SPOILERS Making Money Discussion *Spoilers*

[raisindot]

I was more disturbed with Terry's use of Gladys in this book. The golems have been recognized as a kind of people in the forgoing books. They have stature and worth. To turn Gladys into a ludicrous but not funny character who is "in love" with Moist and who reads books just is embarrassing.

I didn't particularly find Gladys that entertaining, but I do see the point of his subplot with her. Like Dorfl, Gladys is trying to be human, or more independently sentient, at least. Unlike Dorfl, who explore his faux humanity through the words of the prophets of religions, Gladys explores her faux humanity by reading books about women's behavior. Since Golems are literally influenced by words more than anything else, a golem's behavior is either intellignet or foolish depending on which words he or she reads. Glady's behavior is Pterry's commentary on the ways that golems (as an allegory for people) often accept the words they read (or what they seen on TV) as gospel truth, without appropriate deliberation. In the end, the "thinking" golems of AM are only more sophisticated versions of the "golden" golems. It's all about responding to the right words spoken by the right people at the right time.

J-I-B

 

[poohcarrot]

Unlike Dorfl, who explore his faux humanity through the words of the prophets of religions, Gladys explores her faux humanity by reading books about women's behavior.

J-I-B

There's nowt so queer as faux.

 

[Verns]

But I do think the central debate of whether Pterry has created a "new" socioeconomic history of AM and which books might be part of this series is a valid one, since MM is probably the ultimate example of this, even if it's not a great book. Maybe some of the bizarre turns into prehistoric socioeconomic history take it off the chart a bit, but , heck, it's at least a bit more content-heavy than the usual load of Jan and Pooh and me zinging one-liner insults at each other.



J-I-B

John, that's a really good point. I'm sure Tony was right to brandish his moderator's cane, but I've really enjoyed reading that particular debate. At the risk of earning a one-liner from Jan I agree with your analysis. PTerry holds up a fairground distorted mirror to Roundworld and writes about the image produced, and that's the case whether it's a simple parody of Phantom of the Opera, or a more profound look at religion or civilisation as a whole.

I still think I dislike MM because it feels like a lazy plot in that it borrows so heavily from other DW books and says nothing terribly new about Moist, but it has to be said that I find economics and the banking system about as boring a subject as could be found*, so maybe that's why I just couldn't face reading it a second time.



* Although PTerry may surpass himself in that department if he writes about taxation.

 

[poohcarrot]

At the risk of earning a one-liner from Jan .

She's a bugger with those one-liners, isn't she? :twisted:
Some of them are nearly 2,000 words long!

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

But I do think the central debate of whether Pterry has created a "new" socioeconomic history of AM and which books might be part of this series is a valid one, since MM is probably the ultimate example of this, even if it's not a great book. Maybe some of the bizarre turns into prehistoric socioeconomic history take it off the chart a bit, but , heck, it's at least a bit more content-heavy than the usual load of Jan and Pooh and me zinging one-liner insults at each other.



J-I-B

John, that's a really good point. I'm sure Tony was right to brandish his moderator's cane, but I've really enjoyed reading that particular debate. At the risk of earning a one-liner from Jan I agree with your analysis. PTerry holds up a fairground distorted mirror to Roundworld and writes about the image produced, and that's the case whether it's a simple parody of Phantom of the Opera, or a more profound look at religion or civilisation as a whole...

What!

I do NOT do one-liners! Especially when I'm deconstructing twaddle!

OK last word (from me) on a socio-economic serial - it begins with GP and will end when Moist becomes a walk on. In the other books the semantics of daily markets and currency exchanges are at best a sub-plot 8) In Roundworld they're far too important - in Discworld they're just part of the general scenery or structure that Terry scrutinises when he hasn't got anything more interesting to look at. Moist I grant is there and dominates, but only to give a tiresome subject some shoddy glitter and pizazz... :twisted:

Pooh darling - you know me so well

even if you can't/won't argue at length

 

[poohcarrot]

Pooh darling - you know me so well

even if you can't/won't argue at length

The longer the post, the less likely people will read, or remember it.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

In chat thread yeah smartypants - This is a discussion thread and has to lead somewhere

 

[poohcarrot]

True.

 

[Tonyblack]

Guys, I'm overjoyed that this discussion is now on three pages, but can we try and keep the discussion to the book? Apart from anything else, this discussion is for those who have read Making Money. Anyone who hasn't read it won't be (presumably) reading this and so your points about the development of A-M are somewhat wasted.

