Here's a thought.
If Pratchett were not categorized as a science-fiction writer, a genre largely dismissed, then his works' satire might be regarded as uhm...an Abomination.
Pratchett writes about things that most of us can't properly articulate.
What is the difference between a god and the mechanism of religion?
Why do we choose to believe what an authority says? Is it because it's a reliable authority or is it habit? Or maybe it's just easier than thinking for ourselves?
Power and its nature. Is it over people, events, one's own circumstances?
Or is power a lying, no-good, snake-oil salesman? Y'know --one drop and you'll never be able to give it up.
And ego, he goes on a lot about ego.
Everybody's got one (except Altogether Andrews), so how is it we manage to fool our brains into thinking that vanity and ego are the same?
And if we're really messed up and /or insecure, we substitute arrogance for ego and still can't believe in ourselves?
War, the cost of. Casualties, collateral damage, acceptable amounts of collateral damage, military spending (not on food or boots, duh).
Enemies and how come they are "our" enemies. Maybe we are their enemies and we're just too self-important to understand that?
Small business is God. oh, boy...
Thieves' and Beggars' Guilds show the absolute truth that eveyone needs someone else to look down upon. Or blame for the disruption of their bottom line.
Merchants' and Assassins' Guilds, seem to me anyhow, to be the AM equivalent to hedge funds and investment bankers. They are each other's best clients, a sort of incestuous and deadly, if profitable relationship.
What do all of those jokes scream to us about the nature of the society we live in?
And perpetuate?
NONE of Pratchett's books are one-joke novels.
If you read, really read, what's there, if you can look at this-or-that part of the /any story and not find a least half a dozen parallels to our own society (and all the "great" societies before; Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, China, early Western Europe), then you're blind or standing behind a door.
(I can say that because I wear bi-focals and am often mentally the door.)
Oh, yes, MR. Women-as-soldiers, yes. Fascinating and not unusual.
Most of the high school students I sub for seem to find it new & titillating. But it holds their attention, sometimes long enough for them to read an entire chapter.
What the kids miss is the role reversal of the women. Females who are not expected to "behave like women" are likely to do whatever they want. (Yeah, yeah, we have equality now. Right.) But there's a cost.
I'm not sure where this is going or has gone.
But it was fun typing it.
Trish
ps: Magic-as-radiation. Duh.