The Truth: (Discworld Novel 25) (Discworld Novels)

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There are over 40 books in the Discworld series, of which four are written for children. The first of these, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal.

William de Worde has somehow found himself editor of Ankh-Morpork's first newspaper. Well, with a name like that… The line "...what would it do to the pie?" is a reference to the cooking in the previous sentence but also refers to printer pie, a term for jumbled-up type, which will be sorted for the next job or recast into new type. While the ploy works, it is touch-and-go for a minute or two--the New Firm's employers neglects to tell Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip that Vetinari "moves like a snake" and has been trained at the Assassins' Guild. They improvise, stabbing Vetinari's clerk, Drumknott, and pushing their Vetinari look-a-like into the hallway to "confess". If we don’t make an effort all they’ll get is silly ... stories about talking dogs and Elves Ate My Gerbil, so don’t give me lectures on what’s important and what’s not, understand? ... and I might add, about humorous vegetables! William uses the gems on Mr. Pin's person to help the Dwarves buy a new press, and then confronts his father, Lord de Worde, at his mansion, almost getting captured. Otto Chriek, his vampire iconographer, saves him though, despite nearly falling victim to his species' bloodlust, and lets Lord de Worde go.Deep Bone says, "Could be, could be, could very well be". This line is a parallel to the lines from the Monty Pythons "Candid Photography (Nudge Nudge Wink Wink)" sketch. Pratchett uses another reference to Monty Pythons when they are reviewing the "dogs" being delivered to the newspaper office and have to point out to the owners that some are cats and one is a parrot. However, there would be days, when the mood was right, when Terry would tell me to open the memoir file, and he would do an afternoon on the autobiography, him dictating, me typing. At the point at which we ran out of time, the file had grown to just over 24,000 words, rough-hewn, disjointed, awaiting the essential polish that Terry would never be in a position to give them. He was intending to call the book A Life With Footnotes. Terry often talked about “doing” his autobiography. In the years before he was ill, he talked about it almost exclusively to dismiss the idea. He didn’t seem persuaded that there was anything in the story of the journey that took a kid from a council house in Beaconsfield to a knighthood and a mansion near Salisbury by the sheer power of his imagination alone; or in the tale of how a boy with, as Terry put it, “a mouthful of speech impediments” became one of his generation’s most popular communicators; or how someone who left school with five O-levels could also go on to have an honorary professorship at Trinity College Dublin. And besides, there were always other things waiting to be written – bigger stories in which far more outlandish and arresting things were free to happen.

In this, his twenty-fifth Discworld novel, Pratchett turns his pen on, well, the pen. Or, rather, the press, and its power to disseminate and create the truth. The lesser son of one of Ankh most privileged families, William de Worde a struggling scribe, hits on the brilliant idea of producing his upper-crust newsletter with a newfangled printing press. After the two return to the office, William learns of Lord Vetinari's reinstatement, and asks Sacharissa out. Afterwords, Mr. Tulip, reincarnated as a woodworm, comments on the "-ing good wood." But then he thought about it more seriously. “I wish I had started writing for a living earlier,” he said eventually. “I could probably have started to write full time about 10 years before I did.”Zer philosopher Heidehollen tells us zat the universe is just a cold soup of time, all time mixed up together, and vot we call zer passage of time is merely qvantum fluctuations in zer fabric of space-time.” Gaspode's alias, "Deep Bone" comes from Deep Throat, the anonymous informer who leaked information to the Press.

In fact, I might just use this as a replacement habit to give up swearing, since my son's been begging me to. Kind of a nicotine patch for potty-mouths. William de Worde thinks to himself, "You've got to move with the Times" (capitalized as a reference to both time and his newspaper. The headline for the newspaper "The Truth Shall Make Ye Free" is from the bible - John 8:32: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Sacharissa is dismissive of the motto saying, "I think its just a quote." Later on as things get more complex a type setting error changes this line to "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret" and still later it becomes "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fred".The Ankh-Morpork City Watch characters also appear in this novel, but have limited roles and are seen mainly from de Worde's perspective which is not a flattering one. C.M.O.T. Dibbler also puts in an appearance. The opening line regarding rumour spreading like wild fire particularly since Ankh-Morpork had discovered fire insurance is a reference to the Colour of Magic when TwoFlower sells insurance to the owner of the Broken Drum only to have him set fire to the whole city in an attempt to collect on the policy. Later on when there is a fire, Pratchett points out the the Ankh-Morporkians were averse to Fire Brigades because they figured that if they were being paid to put out fires this would give them an incentive to start them. In the early days of Fire Brigades, this was in fact the case. The line, 'Every day, in every vay, ve get better and better.' comes from one of the first positive-thinking mantras, coined by Emile Coue (1857-1926), French psychotherapist and pharmacist. Coue's study of hypnotism convinced him that auto-suggestion could cure anything but actual results showed no improvement. The line has come to represent trite and simplistic solutions to complex problems and is parodied in countless literature and film. Newspapers invade the Discworld. After a while it becomes clear that articles don’t always need to necessarily tell the whole truth to sell newspapers. But when a plot to overthrow Lord Vetinari threatens to shake up Ankh-Morpork, they realize only the truth can save them. Mr. Tulip used his head all the time, from a distance of about eight inches" - a reference to the standard head butting tactic of this type of streetwise thug.

Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. [...] William de Worde had sent a periodical newsletter to influential people all over the Discworld for some time, employing wood engravers to set the words to paper. But when industrious movable type setter dwarf Goodmountain and crew provide an inexpensive and efficient way to mass produce the letter on a daily basis, the Ankh-Morpork Times is born.

In 2008, Harper Children's published Terry's standalone non-Discworld YA novel, Nation. Terry published Snuff in October 2011. Pin is a short, fast talking foxy character while Tulip is a brawny monster who kills. This pairing of little guy / big guy toughs is a frequent device in literature and it was fun to see how Pratchett employs the concept. Pratchett says, that traditional minded dwarfs "took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business." This is a variation on the famous quote by Canadian Prime Minister (then Minister of Justice) Pierre Elliot Trudeau in regard to homosexuals that, "The State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation." The line "bedrooms of the nation" was actually credited by Trudeau to Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Martin O'Malley. There’s just too many people in the city,” Mr. Windling repeated. “I’ve nothing against .... outsiders, heavens know, but Vetinari let it go far too far. Everyone knows we need someone who is prepared to be a little more firm.” William de Word doesn't want to live the way his family has for generations. Instead, he lives in Ankh-Morpork and got a job. While he pays his bills by writing letters to different people from different other places he comes across a few industrious (see what I did there? ;P) dwarves who have invented a rather advanced printing press. Thus the Ankh-Morpork Times is born. The problem is not that paper is now used to spread stories; the problem is that de Word believes in the truth and only reports about actual events.