Wow....this is about as close to hard-nosed moderating as we've ever seen from you, Tony! I feel properly chastened.



But I do think the central debate of whether Pterry has created a "new" socioeconomic history of AM and which books might be part of this series is a valid one, since MM is probably the ultimate example of this, even if it's not a great book. Maybe some of the bizarre turns into prehistoric socioeconomic history take it off the chart a bit, but , heck, it's at least a bit more content-heavy than the usual load of Jan and Pooh and me zinging one-liner insults at each other.



J-I-B

You're right, it is an interesting debate. It's just that it probably deserves a thread of its own.

These discussions are out of sequence and not everyone here will have read all the previous books (or subsequent ones for that matter), so if you are referencing other books you may cause spoilers for those members.

When we decided to do these discussions, I asked if people would rather do them in sequence or randomly - the consensus was for random. While that's fine, it does make it difficult to reference previous books in the series that we haven't got to yet.

 

[Tonyblack]

I have a question that I'd like your opinions on.

Are the golem horses simply golems shaped like horses, or are they something different?

 

[pandasthumb]

I have just re-read Making Money after re reading Interesting Times and I have to say that in my head they look like the terracotta warrior horses.

I haven't read all this thread and after reading this page I'm a bit scared ... but I love Making Money, it just seems right some how. Particularly when the proto economists says 'I don't know sir. I didn't know I had to find solutions as well.' It just demonstrates my long held belief that economists are not part of the real world.

I also enjoyed the discussion about not being able to have female Golems - I had certainly made the assumption that they were all condsidered male but why should I? They do not have a gender in a physical sense at all.

 

[raisindot]

I have a question that I'd like your opinions on.

Are the golem horses simply golems shaped like horses, or are they something different?

Oh, you're not going all philsophical on us, are you?

At first definition, they are horse-shaped golems. There's no rule that golems have to be man-shaped; golem described the state of being, of being baked generally out of clay and then having something resembling life added to them by their creator. By all rights, the human-shaped golems SHOULD be called 'golem men" or 'golem humans,' but since no one had ever seen a golem in the shape of anything other than a human it made no sense to use the term as ad adjective. And not all golems necessarily look very human like; some of the golems in Feet of Clay seemed to be described as something more akin to big lumps of clay with arms and eyeholes, since some were created by other golems, rather than humans.

But at a deeper glance, the real question is: Are the 'golden golems' that march into AM really golems at all since they have no replaceable chem, no discernable intelligence, are incapable of developing the capability of thinking on their own, and are essentially little more than robots?

J-I-B

 

[poohcarrot]

some of the golems in Feet of Clay seemed to be described as something more akin to big lumps of clay with arms and eyeholes, since some were created by other golems, rather than humans.

J-I-B

Some? Surely there was only one, wasn't there?

 

[poohcarrot]

But at a deeper glance, the real question is: Are the 'golden golems' that march into AM really golems at all since they have no replaceable chem, no discernable intelligence, are incapable of developing the capability of thinking on their own, and are essentially little more than robots?

J-I-B

Surely the very first page of the book disproves this twaddle, doesn't it?

 

[Verns]

In chat thread yeah smartypants - This is a discussion thread and has to lead somewhere

I'm with you on this one, Jan (see what a diplomat I am? ). I never use one word where seven will do (have always been crap at précis) and I, for one, have enjoyed reading the dissertations, erm, posts on these threads. They've given me an insight into DW that I didn't have before joining this forum so, for that, I thank you.

 

[poohcarrot]

I agree with Jano too. I realised after I said it that I was wrong.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

Stop it pooh! You're making me nervous agreeing so much...

Verns - these discussions are brill and much better than formal debating with it's rules and enforced rationale. The only problem is when we have a book (like CoM) where there's a measure of agreement or perhaps sometimes a marmite effect where neither faction's going to win out - I love CoM because it was the first spoof fantasy I read and so I have a great deal of affection for it, simply because it was the first. I acknowledge that it's not the best written book by a long way which is why I hadn't really got an argument for those who don't have the same emotional attachment to it, and there's only so many times you can say I love it but I know it's not up to the mark in a literary sense.

It's the same with this book, except I do have very strong feelings about Moist (in that I love to hate him :twisted: ), but the actual feature plotlines of this and GP - and already Raising Taxes, do absolutely nothing for me aside from seeing how clever Terry gets with re-spinning it. It worked in GP with Mr Pump mainly (plus Vetinari was better in it) and Reacher Gilt too. Will come back to that one another time.

