The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 151: Raising Steam Pt. 1 (A Better Class of Smut)

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Raising Steam”. Choo! Choo!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along '24 - Seven-Strand Plaited Note Death's Domain - Discworld Emporium Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes - Penguin  Pippina - Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki  The Severn Valley RailwayUp And Down The Railway Lines! (1940) - YouTubeRichard Trevithick - Wikipedia   Lancashire Witch - Wikipedia Lotus-eaters - Wikipedia  ---Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Nothing was ever gonna go right, but I ended up with edible biscuits. They're fucking cancelled chaos. Ah, I'm just annoyed at the television industry in general right now. But the chaos thing is really like the straw. I haven't even watched it yet. And I'm really annoyed about it. I never get that into TV. A little rant in the office when I found out.

But it's like recommending it. I've been recommending it to everyone like loads of people. I've had loads of word of mouth stuff. They don't give anything a fucking chance. Like it was building an audience. And, any momentum it's getting, people are going to be like, well, it's great, but it has been cancelled. Maybe don't. I'm still going to watch it. That's one of the little treats I'm saving for myself when I finish the official binge watching for this book.

It is still definitely worth watching. It's enough of a story in its own right. Yeah. I was thinking more about how the business models can work with this quick cancellation because obviously I've written so much about this stuff. Like the whole kind of running theme through the teen drama book I'm writing is like these shows built up these massive fandoms because they got the chance to last more than a season. Like Supernatural ran for 15 years. But there were a lot of shows that networks did cancel after one season and that never built the fandoms for a lot of reasons. Some of it was a showrunner had a really popular show so they're like, oh, what else can you do for us? Sign a deal with them and then the showrunner

then is making two shows at once and gets burned out really quickly and they realize it's not sustainable. But yeah, there was more logic to it with network television. It was like, right, we can see the live audiences. People are not tuning in to watch this on a regular basis on the night, which means we can't sell advertising, get rid of it. But with the streaming model where it's all about building subscribers, the only logic I can see behind it, and it's barely logic, is cancecelling something like chaos is, okay, so people have signed up to watch it and now the people that are going to keep Netflix because they found all of the old stuff on there that they can binge watch like Gilmore Girls and

stuff, they have signed up for Netflix now. A second season is not going to get us more new people, so why bother with it? Especially when we have to pay the writers and actors more because that's how contracts work. When you make a second season, you get more money. So it saves the network money. The stream of money. It's really depressing. It is. I know it's how business is worked. Like it's got to be short term, gauge short term, whatever. But it's just like the part of my brain that feels like the world should run in a sane manner. You can't let go of like, what do you just want your whole platform to be a repository for unfinished works? Is that what you want?

No, what they want is their platform to carry a bunch of already completed shows that were made that 10 years ago that people will binge watch repeatedly out of nostalgia. They can barely manage that. Yeah, that and cheap reality television. How's your bake off going? I'm really at the latest. I haven't written up this week's yet. I was going to do that before we started recording and then I faffed around blocking a scarf instead. I'm really annoyed at Paul Hollywood. Oh, I'm always kind of annoyed at Paul Hollywood, to be fair. No, this week's challenge, well, it was bread week this week. And I always

look forward to bread week because I do love bread. It wasn't a bad episode this week actually. I didn't think anything was massively egregious apart from Kelly being robbed of Star Baker. I would die for Kelly. Those who are listening and watching Bake Off will know exactly what I mean here. But the technical challenge was a braided wreath loaf. You can do that. I've seen you do that. I can do that. I did do that. I did it successfully. I made a lovely braided wreath loaf. You can do that. I've seen you do that. I can do that. I did do that. I did it successfully. I made lovely braided wreath loaf. It was just really boring. There was no real challenge in the recipe. It's not even like a challah or something. It's just a plain white bread but braided. The bakers weren't given the amount of water. They were just given the amount of flour and that's fine because it

is a very, very easy thing to work out if you make bread on an even slightly regular basis. I've got a post-it note with the ratios on, I'm not sure I could recite that. I make bread weekly so I know various ratios depending on what I want the texture of the bread to be. And yeah, the bread thing, he did a demonstration at the beginning of the thing of how to do the bread so I gave myself the challenge of not rewatching between when I watched the episode and then going to make it myself. So I had two days of memory gap. Is it a very complicated braid? I take it. Seven strands.

Okay, right. But what I'm annoyed with, right, is fine. Perfectly simple challenge. It worked in the time frame. I did it. I had a lovely braided wreath of loaf. It is not a convenient loaf of bread to eat. Like I would only make a loaf like this if I was like having a dinner party and I could kind of, you know, yeah, you put it in the middle of the table and people can rip chunks off it and smother them in butter and it's a lovely experience for all involved. That sounds convenient to me. Yeah, but you can't get good slices out of it for toast. No. You've got to make a weird curving sandwich if you want a sandwich.

