Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion . . . So Far by Pratchett Terry & Briggs Stephen

Author:Pratchett, Terry & Briggs, Stephen
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780575091214
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

In short, he is a useful and well-respected member of the University staff, his only failing being a tendency to educative violence if referred to as a ‘monkey’. During the evenings he can often be found enjoying a quiet pint and, if the landlord is not wary, every single bowl of peanuts in the Mended DRUM, where his iron grip and ability to swing from the rafters adds an extra dimension of terror to bar-room brawls.

Libraries, nature of. Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter.

The relevant equation is: Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.

All libraries everywhere are connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the strong space-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact – because it amounts to time travel.

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and 3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with. (See also BOOKS and INVISIBLE WRITINGS.)

Library, the. Books play a major role in the Discworld. In Discworld reality as well as in general magical theory the Name is often nearly identical to the Thing itself; to know the Name is to control the Thing. Books on the Discworld often do far more than merely record its history and the concerns of its inhabitants; they often are the script on which the unfolding drama is based.

Books can also be affected by their contents, and a book containing powerful magic spells can become, for all practical purposes, alive.

The Library at Unseen University therefore has to deal with problems rather greater than readers writing ‘Rubbish!’ in the margins and using slices of bacon as a bookmark.

From the outside, the Library of Unseen University is a low, brooding building, with high, narrow, barred windows and a glass dome high above its centre. There clearly is a centre, because it is quite possible for someone to walk from the door to the middle of the floor.

However, all four of the standard dimensions are, in this place, plaited like soft clay by the presence of the very high thaumic field generated by the magic in the books coupled with the pressure on space-time from the books themselves. Because of the distortions caused by the vast amount of assembled knowledge, the Library has a diameter of about 100 yards but an infinite radius. The interior is a topographical nightmare; the sheer

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