The Light Fantastic

1

The book’s title comes from the poem L’Allegro, written by John Milton in 1631:

2

The reference is to the saying “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” (also known by its acronym ‘TANSTAAFL’, made popular by science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his classic novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, although the phrase was originally coined by American economist John Kenneth Galbraith).

3

“Slightly foxed” is a term used primarily by antiquarian booksellers to denote that there is staining (usually due to Ferric OXide, hence ‘FOXed’) on the pages of a book. This does not usually reduce the value of the book, but booksellers tend to be scrupulous about such matters.

4

Many people have commented on the last name of the 304th Chancellor of Unseen University: Weatherwax, and asked if there is a connection with Granny Weatherwax.

In Lords and Ladies, Terry supplies the following piece of dialogue (on p. 224/161) between Granny and Archchancellor Ridcully as an answer:

“‘There was even a Weatherwax as Archchancellor, years ago,’ said Ridcully. ‘So I understand. Distant cousin. Never knew him,’ said Granny.”

5

This is one of those candlesticks with a flat, saucer-like base, a short candleholder in the middle and a loop to grip it by at one side. ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ is a Mother Goose nursery rhyme, and traditional illustrations always show Willie going upstairs carrying a candle.

6

The title the ancient Egyptians used for what we now call the Book of the Dead was The Book of Going Forth By Day. Note that in the UK until a few years ago the pubs opened at 11 a.m.

If you try really hard (one of my correspondents did) you can see this as a very elaborate joke via the chain: Around Elevenish —> Late in the morning —> Late —> Dead —> Book of the Dead. But I doubt if even Terry is that twisted.

7

Amongst English (and Australian) children there exists the folk-belief that the seed-heads of dandelions can be used to tell the time. The method goes as follows: pick the dandelion, blow the seeds away, and the number of puffs it takes to get rid of all the seeds is the time, e.g. three puffs = three o’clock. As a result, the dandelion stalks with their globes of seeds are regularly referred to as a “dandelion clocks” in colloquial English.

8

The magic eating its way through the ceilings with the wizards chasing it floor after floor vaguely resonates with the ‘alien blood’ scene in the movie Alien, where the acidic blood of the Alien burns through successive floors of the ship, with people running down after it.

9

The original quote here dates back to 1777, and is by Samuel Johnson (a well-known harmless drudge): “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

Quite a few people have mistaken this quote for a reference to Douglas Adams. Of course Adams was simply parodying Johnson’s quote as well when he wrote (in Chapter 4 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe):

“[…] when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words ‘When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life’, the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight.”

10

When someone on the net wondered if this scene had been influenced by Monty Python (who also do a Death-at-a-party sketch), Terry replied:

“No. I’m fairly honest about this stuff. I didn’t even see the film until long after the book was done. Once again, I’d say it’s an easy parallel — what with the Masque of the Red Death and stuff like that, the joke is just lying there waiting for anyone to pick it up.”

The Masque of the Red Death is a well-known story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the nobility, in a decadent and senseless attempt to escape from the plague that’s ravishing the land, lock themselves up a castle and hold a big party. At which a costumed personification of Death, of course, eventually turns up and claims everyone anyway.

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that the quoted sentence looks very much like a classic Tom Swiftie (if you can accept Death as a shade). Tom Swifties (after the famous series of boys’ novels which popularised them) are sentences of the form “xxx, said he zzz-ly”, where the zzz refers back to the xxx. Examples:

“Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily.

“Let’s look for another Grail!” Tom requested.

“I used to be a pilot,” Tom explained.

“I’m into homosexual necrophilia,” said Tom in dead earnest.

11

The miscommunication between natives and foreign explorers Terry describes here occurs in our world as well. Or rather: it is rumoured, with stubborn regularity, to have occurred all over the globe. Really hard evidence, one way or the other, turns out to be surprisingly hard to come by. As Cecil Adams puts it in More of the Straight Dope: “Having now had the “I don’t know” yarn turn up in three different parts of the globe, I can draw one of two conclusions: either explorers are incredible saps, or somebody’s been pulling our leg.”

12

Speaking of Tom Swifties…

13

The cottage and the events alluded to a bit later (“‘Kids of today,’ commented Rincewind. ‘I blame the parents,’ said Twoflower.”) are straight out of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale by the brothers Grimm.

14

Candyfloss is known as cotton candy in the US, or fairy floss in Australia. It’s the pink spun sugar you can eat at fairs and shows.

15

A parody of the typical numerical pseudo-science tossed about regarding the Great Pyramid and the ‘cosmic truths’ (such as the distance from the Earth to the Sun) that the Egyptians supposedly incorporated into its measurements.