I have an uncomfortable, and I've got to use it, obviously. I'm not going to throw away perfectly good bread. There is a limit to how much in the way of bread crumbs and croutons I need. Oh, you don't like soup. Yeah, no, not soup, then. Oh, that's a problem for weird shaped bread. That's the destination, the destiny of all weird shaped bread in this house is to be a soup.

A soup compliment. A soup receptacle. Yeah. But yeah, no, I'm not really a soup person. So I'm gonna get... Stew? Not a stew either, I guess, no. I mean, no, I love a stew, but I don't have it on the...

Camembert, bake a camembert. See, that's what I should have done. I should have baked a camembert. It's too late now. Yeah, obviously. Instead I will be eating awkwardly curved sandwiches. I've got no way to get from that to anything reasonable, but do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the True Shall We Make You Fret, a podcast in which we are reading

and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one of Steinbrink on Lodge Clawdor. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today is our first episode on Raising Steam. Choo-choo, motherfuckers. Yeah, we are chuffing along. We're chuffed. Chuffing along.

There we go. We're chuffed to be talking about Raising Steam. I was trying so hard not to do it. No one spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler-like podcast. Obviously heavy spoilers for the book Raising Steam, however we are saving any and all mention of the final Discworld novel The Shepherd's Crown until we get there so you dear listeners can come on the journey with us. Gleefully pulling the whistle as we go. Did you notice I had to cut a bit out of the spoiler warning because The Shepherd's Crown is the only book we've got left.

Oh yeah. Up to this. Ah, edited. Cool. All right, not having an emotion about that. We had a lovely mailbag as our last episode, so we don't really have anything to follow up on. So Francine, do you want to introduce us to the book Raising Steam? I do. Raising Steam is the 40th and the penultimate Discworld novel. It was dedicated rather sweetly to Terry and Rob's fathers in the beginning. Now apparently, and I found this just while

I was reading the competing page, the railway on Discworld was mentioned in Death's Domain, which is a Kidby illustrated map that published in 1999. And I don't remember ever coming across this. I'm aware that it exists, but I've never acquired a copy of it. I think it's out of print now. I would not say we can't probably find a copy on eBay. I think I saw it on deskwell.com. Oh it's not out of print. Okay. But yeah I've never acquired a copy and had a look through it so we should do that at some point. Yeah I think so. So yeah this is one of those books I've only read once or twice, maybe twice probably. It feels sort of like two arcs meeting, got

a little voice from the story, got a little Schmaltzberg volumes for thousand vibes. Yeah, and yeah, I'll just launch into the tricky bit as I've titled it, subtitled it. We've said we weren't going to go on about the we embuggerance here kind of stuff. And we do stand by that. But it does seem disingenuous not to mention outsiders at this point. Because Rob wrote about it at length in A Life with Footnotes. And it was very challenging to write. So Rob wrote about the process and how Terry was still downloading as he put out a lot of beautiful scenes from the book and there's a lot of flourish and flare and very Pratchettian. But he says, where was it all heading? As never before, I found myself worrying about that as we were going along. The scenes accumulated and accumulated, the word count rose and rose

and get the unifying crystallizing vision that would have turned these scenes into a novel that wasn't emerging. They worked in very close collaboration, even more so than usual, with Philippa Dickinson, Brad Pitt's editor, to make it more cohesive. But Rob described his worries about the book proving to be true. And so he was on holiday in Florida when Raising Steam came out, and he read the early Amazon reviews. And he said, and and right away my worst fears were realized. I scrolled down one star review, two star review, one star review, the characters aren't themselves. The writing is different, not like Pratchett's previous work.

Not interesting, not funny, not Pratchett. Within 48 hours, fans would come rushing to Terry's defense, never prepared to stand by and see him slated, least of all now, and the book's ratings got boosted 4.6. Well, bless them for that, but those reviews were the one-liners. The longer, more considered ones tended to see it differently. And much as it hurt to admit it, I thought the more considered ones had got it right. The book was a missed opportunity. I knew that the real triumph of raising steam was that it existed at all. So yeah, I don't know about you, but I kind of do look at it that way as well.

Like, this isn't deep practice, at no point saying it is, but we do get the chance to hear from him again for his characters. And there are these beautiful things he's downloaded from the ether, and it might be in a less defined way. But I think Moist, as certainly as a character, as the main character is pretty clear. Yeah. So yeah, what do you reckon? I'm in two minds about this. I get very defensive about this

book. I really like this book. I've read it a couple of two or three times because as I talked about with like Snuff and I Shall Wear Midnight, this was kind of, I was still new to getting Pratchett books as they came out because I started reading quite late. So I really enjoyed it. I'd read Going Post and Making Money by this point. So I was really excited to have another Moist One Lit Big Book. I wanted to see what Terry Pratchett would do with trains. And yeah, I get very- Nobody's doing with trains. Sorry, just like- I love what he's done with the trains. In this train era.

