Source of book: Audiobook borrowed from my brother.
The younger three kids and I just got back from an epic camping trip of nearly two weeks and 3000 miles of towing. (And also between 50 and 60 miles of hiking, depending on the kid.) Because of that long period spent in the car, we listened to five audiobooks. I’ll try to get those reviewed over the next week or so. This is the third one.
Regular readers of this blog will know that we love Terry Pratchett, and that he has been a big part of our road trips for a number of years. A full list is at the bottom of this post.
We are almost done with the audiobooks my brother was able to find on CD over the last few years. The good news is that a project is underway to re-record ALL of the Discworld books, using multiple narrators, and keeping the books intact as fully unabridged. This is, to say the least, fabulous news. While the classic Nigel Planer, Stephen Briggs, and Celia Imrie recordings are excellent, they are unfortunately difficult to find, particularly for the books in the middle of the series. With a resurgence in popularity for Pratchett, perhaps because of the success of Good Omens, the will appears to be there to create a definitive set available for all. While I have yet to listen to any of the new ones, friends who have give them a hearty thumbs up.
Raising Steam is the last completed novel by Pratchett before his death. Technically, The Shepherd’s Crown is the last, but it was not entirely finished before its posthumous publication. This book is in the “industrial revolution” series, like The Truth, but also features the reformed con-artist-turned-bureaucrat Moist von Lipwig as a central character.
There are two basic threads in the plot which intersect repeatedly through the book. The first is the creation of the first locomotive and eventually railway network in Discworld, connecting Ankh-Morpork with other cities and countries within the “European” sector of the disc. The second is the rise of ethno-fundamentalism among the dwarves, leading to internecine conflict, terrorism, and calls for genocide of the goblins and trolls.
Okay, so how does all this come about, and how does it fit together?
To start with, Dick Simnel, a young engineer, decides to carry on the work of his late father in developing a working steam engine. Simnel Senior blew himself up in the attempt, but Dick figures he has a few things his father didn’t: knowledge of mathematics and a seemingly magical device called a “sliding ruler.” Using his ability to reduce the awesome power of steam pressure to numbers, Dick makes safety relief valves the centerpiece of his work, along with pressure gauges and carefully calculated strengths. As a result, his contraption doesn’t blow up.
Meanwhile, unrest is brewing in the Dwarf homeland of Uberwald. (Also home to vampires and Lord Vetinari’s mistress.) Young Dwarves are leaving the mines to find work in the multicultural Mecca of Ankh-Morpork. And so are Trolls and Goblins, the old enemies of the Dwarves. Worse yet, the Goblins are turning out to be highly skilled at certain professions, particularly the new telegraph system, the Clack, causing the Dwarves to feel they are being potentially “displaced” by people they thought were their inferiors. Worst yet, the next generation is growing up in that melting pot, and takes for granted having friends who are Goblins and Trolls and even Humans.
For some Dwarves, this is the potential end of the world, and they - the Grags - form an ethno-fundamentalist group, built around the worship of their god, Tac, and calling for racial and cultural purity.
So, does this sound familiar yet? I mean, it fits Wahhabist Islam pretty well. But also American White Evangelicalism. I cannot overstate just how brilliant Pratchett is in repurposing the rhetoric from these extremist groups in our own world and using it in Discworld. I wanted to quote whole passages at length, honestly.
So how do the stories intersect? Well, Dick is just an engineer, and he needs a capitalist to put up the funds to actually get a railroad running. So, he sells his idea to the ever-amusing shit magnate (literally) Harry King, who sees a chance to not only expand his wealth, but also create a legacy that smells a bit better than his core business.
The initial demonstration of the locomotive - Iron Girder (say it like a female name, and you have the idea) - brings out crowds, and lots of attention, and word of it gets to Lord Vetinari, who is intrigued and concerned.
