SPOILERS Thud! Discussion *Spoilers*

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raisindot

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Oct 1, 2009
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#21
Sjoerd3000 said:
Too bad Leonard da Quirm didn't paint the battle of koom valley. Then the book could be called The Da Quirm Code ;)
Yeah, but if Leonard had painted it there would have been all sorts of side drawings of nuclear weapons all over the edges.

J-I-B
 

raisindot

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#22
The one thing in the novel that I had the most problem understanding (and which I posted in a separate topic last year) was how Methodia Rascal was able to paint such a detailed and supposedly historically accurate painting of the battle when it didn't appear he was a historian and did not speak either Dwarfish or Troll.

I thought at first that when he found the Cube, that it "told" him about the battle (all those battle sounds that came out after Bloodaxe's and Shine's speeches). But since Rascal didn't speak Dwarfish, how would have known what it said?

If it wasn't the cube that told him the story of the events of the battle, and he couldn't understand the language of the cube, what then inspired him to spend 20 years paining the painting? Did the cube have some kind of "mystic quality" that imparted to him the importance and details of the battle? After all, it didn't seem that Rascal originally went to Koom Valley to indulge a passion for history--he was interested in finding the right spot for a landscape.

Not the key point, but one that's always bugged me. Oh, that and trying to figure out why Lady Sibyl needed to paint two copies of the painting.

J-I-B
 

Tonyblack

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Jul 25, 2008
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#23
I think it was more a case of careful research by Rascal. It's like some of the military artists of today who paint scenes from famous battles such as Waterloo. They do the research to get the details right. In fact the painting may be more accurate that the ones at the time as there may be less poetic licence and propaganda.

Remember that the battles was a huge part of both dwarf and troll history and folklore - there would have been all sorts of accounts of it passed down. The real important bit though was the placement of the mountains as they were the key to the whole mystery. :laugh:
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#24
Maybe the box spoke 'chicken' more than we're shown - it did at first anyway or maybe it was psychoactive in some way, so it could make it through to someone who wasn't particularly mentally stable? Or fed visuals into his head. Some artists 'see' music as colours (Kandinsky) so seeing sounds as pictures isn't too much of a stretch ;)

Also - sometimes if you hear people talking in a totally foreign language you can still pick nuances of meaning in the tone etc
 

poohcarrot

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Sep 13, 2009
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#25
Although I haven't yet contributed to this debate, I have been reading what people have been saying (Nice into J-I-B). :p

Well here goes, controvesy time. :twisted:

I don't rate Thud that highly for the following reasons.

a. It's hardly a laugh-a-minute book.
b. It seemed to me like a glorified commercial for the board game "Thud".
c. The spin-off "Where's my cow" was designed to "milk" Discworld fans of their money. It was awful.
d. I thought the point TP was making was too blantantly obvious and about as subtle as a brick.

Dealing with point "d", you have to bear in mind that this book was written in the same year as the London bombings and the ongoing debacle of the Iraq occupation. I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this yet, but I believe the Deep down dwarfs are meant to represent fundamental muslims (possibly living in the UK and not even attempting to adapt to British lifestyle), while the trolls I believe are meant to represent the fundamental Christians (Bush & Blair etc).

I mean no rascist/religious offence from these comments, because as far as I can see, fundamentalism is wrong, which ever God you believe in.
 

Tonyblack

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#26
Regarding point 'D' - well of course it was. ;) But I think it was referring to fundamentalists in general. People who would rather destroy the truth than admit they might have been wrong. It's a point he goes back to, to a degree, in Nation.

As to point 'A' - well I wasn't bothered by that. I don't read Pratchett books for laughs. The 'funny' books tend to lose their humour after a few readings. I prefer thoughtful to funny. ;)

The game, Thud! has been around since 2002 and is based on ancient Norse board games. It was around a long time before the book. Is this book a commercial for it? o_O I guess that's arguable. I certainly didn't want to rush out an buy a game as soon as I read it and I've still managed not to want to buy one.

