Small Gods

77

Brewer tells us that in 456 BC Aeschylus, “the most sublime of the Greek tragic poets”, was “killed by a tortoise thrown by an eagle (to break the shell) against his bald head, which it mistook for a stone”.

Somebody on alt.fan.pratchett accused Terry of using ‘deus ex machina’ solutions too often in the Discworld novels, and cited this as a particular example. After all, everything has been going just swimmingly for Vorbis right until the very end, when the situation is simply resolved by having Om smash into him. In answer to this, Terry wrote:

“This is a valid point… but the key is whether the ‘solution’ is inherent in the story.

Consider one of the most basic lessons of folk tale. The young adventurer meets the old woman begging for food and gives her some; subsequently (she being, of course, a witch) he becomes king/wins the princess/etc with her aid, because of his actions earlier.

A solution doesn’t ‘come along’; it’s built into the fabric of the story from an early stage. Guards! Guards! and Interesting Times both use this device. I’d suggest that such a resolution is perfectly valid — as they say, using a gun to shoot the bad guy in Act 3 is only okay if the gun has been on the wall since Act 1. In Small Gods, though, not a single new thing is introduced or resurrected in order to defeat Vorbis — he’s defeated because of the way various characters react to events. The problem contains the solution coiled inside.

If it’s cowardice not to kill off your heroes but let them survive because luck runs their way, then I’ll plead guilty in the certain knowledge that I won’t get within a mile of the dock because of the crowds of authors and directors already there…:-)”