Moving pictures (by Terry Pratchett)

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'Moving pictures, the tenth book in the 'Discworld' series by Terry Pratchett, shows the author at his best, in my opinion.

This book tells the story of how movies arrived in the Discworld. The Discworld is Terry Pratchett's best-known creation: a flat world populated with - amongst others - granite trolls, bearded dwarfs, friendly zombies, as well as every conceivable type of human. They live (mostly) peaceably alongside each other, in a culture somewhat reminiscent of Mediaeval England. There are watchmen who call the hour (when they remember), dank alehouses, and a filthy river. Oh, and there's a university run by wizards with an orangutang as librarian.

There are also guilds, an attempt at organising the different craftspeople of the cities. This book particularly features the guild of alchemists, who have been experimenting on a new and highly explosive transparent filmy substance called octo-cellulose.

Since the Discworld has wizards and plenty of creativity, it also has a vast number of inventions which are easily recognisable to those of us from 21st century earth, cleverly powered by 12th century technology. Cameras, for instance, look somewhat like the box brownies of the 19th century, and work by having not brownies but bad-tempered imps inside them, painting pictures of whatever they see through the peep-hole.

So, when someone has the bright idea of using a team of imps, painting extremely fast onto octo-cellulose, the concept of 'moving pictures' is born. Salamanders - creatures who absorb light from the sun and then give out light when startled - are used in another box to project the images from the octo-cellulose onto a large screen.

There is no sound, and the movies (or 'clicks' as they're known on Discworld) tend to feature brave young men rescuing frightened maidens who had been tied to trees by evil monsters (generally trolls dressed up). This is a reference of course to the early black-and-white soundless melodramatic films made in the early part of the 20th century.

The moving picture industry converges on a previously deserted town called the Holy Wood but without anybody knowing quite WHY they're doing what they're doing. People arrive there as if called by an invisible voice, and every so often strange things happen. An actor suddenly finds himself passionately kissing a girl rather than simply untying her. A sausage salesman dreams of huge posters and dramatic advertisements. One of the wizards, for no apparent reason, fries some corn in a crucible with a plate on the top, and produces some rather tasteless white puffy things that he calls 'banged grains', and suddenly everybody wants to sell them to people watching the clicks.

That's really how this series of books works: brilliantly written scenarios that seem believable (well, somewhat believable anyway, given the conditions of the Discworld), with humorous references to circumstances on earth. The books are enjoyable and amusing even without knowing what all the references are, but all the more fun when the reader realises what is meant. In 'Moving Pictures' there are many references to classic films, some of which I can spot, others of which I didn't know about till reading online where there are sites dedicated to spotting them.

This book isn't just a clever play on words and situations, however. There's also quite a philosophical thread running through it, beginning with a very old man, the last remaining inhabitant of the Holy Wood before the movie industry arrives. This old man performs regular mystical chants, something he's done all his life, to keep 'something' from happening. He learned about this from the previous keeper, who learned about it from someone else... but there is nobody for the last keeper to pass on his knowledge to.

And so, something begins to emerge from the hills, when the keeper dies and the chanting ceases. Something which gradually infiltrates people's minds, and draws them in. Something which has 'memories', which makes people do the strange things they've never done before - and which work. It's quite an ominous force, the style is almost suspenseful in places. The inhabitants of Discworld are taken over by an unstoppable and destructive force, which creeps up on them slowly but inexorably. If it wasn't for the humour, it would be a little frightening.

We have all the Discworld series, collected over several years. Recently I've felt they tended to be a bit samey, churned out to satisfy the demand of customers. Not that any of them are bad, but somehow I feel they've lost most of the sparkle that seemed to shine through the books written in the late eighties and early nineties. However I love this book! 'Moving Pictures' is the ninth Discworld book, and one of my favourites.

Some characters appear in previous books, and some reappear in later books, but it's not necessary to know who they are to enjoy this one, which could well be read as a standalone novel. There are some classics: the sausage-inna-bun salesman Dibbler, who pushes his way into Holy Wood to become the equivalent of executive producer; the flea-ridden wonder-dog Gaspode who suddenly starts talking, and dreaming about rescuing people from burning houses. The hero of the book, Victor, isn't in any of the other books. He begins as a perpetual student wizard who never wants to pass his final exams, and then finds himself right in the centre of the moving picture industry.

Probably most Pratchett fans will have read this book before, but it's well worth a re-read. I first read it about ten years ago, shortly after it was published; recently I read it again, and found myself chuckling out loud at some places where I'd quite forgotten the clever allusions. It also provoked me to think about the whole movie industry - the way people get sucked in to glamour and pretence, maybe to escape from the reality of life.

If you haven't read Pratchett before, then you'd probably still enjoy this if you have any interest at all in the film-making world, or simply if you want a light read that's deeper than it seems at first glance. It's intended for adults, but teenagers often enjoy these books too. My sons started reading Discworld book from about the age of ten or eleven; they didn't understand everything in them, but that wasn't a problem, and they've re-read most of them as they've grown older.

Highly recommended.