The same with 'Where's My Cow' - I have a copy of it, but only because a rep at Harper Collins gave Sharlene a free copy when she had the bookstore. I wouldn't have actually bought it unless I saw it in a charity shop or for less than a couple of quid. But there does seem to have been a market for it. :)
 

poohcarrot

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Sep 13, 2009
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#27
Tonyblack said:
Regarding point 'D' - well of course it was. ;) But I think it was referring to fundamentalists in general. People who would rather destroy the truth than admit they might have been wrong. It's a point he goes back to, to a degree, in Nation.
So why has nobody mentioned it then?
I also thought that I'd stated it was against fundamentalism is general, hadn't I? o_O
tonyblack said:
The same with 'Where's My Cow' - I have a copy of it, but only because a rep at Harper Collins gave Sharlene a free copy when she had the bookstore. I wouldn't have actually bought it unless I saw it in a charity shop or for less than a couple of quid. But there does seem to have been a market for it.
Yeah! Discworld fans like me! :laugh:
 

Penfold

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#28
Regarding point A, I haven't read it for a while but I still enjoyed it and found it more than humorous enough to hold my attention. Still, as mentioned numerous times elsewhere, horses for courses etc.

For point B, I don't think your idea for the book to be a glorified commercial for the game holds water. I never even knew such a game existed until a few weeks ago so it was hardly a successful advert, if that was its intention.

I agree with you on point C and thought this at the time when it was released.

I sort of agree with you on point D as well, although Terry did much the same from a different perspective with Jingo and patriotism (the conversation between Colon and Nobby (p28/29) springing to mind). The storyline for Ankh Morpork going to war with Klatch echoed the Gulf War(s) rather loudly.
 

poohcarrot

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Sep 13, 2009
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#29
Penfold said:
rI sort of agree with you on point D as well, although Terry did much the same from a different perspective with Jingo and patriotism (the conversation between Colon and Nobby (p28/29) springing to mind). The storyline for Ankh Morpork going to war with Klatch echoed the Gulf War(s) rather loudly.
Patriotism is one thing, religious fundamentalism is a totally different thing.
 

Tonyblack

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#32
As to why no one had mentioned religious fanaticism before - well swreader did on page one. ;)

Yes, it's an obvious theme of the book and one I was certainly planning on investigating. But this discussion has been a little slow to get under way since Monday. :p

The timing was somewhat apt regarding the London bombings - I know as I was in London the week after on my way to the Clarecraft event and there were armed police everywhere. Terry was writing the book at the time, but he practically finished by then.

The fact is that this sort of thing is not new - it's happened in the past and it will continue to happen. So, yes it was well timed, but it's hardly out of date now.
 

Penfold

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#33
Tonyblack said:
The timing was somewhat apt regarding the London bombings - I know as I was in London the week after on my way to the Clarecraft event and there were armed police everywhere. Terry was writing the book at the time, but he practically finished by then.
This isn't the only time that Terry has shown great timing with book release. Feel free to correct me, but wasn't Making Money released just prior to the world-wide banking financial meltdown? :laugh:
 

raisindot

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Oct 1, 2009
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#34
Reacting to Pooh's comments:

When I first read Thud! I agreed with your b and c. There certainly seemed a lot more blatant commercialism here than the other books. I finally rationalized it by thinking that, hell, DW is PTerry's property, and he should be able to do whatever the hell he wants with it.

The humor level (or it being 'less funny') didn't bother me one bit. Perhaps because I started my DW journey rather late in the series, with more 'serious (i.e., less ha ha funny) books like TFE and NW. I almost have the reverse reaction--I like much less the ones that seem to be just in it for laughs alone (I won't mention them for fear of bringing up old debates).

I didn't see the dwarf/troll issues as one of religion but more one of culture. The DW dwarfs aren't religious--they don't worship a higher power because their higher power (Tak) went away after he 'wroten' the world. And, unlike fundamentalists, the deep downers don't think their way was the ONLY way--they just simply hated trolls and wanted to preserve that historical status quo. That's a lot different than radical fundamentalists in general, who feel that anyone anywhere who doesn't share their views either needs to convert or be destroyed.