The remark about sharpening razor blades at the end of the paragraph is similarly a reference to the pseudo-scientific ‘fact’ that (small models of) pyramids are supposed to have, among many other powers, the ability to sharpen razor blades that are left underneath the pyramids overnight.

16

From the first Conan The Barbarian movie (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger): “Conan! What is good in life?” “To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” This quote, in turn, is lifted more or less verbatim from an actual conversation Genghiz Khan is supposed to have had with his lieutenants.

17

Another fairy tale reference, this time to Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

18

A mixture of “someone’s been eating my porridge” and “someone’s been sleeping in my bed”, both from the Goldilocks and the Three Bears fairy tale.

19

An organisation with this name is also mentioned in the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

20

The four fundamental forces that govern our universe are gravitation, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.

The word ‘charm’ also resonates with the concept of quarks, the elementary quantum particles that the strong nuclear force in fact acts on.

21

The bickering of the spells is cleared up somewhat by the creation passages on pp. 103/85-119/99 from Eric. It is quite clearly stated that first the Creator did an Egg and Cress (for Rincewind), then He Cleared His Throat, then He Read the Octavo (that’s the word then), which created the world and finally the primordial slime came into being because Rincewind couldn’t eat the Egg and Cress Sandwich and just dropped it on the beach. The Creator subcontracted for the firmament, so it isn’t quite clear when that came to be.

“In the beginning was the word” is of course also a biblical allusion to John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

22

Caroc = Tarot and Ching Aling = I Ching: two ways of accessing the Distilled Wisdom of the Ancients, and all that. A minor inconsistency, by the way, is that on p. 24/24 there actually is a reference to Tarot cards.

23

A reference to the Young Men’s Christian Association, YMCA. In our world the YMCA somehow became associated with the homosexual scene (I think quite a few people singing merrily along to the Village People’s disco hit ‘YMCA’ would have been very surprised to learn what the song was really about), hence the “studded collars and oiled muscles” bit.

24

It’s always important never to look back if you’re rescuing somebody from Death’s domain. The best known example of this can be found in the tragic legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus went to fetch his departed loved one, talked Hades (the Greek version of Death) into it, but had to leave without looking back. Of course he looked — and she was gone forever. A contemporary retelling of the Orpheus legend can be found in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

A few people have written and suggested a reference to Lot’s wife in Genesis 19:26 (who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back when they left Sodom and Gomorrah), but the fact that we’re talking about Death’s domain here indicates clearly to me that the Orpheus reference is the one Terry intended.

25

A houri is actually a beautiful young girl found in the Moslem paradise. ‘Sherbet’ is a cooling Oriental fruit drink (also a frozen dessert) as well as a fizzy sweet powder children eat as a sweet, and which comes in a cardboard tube with a liquorice ‘straw’ at the top. To get to the sherbet you bite off the end of the liquorice and suck through it.

26

A biriani is an Indian rice curry.

27

This is the first mention of Creosote, whom we will later meet as a fully developed character in his own right, in Sourcery.

28

The idea of a strange little shop that appears, sells the most peculiar things, and then vanishes again first appears in a short story by H. G. Wells, appropriately called The Magic Shop. A recent variation on the same theme can be found in Stephen King’s Needful Things.

When an a.f.p. reader mistakenly thought that this type of shop was invented by Fritz Leiber, Terry replied:

“Actually, magically appearing/disappearing shops were a regular feature of fantasy stories, particularly in the old Unknown magazine. They always sold the hero something he didn’t — at the time — know he needed, or played some other vital part in the plot. And I think they even turned up on the early Twilight Zones too. You’re referring to a Leiber story called Bazaar of the Bizarre or something similar, where a shop appears which seems to contain wonderful merchandise but in fact contains dangerous trash.”

The Leiber story is indeed called Bazaar of the Bizarre. It features Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and can be found in Swords Against Death.

29

In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings where we find (in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter III) that Gildor Inglorion the High Elf says: “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because they are subtle and quick to anger”. The other part she may have got from signs often seen in stores and pubs around the English-speaking world: “Do not ask for credit, because a refusal often offends”.

30

My herpetological correspondent tells me that in our world no known turtles give any sort of care to their young. They just lay the eggs and leave the hatchlings to fend for themselves, which incidentally helps explain why sea turtles are becoming extinct.

It can be argued that Great A’Tuin is in fact a kind of sea turtle (admittedly, a somewhat unusual sea turtle), since only sea turtles have flippers in place of feet and spend most of their time swimming.

31

Substituting “graduation with distinction” for the Latin “summa cum laude” gives a perfectly unexceptional sentiment, but it is, of course, also a reference to the song ‘Summertime’ from the Gershwin opera/operetta/musical Porgy and Bess: “Summertime, and the living is easy”.