The Colour of Magic

Foreword

If I had a penny for every time someone asked me where I got the idea of the Discworld, I’d have—hang on a moment—£4.67.

Anyway, the answer is that it was lying around and didn’t look as though it belonged to anyone.

The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. It’s one of the great ancient myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication. The idea has been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off.

Since this is a reprint by popular demand—gosh—of the first book in a series that will, eventually, contain at least ten, there’s a very good chance that you already know what happens after this book, which is more than I did when I wrote it.

The Discworld is not a coherent fantasy world. Its geography is fuzzy, its chronology unreliable. A small travelling circle of firelight in a chilly infinity has turned out to be the home of defiant jokes and last chances.

The are no maps. You can’t map a sense of humour. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

Enjoy.

Terry Pratchett

October, 1989