The late Terry Pratchett was a British author of a series of fantasy books about “Discworld”, a mythical world where magic rules. Many years ago I picked up one of his books in a bookstore and skimmed it and put it back, thinking it was just fantasy, which is not a genre that really interests me. That was a big mistake. Many years later, desperate for something to read on a trip, I picked up The Science of Discworld (1999) in an English village store and discovered how foolish I had been to discount him earlier. Pratchett’s Discworld stories in fact examine very profound issues, like the nature of time, with a wicked British sense of humor and playful sense of irony. Once one realizes that he is using his magical Discworld to comment on the nature of science and of human behavior, his stories take on much deeper meaning, but all cloaked in his wonderful and whimsical sense of humor.
The four books in the Science of Discworld series are a collaboration between Pratchett and two of his best friends, Ian Steward, a mathematician (who used to write the Mathematical Recreation column in Scientific American), and Jack Cohen, a reproductive biologist. Stewart and Cohn have also coauthored several other very, very good books, including The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (1994), Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind (1997), and What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life (2002.
In the Science of Discworld series, a Pratchett story about the wizards of Unseen University (a spoof of British university life) is interleaved, chapter by chapter, with chapters by Stewart and Cohen discussing the science involved, but discussed with the same sort of wry humor as Pratchett’s. It is at once profoundly enlightening and wonderfully humorous and readable.
The first book in the series, The Science of Discworld: A Novel, deals with the history of the cosmos and the earth. The second book, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe deals with the development of the human mind and the evolution of culture, language, and art. The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch deals with the nature of evolution, And the fourth and last book in the series, The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day takes on the really big questions in life, the universe, God, and the meaning of life, again with wonderful wit and humor.
I have started to reread these books, or, more accurately, this time to listen to them as I do my morning walk – the audiobooks are very good. Michael Fenton Stevens and Stephen Briggs do a great job reading. The books can be read in any order, but it helps to read them in order because there is a certain amount of character development. It also helps if one has already read some of the other Discworld novels, because one will already be acquainted with some of the characters that reappear and some of the features of Discworld.
I can’t recommend these books highly enough if one is interested in the big questions in life, in philosophy and in science.
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