To make sure that the City is able to properly leverage the new invention, Vetinari decides to send Moist von Lipwig to keep an eye on it, and keep it in line. Moist is the perfect man for the job. As a former criminal, he knows a thing or two very useful to a capitalist enterprise. (He has already been instrumental in the rise of banking and the post office.) For one thing, he can….negotiate. And negotiation becomes a key necessity when it comes to convincing a skeptical public of the utility of the railroad, and, crucially, negotiation rights of way. (Discworld apparently doesn’t have indigenous peoples who can be easily displaced along the route.)
To assist in the key corporate issues, King and Lipwig bring in Thunderbolt, a troll who has become a highly skilled lawyer. These four then are able to work together to make the enterprise a success.
But one other thing: Moist is married to Adora Belle, who is a bit of a proto-Eleanor Roosevelt sort. She has made friends with the Goblins who man the nearby Clacks tower, and is able to bring on a group of them to assist with the railroad - and specifically the laying of a line across a neighboring country, Quirm (essentially France) - which involves taking out the gangsters that rule the wastes (Harry’s goons do that) and enlisting the now liberated Goblins in the enterprise.
Meanwhile, the Grags have decided that since progress is bad, and Goblins are bad, they should be burning the Clacks towers, destroying the railroad, and murdering the workers for both.
The Low King of the Dwarves, a progressive sort who sees resisting progress as certain cultural death for Dwarvekind, is off on a diplomatic trip to Quirm, when the Grag leader stages a coup and declares himself leader of the Dwarves - and death to infidels, of course.
Vetinari realizes that this jeopardizes the carefully negotiated truce among peoples - as well as his own legacy as a peacemaker - and decides on a bold plan. Moist von Lipwig is informed that the railroad will be transporting the Low King back to Uberwald. This will both head off the coup and give Vetinari a seeming miracle. And, perhaps, the railroad will rake in the profits as a result.
Getting this done is not easy, of course, because the railroad is not, technically speaking, completed. And also the Grags are determined to stop it and murder anyone who stands in the way. It is up to Dick and his army of engineers to take care of the technical stuff and run the train through. It is up to Harry to provide the muscle to go along with the very motivated Goblins in defending the train. It is up to Moist to iron out the diplomatic difficulties - and pitch in to fight when necessary. And to perhaps commit an illegal act or two if all else fails.
At the risk of major spoilers, I have to note one final theme which comes into play late in the book. Dwarves, as is commonly known within the fantasy world, are not all male. But, because they all have beards, and form a fairly chauvinist society, nobody knows who the females are. And that includes other Dwarves.
So, near the end, the Low King “comes out,” so to speak, as a woman…and a pregnant one at that. This is shocking, of course, but the result is that a number of other important Dwarves likewise come out as female, with the defeat of the Grags leading to a society that is more egalitarian in more than one way.
I want to hit a few highlights in the quotes, of course.
“I have to ask, sir...Why does it have to be done like this?"
Vetinari smiled. "Can you keep a secret, Mister Lipwig?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I've kept lots."
"Capital. And the point is, so can I. You do not need to know.”
Lord Vetinari is in so many ways the Machiavellian ideal of a despot. He wields pretty absolute power, but he knows that he can only retain that power by being the consummate politician. He is ruthless, indomitable, and calculating. But he also reads people - and The People - really well. So he rarely has to use his despotic power, relying instead on more subtle pressures and manipulations - and also on allowing a significant amount of freedom. In this book, he notes that he could simply outlaw railroads or otherwise prevent them from happening. For now, at least. But he decides instead that whatever he personally thinks about progress, the wise ruler learns to work with it, and channel it as needed.
“The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available.”
Just one of the fascinating lines in this book that very much parallels our own world. The railroads played a huge role in creating a global world - and also in leveling the cost of experience, which led in turn to the rise of organized labor and the final end of feudalism. There is no way to mention all the Easter Eggs in this book, but fortunately, someone already did it on the Discworld Wiki. I should also mention Railroaded: The Transcontinentals, if you want to read up on railroads in our own world – specifically the great American railroad project.
Several quotes come to mind regarding the Grags, the ethno-fundamentalists.
“I understand the ways of people and the way of the world. Everything is mutable. Nothing is unchangeable. A little give and a little take and a little negotiation, and suddenly the balance of the world is back on track again; that is what politics is for. But the politics of the grags consists only of ‘Do what you are told, we know best.”