Besides, I always believed that the Dwarfs of TFE and Thud! were the DW equivalent of Chasidic Jews, who are bound in tradition, are strong believers in the power of words and laws, and tend to isolate themselves from society as much as possible.

I think that, rather than religion here, the troll/dwarf debate has a better analogy in racism, particularly that of white people trying to asset their racial superiority over any of any other race (but particularly those of African descent). Olduvai (sp.) Gorge may be the Koom Valley for racists, for it more or less proved that humankind did originate in Africa and everyone is a descendants from the 'original' Africans. There are still white supremacists today who won't accept this version of evolution and do anything they can to discredit it (creationism, anyone?)

J-I-B
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#35
Not necessarily creationism - how about convergent evolution? ;)

The oldest fossil remains of australopithecus africanus were indeed found in Olduvai Gorge - but an earlier 'strain' called australopithicus 'afarenisis' was found in 1974 in Ethiopia and named 'Lucy'. So all of the fossil evidence for this early hominid have been found in Africa - so far.

That doesn't mean to say the 2 sub-species never existed beyond Africa - just that those are the oldest remains so far and they have been found there...

Palaeontology can only go on the latest evidence, so yes, the earliest hominid species has been found in Africa - but that doesn't mean it was confined to that range. :)
 
Jul 25, 2008
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#36
Responding more or less to Pooh's points and subsequent comments--

Humor - This is probably the most serious of Pratchett's books to theat time, and since I find his "laugh a minute" books less than satisfactory, I was pleased. He does try to insert a humorous thread, I think, with the Colon/Nobby and Angua/Sally/Cheery/Tawnee story lines. And I think that's pretty much the worst part of the book. The caricature of the posh museum director is funny, and I must admit that the comment about it being "art" if it's got cherubs and urns is worth a small chuckle. The idea of Nobby and Tawnee as a "couple" is almost too unbelievable to be funny--but I think that's what Pratchett was trying to do. The "girl's night out" section of the book that drags, and isn't funny (or fun). Letting Nobby off (since it seems clear to me that Tawnee will dump him) because he no longer wants her because "she can't cook" is supposed to be funny but is too stereotypical. But then, I don't think that Pratchett has been trying to write "funny" books for a long time.

b) As to the charge of "commercialism" -- I suspect the publication of the book and the board game is more due to the publishers than to Terry. DW fans will, and do, buy most anything. There is no need to buy the game or Where's My Cow ?as far as Thud! goes. The game is described and explained, and all of Where's My Cow? is quoted at one place or another. I can't understand how you can miss the point of Sam's reading to young Sam and the whole Thud! game/ Koom Valley war as major parts of the major themes of the book.

I thought I'd explained this well enough earlier, but obviously not. It seems quire clear to me that Terry is satirizing the mind-set which uses "religion" as a justification for war. It's pretty clear at the beginning of the book when Sam describes what Hamcrusher has been preaching--

"He preached the superiority of dwarf over troll, and that the duty of every dwarf was to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers and remove trollkind from the face of the world. It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory. [emphasis added]
Young dwarfs listened to him because he talked about history and destiny and all the other words that always got trotted out to put a gloss on slaughter. "

The beauty of this satire is that it fits on fundamentalists of whatever stripe precisely because it's told as a war between Dwarfs and Trolls. And it illustrates why Hamcrusher is "accidentally" killed by the others and why they must destroy the proof that Tak created the Trolls as well as the Dwarfs. If this isn't a religious war--never mind what the dwarfs sayabout not having a religion--I can't imagine what else it is.

