There were real semaphore systems used for communication. Then he layered a lot of early telegraph stuff on top of that, popped some of his own invention into the mix and finally used the rest to parody internet and mobile phones. It's magnificent really.
Speaking of sci fi - have you read Strata and Dark Side? They're pastiches of Asimov and Niven and so on, but he has some really neat ideas in there as well. I particularly like his notion of vacuum tube technology taken to its limits in Strata.
If ever I needed proof of the non-existence of a benign all powerful god then the fact that someone who loved writing that kind of intricate and clever sophisticated humour would be so cruelly struck down with Alzheimers would suffice.
"A life with footnotes", the biography of him by Rob Wilkins is excellent and very moving.
bloopernova
The Clacks, the Disorganiser, Dwarf-discovered Devices, and L-Space are all wonderful ideas. I'm a huge fan of the City Watch series, with Thud! being my absolute favourite.
I envy those reading the series for the first time!
Scarblac
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
One of the major recurring themes of r/discworld is that so much of the amazing ideas in Discworld were actually real things.
Tuna-Fish
To greatly oversimplify, the first 4 Discworld books are about fantasy. The ones after that are about other subjects, using the fantasy world of Discworld as a vehicle. And Pratchett really does this masterfully.
IsTom
> on book 2
All the books were written over span of 30+ years and they changed over the time during this.
travisgriggs
As I scroll through the various discworld commentaries here, one of the things I haven't seen surface much yet is Pratchett as a dialog artist. My dad and I were both discussing just the other day how we’re honestly happy just picking up any Discworld book, opening it anywhere, and having a listen on what the characters are saying to each other at the moment. I’m not sure what others have created dialogue like that. Maybe Michael Sullivan in his Theft of Swords series.
i_don_t_know
The dialogs and the interaction between characters are also driving the story in a natural way. It’s like those screwball comedies from the 30s (His Girl Friday etc). Pratchett had a good ear for how people talk, and he managed to put it on page.
There are no lengthy stilted lectures (characters explaining stuff to other characters) as in some other books by other authors, and only few (and usually short) descriptions of what happens when and then this and then that and then something else.
travisgriggs
“The more seriously you take Discworld, the smarter you get about Roundworld.”
Love that.
I love LoTR too. I would never feel the need to pick one OR the other. It’s not about WHICH. Much better to love BOTH. AND is the correct operator to place between these two great sets of works.
I think an under appreciated subset of Discworld is the Tiffany Aching series. If you really want to see Pratchett’s notions of “good morality” on display, these model it the best IMO.
Macha
> I think an under appreciated subset of Discworld is the Tiffany Aching series.
Yeah, the author indicates he skipped them, probably because of the YA moniker, but honestly, _maybe_ Wee Free Men exempted, they're equally as mature as any other discworld books, with really the only YA thing about them being their underage protagonist.
Scarblac
The main thing with his YA books is that the themes are darker and they're scarier than the regular stuff, imo.
dmd
My 10 year old - who has never really been exposed to religion, much less the 'WWJD' meme - told me a few months ago that when she wonders what she should do in a situation, she asks herself what Tiffany Aching would do.
zem
yeah the tiffany aching subseries is perhaps the most consistently good one. loved every book in it.
mulakosag
I don't think anybody is asking to choose one over the other. You can love both or either of them.
lolinder
TFA explicitly sets out to contrast the two:
> The Lord of the Rings on the other hand — the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld.
> ...
> The thought I began with, that The Lord of the Rings, whatever its merits as a fantasy tale, is brain-rot for the technological mind, is one that I find so obvious it feels barely worth stating.
It's honestly hard to read the piece because of how clearly visible the author's sneer towards those who love Tolkien is.
Ygg2
> The more seriously you take Discworld, the smarter you get about Roundworld.”
Depends where. Getting serious about Discworld would make you think thinking something makes it real. Which is a different set of crazy.
protocolture
I quite like the Most Von Lipwig stuff.
But honestly KJ Parkers novels are better again.
megadata
There are many ways of rightly praising Discword without sucker punching LOTR.
ggm
Tolkien himself said to beware allegorical readings. He said had he sought allegory, by book III the rings of power would have been seized for good or ill, and the Hobbits discarded as irrelevant or enslaved. Likewise the palentir (!)
Tolkien also faced extensive criticism from Christians for a non catholic fictive world, something he easily disregarded as trite. He was a loyal devout catholic in every respect.
His biography by Humphrey Carpenter goes into all this.
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, 1977
I'm equal parts amused and bewildered that this author with so many interesting thoughts has managed not to see what pretty much every other serious reader of Lord of the Rings has pointed out over decades - the entire story is about a weak and almost completely unknown set of people who were "chosen" only by the most inexplicable series of events anyone could imagine - who through no inherent power of their own manage to save the world by nothing more or less than the choice to be kind to a pitiful (though clearly treacherous) creature... and who then go right back home where they belong, dismissing any notion of chosenness beyond the ordinary sort where everyone is chosen to do what is good for their neighbors.
the Hobbits pursued not greatness or destiny, but took the only path toward life available to them and then returned to let the rest of the world get on with living.