That is literally the mantra of Fundamentalism here in the US - including a majority of the US Supreme Court now. No negotiation, or accommodating competing interests. Just “we win, ha ha ha.” The problem when you forsake politics as the means of resolving issues is that you end up with “politics by other means.”
“However much we disdain the word ‘politics,’ one of its most useful aspects is the stopping of bloodshed.”
The problem that the Religious Right in the US is finding is the same that the Grags had: if there is any other alternative to be seen, people find them. It is extremely difficult to form a truly closed society where nothing from outside gets in - in fact, it seems to either require becoming an impoverished hermit kingdom (North Korea) or a petro/mineral-state, where the only source of income from outside is oil or metals. (The Middle East and parts of Africa.) Otherwise, control is at best a delusion.
“The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing.”
I also have to mention a line that I couldn’t find online for some reason. There is a scene when a Grag tries to sabotage Iron Girder (who seems to have become sentient), only to be vaporized by steam. Death reaps the pink cloud, and the Dwarf realizes he is dead. He tries to cheer himself up with the idea that Tac is going to reward him, but Death knows better. Recall that in the Discworld, you get the kind of afterlife you believe in….according to the actual rules of your religion, though. So, Vorbis the Exquisitor finds he is facing judgment according to the harsh standards he has judged others by. Mr. Pin latches on to the belief that if he has a potato, he will be reincarnated. And so he is…as a potato that gets fried into crisps.
Death turns to the dead Dwarf and says, “Tac may be….merciful.”
This is the thing. So many white Evangelicals/Fundamentalists have chosen to follow not just the spirit of Matthew 25, but even the very letter of the law to get themselves sent to hell. They could not do a better job if they made a life study of it. I have no idea what I believe about an afterlife these days - if one even exists. But the most satisfying one looks like a combination of what Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have envisioned in their fiction. It would be justice if people had to be judged by the standards they insist on judging others (hey, someone famous said that?) And justice would also require some sort of purification and restitution process, otherwise victims would have to just live with their abusers in unchanged form.
There were also so many good lines on progress, and how everything new was once suspicious, before becoming old and necessary. Pratchett can’t resist some great wordplay, of course.
“And in this doleful mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here to stay. Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler?”
“New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world.”
Not all Discworld novels get into European politics, but this one does. Uberwald is kind of a mashup of Eastern European stereotypes, from “Transylvania” to the Czech Republic. But in this one, it is fun to hear about Quirm, which gives Pratchett a chance to (good naturedly) poke fun at the French in the grand British tradition.
“When the humours were handed out, Ankh-Morpork got the one for joking and Quirm had to make do with their expertise in fine dining and love-making.”
And, I have have to end with one of my favorite lines in all of Discworld:
“Don’t force me to draw my own conclusions. I do have a very big pencil.”
In context, this is when “drawing conclusions” is definitely a matter of understanding the obvious implications of someone’s actions, not an attempt to avoid thinking. So the line is more of an accusation than anything else. I think I will have to start using it for myself.
I have yet to listen to or read a Pratchett book I didn’t like. This one was a lot of fun, hilarious at times, but with the usual more serious themes. Pratchett comes down firmly on the side of multiculturalism and equality. And of everyone being “people.” To him, Dwarf and Goblin and Troll and Human - it’s all just “people” - and if people spent less time obsessing over their racial, ethnic, and cultural identities - and instead just, well, lived them, the world would be a better place. As his progressive Dwarves note, they are not somehow less “Dwarf” because they accept and support other peoples. In fact, they are in many ways more “Dwarf” because they are free to celebrate the good of their culture without trying to “defend” it, or preserve some imaginary quality of “purity.”
In our troubled times, where the Grags seem to be winning, for now at least, writers like Pratchett enable us to have a vision for a better future.
***
The Terry Pratchett list:
Rincewind:
Tiffany Aching:
Witches:
Watch:
Guards! Guards! (Stupid abridged edition, which is an abomination.)
Industrial Revolution:
Other Discworld:
Non-Discworld:
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