What happens to magic in a world ruled by logic?
The second novel in Terry Pratchett’s The Science of Discworld-series is set to appear in the US on 20 January 2015. Co-written with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, The Globe shows you what happens when wizards mess with magic, especially when they create alternate universes!
The wizards of Unseen University didn’t quite know what they were getting themselves into when they first created Roundworld. In a world filled with humans, elves and other ghastly creatures, it’s once again up to our unsung heroes Rincewind and the Librarian to save the day. Together with Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons they travel to the Dark Ages to set humanity straight, or to try in any case.
Tor shared an extract from the first chapter of The Globe. Rincewind receives a message of elves entering Roundworld and certain doom that is sure to follow. Read the extract:
ONE
Message in a Bottle
In the airy, crowded silence of the forest, magic was hunting magic on silent feet.A wizard may be safely defined as a large ego which comes to a point at the top. That is why wizards do not blend well. That would mean looking like other people, and wizards do not wish to look like other people. Wizards aren’t other people.
And therefore, in these thick woods, full of dappled shade, new growth and birdsong, the wizards who were in theory blending in, in fact blended out. They’d understood the theory of camouflage – at least they’d nodded when it was being explained – but had then got it wrong.
For example, take this tree. It was short, and it had big gnarly roots. There were interesting holes in it. The leaves were a brilliant green. Moss hung from its branches. One hairy loop of grey-green moss, in particular, looked rather like a beard. Which was odd, because a lump in the wood above it looked rather like a nose. And then there was a blemish in the wood that could have been eyes …
But overall this was definitely a tree. In fact, it was a lot more like a tree than a tree normally is. Practically no other tree in the forest looked so tree-like as this tree. It projected a sensation of extreme barkness, it exuded leafidity. Pigeons and squirrels were queuing up to settle in the branches. There was even an owl. Other trees were just sticks with greenery on compared to the sylvanic verdanity of this tree…
Book details
- The Globe by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
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EAN: 9780804168960
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