Golem horses - definitely horse-shaped! How else do we know they're horses? Also very interesting despite Terry virtually throwing them away in this book. Same reason for the Golden Golems and all the others being human-shaped (but sexless) but it does beg the question on how Golems work, 'cos these don't have any sentience of their own because they don't have normal chems (or not ones that can be taken and adapted) - so they're not even robots because they're not really 'programmed' for anything useful at all. How is a robot different from a chem Golem who's bought itself out of servitude?

In Roundworld robots are machines that have been programmed to work at certain tasks. When the concept of a slave machine (which is effectively to rid humans of the need to do menial industrial or even domestic tasks) they were in general human-shaped - as in the breakthrough sci-fi film Metropolis back in the silent movie era. Why? Robots in the shape of what came to be called androids (think C3P0 not R2D2) caught at the imagination, so much so that the late great Isaac Asimov wrote about them a lot and Terry has followed his 'positronic brain' concept and creed of those type of robot who cannot break their programming not to harm human beings in any way, except with a huge effort which generally resulted in their being rendered permanently unusable because it wrecks their normal functions (I'm thinking here of the mutant mind-reader robot in Liar! where Susan Calvin deliberately induced a brain breakdown because it tried to make her happy and said another scientist was in love with her). Terry has developed the Golems along those lines, but because the chem is magic he's chosen to go the fully sentient route.

In Roundworld this didn't happen because we don't have android-type robots - we have robots that are most definitely machine and are designed to do specific tasks better than humans, but with no self-reasoning ability whatsoever except in engineering terms. The motor industry is the best example of this as it makes horses with with various types of robot (where once it was men doing that task less efficiently) that are far stronger and faster than it's biological inspiration. Horses...

How long is it going to take for the artisans of AM to build a ceramic (or some other material) horse that doesn't look like one and doesn't have a chem because it doesn't need it. They've seen the use for mounting their post couriers so how long before the mail coach, which is of course a horse-drawn carriage, goes the same way... How long before the horse-drawn bus system we see in UA goes the same way?

Now isn't that a much more interesting avenue of advancement than raising poxy taxes? :twisted:

 

[poohcarrot]

Golems can communicate telepathically with each other.
The golden golems weren't happy about being trapped underground.
They are now trapped underground again, but can communicate with the free golems.
Mr Pump has a licence to kill.
It's pretty obvious what's going to happen next.
The golems are going to revolt, then it's
GOLEM WARS! :twisted:

 

[mystmoon]

Aren't the golems already having a revolution?

 

[swreader]

The problem with the buried golems of Um is that Terry created them to explain Adora Belle"s absence from the city while he is setting up what is supposed to be the main theme of the book -- Moist's reform of the banking system. Reading through the various descriptions of the Uminan golems, one finds that Adora Belle (hereafter Spike) knows almost nothing about their use since all she has to go on is a report of the song of the buried golems reported by another current golem. She expects, apparently, that they are "golden" as does Professor Flead until he studies the new information. After their arrival, Spike has only discovered that their heads cannot be opened but that they have a "chem" written in their clay which says "Guard the city".

However, it seems pretty obvious that they can be instructed (by someone dressed in a golden suit and speaking Umnian) to do almost anything. But if Professor Flead is at all correct about them, they were super-intelligent and capable of creating and building all sorts of things. We don't know what tasks they're capable of performing if properly instructed. And that is what makes them so dangerous.

What we do know, as Hubert tells the assembled crowd, is that putting the 4000 Uminam golems at work in the city would cause the greatest financial crisis ever in AM, putting everyone out of work and therefore unable to buy (or sell) anything.

The horse golems are indeed horse (& saddle) shaped and there are about 20 of them. That would seem to make it rather unlikely that they could be used as draft horses. They could, however, be used (as could the other golems) to move treadmills. Moist says he wants some to replace the donkeys that are at each clacks tower (first time we've heard anything about how the clacks stations are powered).

To go back to my original statement in a much earlier post--the golems are perhaps the biggest (dreadful pun) example of slapdash writing in this book. About their only use is that they give Terry a chance to do some funny scenes (such as the Cabinet and use Professor Flead).

It's quite clear that Terry hasn't thought about them, or about the real problems of finance. The original idea seems to have been to substitute paper money for the coins presently in use and to get people to turn in their coins. But by the end of the book, we have currency backed (so to speak) by the returned gold and by golems. Gold, as both Moist and Vetinari know, really has no value. The commerce of the city creates the value of it's money.