Another Terry Pratchett banger. Mort takes awhile to get going but once it does it’s amazing until the very end. It’s Terry Pratchett’s combination of philosophical, political, ethical, cosmological ideas infused into (mostly) lighthearted fantasy romps that makes more unique and interesting stories that are still enjoyable to read more than 30 years later.

“He doesn’t like wizards and witches much,” Mort volunteered.

“Nobody likes a smartass,” she said with some satisfaction. “We give him trouble, you see. Priests don’t, so he likes priests.”

“He’s never said,” said Mort.

“Ah. They’re always telling folk how much better it’s going to be when they’re dead. We tell them it could be pretty good right here if only they’d put their minds to it.”

p. 97

I was interested to see a few possible references to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series in Mort. I can’t confirm if Pratchett was taking the piss out of Le Guin here or he was taking the piss out of some other common predecessor novel/myth.

But here you go.

When the wizard that founded the Unseen University (Discworld’s #1 wizard academy), returns to the university 2000 years later and sees the state its in, he says the following:

‘By the Smoking Mirror of Grism, there’s going to be a few changes around here!’

Those wizards who had studied history nodded uncomfortably. It would be back to the stone floors and getting up when it was still dark and no alcohol under any circumstances and memorising the true names of everything until the brain squeaked.

p. 266

If you’re familiar with Le Guin’s Earthsea series, you’ll be familiar with this concept of “true names”. Essentially everything in the Earthsea world has a “true name”. If you know the “true name” of something or something one, this grants you power over the thing with this “true name”.

Mort is published in 1987, and the first three books of Le Guin’s Earthsea are all published prior to 1972 with the first novel in the series, the Wizard of Earthsea, being published as early as 1968. So timeline-wise, it would make sense that Pratchett might be making an explicit reference to Le Guin’s Earthsea series here.

This could be just a coincidence. The reason that I don’t think it is one, is because earlier in Mort, Pratchett makes another claim about wizards that lines up with how wizards in the Earthsea series are depicted.

[INSERT THE ACTUAL QUOTE FOR THIS WHEN I DO A SECOND READ OF THIS NOVEL…]

At some point, Pratchett comments on the fact that wizards are celibate in Discworld, or something to that effect.

If you’ve read Le Guin’s Earthsea series, you’ll know about the way she depicts certain wizards as being voluntarily celibate because they believe that having intimate relations with women will drain their magical powers.

Neither Le Guin’s Earthsea series nor Terry Pratchett’s Discworld (although I’m not complete on that one), touches on gay wizards, if you’re interested in that, please check out Mercedes Lackey’s The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy.

PS: Remember kids, magic is stored in the balls.