Wars are fought, almost always, with some "religious" or "moral" imperative--consider the Crusades, the Moorish invasion of Europe, the Aryan theories of the Nazi's used to justify the slaughter of non-Aryans, and even the abolitionist part of the Civil War. That's because war is irrational. Faith is, by definition, not rational. And religious coloring can be added to whatever war or atrocity you want to justify. The most obvious analogy is to the Al-Qaeda terrorists, but it works just as well with the anti-abortionist murders or other justifications for killing those who disagree with you. That's why I find this a better book than Jingo, which is also anti-war--but with a more "patriotic" theme. That one is the book where he satirizes nationalism (Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". )

Sam is the target of The Summoning Dark because he has a well of anger at stupidity and cruelty. But he is able to defeat The Summoning Dark, because he knows the darkness of his own soul and chooses to control it--by creating the Guardian Dark. Certainly, there are strong religious and/or moral overtones in this.

Does anybody think that what I describe as the humorous thread really works as "funny"? I think it's the one weakness in an otherwise magnificent satiric novel dealing with not only the problems of our times, but those of human nature.
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#37
I've only read Thud once and enjoyed it but thought it was pretty 'flat' because of the lack of humour. Whilst warring over 'people who are not like us' is part of human nature (in the broadest way possible - which is on the Discworld) so is having a joke or a lark in even the darkest of times.

Biggest possible example - WW1 killed a million people on the battlefield, but Spanish 'bird' flu' killed as many as it struck immediately afterwards and killed as many women as men. This re-established the procreative balance and allowed the birth rate to recover relatively quickly once peace was established. BUT, in the UK the birth rate during WW1 and WW2 actually rose drastically amongst the unmarried population - why? Because death is scary and almost certain death doubly so. What do people do when they're scared? In Britain they went to the pub and the theatres (which hastily switched from dramas to musicals and burlesque/music hall style comedies) and had FUN. After the theatres and pubs chucked out they all went and had yet more fun of the carnal variety and during both wars a lot of kids were born without fathers either because they'd been killed or had only stuck around the one crucial night... The same thing happened on the continent in both World Wars of course, especially in places like Paris where soldiers went on furlough occasionally and did exactly the same kind of thing as they did before they left home in Berlin, or Birmingham, or Boston (Lancs or Mass). They went out and blew off a lot of steam and then got laid.

Life/Hope and Death/Fate double date during wartime. :laugh: Anyway the debates between boys and girls in Thud are simply there to add light relief, absolutely in context, except they're Tawnee and Nobby, not dwarves and trolls. When I hit bottom the other day I made a very off-colour and extremely cynical joke about suicide - deliberately laughing at 'death' (of hope in this case) is my way of coping with demons.

Terry's written this book in the same way as he wrote Small Gods and Jingo. The reason it's not as funny is because he was further down the maturity road and no longer needs to be as funny or just wanted to be funny in a different manner. That's all it is. Horses for courses.
 

raisindot

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#38
Swreader--

Very thoughtful analysis. I agree with everything you said except the "religious" element. Not that I'm defending religion--not at all--but because it's quite clear that the dwarves are NOT religious at all. They don't pray to any higher power, and their rituals are cultural, not religious in nature. Remember that Bashfulson says that the Tak origination story is not religious is nature--the dwarfs consider this to be history, the literal truth, and that Tak left the world after creating it and therefore there is no reason to pray to him. In fact, there's no evidence that dwarves have any religious (i.e., worshipping in higher powers) at all. They do believe in the "paranormal," i.e., the Summoning Dark, but this is no different than humans believing that ghosts exists, which doesn't require one to be religious, either.

Which is why I restate that in Thud! the issue is racism, not religion. One can be racist without being religious, as Hitler and Stalin amply demonstrated. Fundamentalists don't tolerate other beliefs and want everyone to join their religion. Dwarfs aren't like that all--in fact, they're the opposite--they don't wany ANYONE to join their club. Their mentality is the same as that of the bigots in the American south who practiced Jim Crow to keep blacks "in their place" or any of a thousand other examples of race-based discrimination based on the belief that one race is superior to another.

J-I-B
 
#40
Actually Pooh Hitler detested ALL FORMS OF Religion - he was a manic evolutionist and thought he was God! It was the 'strong survive the weak die' that helped the Aryan cause and he thought that anyone who was not Aryan was weak.

Catholics, Protestants, Evangelists ... ANYONE who believed in God was put in Concentration Camps - as well as Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies and Blacks ...
 

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