I get very defensive about it partly because like I said, you see a lot of variations, especially in like Facebook groups things, of people saying, I'm so disappointed, I read this and you can really see it. I think it's gross to constantly bring it up. I think some of that attitude comes from – the readers were very aware, both when it came out and when they read it now, how Terry Pratchett's health was when he was writing this book. I think people go into it with that attitude and looking for what's wrong with it in a way they maybe don't with the earlier ones. As we've talked about, there's plenty of wrong with some of the earlier ones

as well. I agree with that. It's not peak Pratchett. This is far from the most intricately, tightly plotted of his books. It does ramble a lot more. But I really enjoy it. I genuinely think it is a very good book and a not great Discworld book is still a better book than many, many books. We've kind of come full circle on that comment, haven't we? Because right at the beginning, we're saying, you know, we're criticizing these books, we love these books, but we're comparing them with with Nightwatch, with Going Toaster, with you know, it's a different standard. I'd still rather be reading this than almost any other book by a different author. So yeah, I do agree with like the kind of the wallowing in it on fan groups makes it. It irks me. Yeah, it makes me want to immediately deny there's anything different about it. Obviously there is, but yeah, the way some

people put it is just grim. I put it in the same bucket as like, you know, frustrated with fans sort of going, I find it very frustrating people going, oh, and it's so sad, we never get any more. It's like, you got 41. Plus, you know, all the other non-dis world books and all this stuff. You've got a lot. I am sad about that. But still, yeah. I'm also sad about it. But there's a difference between being sad about it and wallowing in it. And yeah, I feel like when people point out a lot, it's to show how clever they are for noticing it and knowing rather than it being a genuine criticism. Yeah. Yeah. I was like the one specific criticism from from an early blog review, I think, that I did agree with is that

some of the characters are less defined than they were. But, you know, a lot of that can be set down to character development as well, frankly. I mean, we have noted that characters like Betnari are getting a little bit less black and white. Yeah. And I have a lot more thoughts about that. I'll talk about as we go through the episode. Yeah, I thought we better cover cover that, just by saying, yeah. Yeah, we can't completely ignore that. To end the intro on a happy note, might this be the highest concentration of footnotes

we've had in a section? For a while, yeah, really fun footnotes. But yeah, OK, so in this section then, speaking of sections, this section goes from page one to page 142 in the Corgi paperback version and ends with, why thank you, I'll have a tincture of brandy with my tea to keep out the cold if you don't mind. In this section, nothing becomes something. Young Dick Simnorn discovers the library and the wonders of mathematics. Ten years later, he shows his mother the prototype of the Iron Gerder, gets funding, keeps working, and heads to Ankh-Morpork to seek his fortune. Vesanari deals with assassins en route to Uyghurwold

and learns from Margolotta that grag issues are arising. While Mois and Adora are happily at home with rooftop goblins, Harry King ponders and smells promness. Simnel has arrived. Dick demonstrates for his potential investor with a track around King's compound. As a crowd gathers, Harry suggests making things legal and goblins get fascinated. The next morning, Moist is politely invited to Vettinari's office to discuss the Railway while a wedding in Vlamidos gets warlike. At Harry's compound, Moist and Drumnock meet Dick and his girder and go for a ride. Drumnock blows a whistle and Moisey's possibilities. Vettinari decides to nod. Adora and Angua chat at an attacked Klax tower. Vettinari's in a fury

about attacks on the Klax and the low king Rhys meets with his council of dissenting dwarfs, Ardent's being vocal but Albertson sounds with the king on this issue at least. The Times has concerns and Vettinari asks Moist to take an official interest on behalf of the city. As customers queue for rides, Drumknot has another go, Nobs and Colon answer questions and veterinary thinks about the route to Uberwald. Moist travels the countryside, greasing things along and out drinking landowners, while less legitimate railway companies pop up in the background. The compound grows, hammer strikes steel, signals a ragtag bunch of engineers keep up their engineering,

grags push unwilling dwarfs and railway fever abounds. Boyce makes an entrance into veterinary office on a golem horse and is informed of plans to reach Quern by rail. Finally, Ridcully gets a visitor. Lutze wants to discuss steam engine time. It's all gonna get metaphysical. It might get metaphysical.

It might get metaphysical. Yeah, at the very beginning, the nothing becoming something that is quite fun because it's been a while since we've had that intro. It's that flavor of Discworld intro, isn't it? Like moving pictures is the one that sticks out and maybe Reefer Man as well, but you get the character introduction of the concept. Yeah. I think that's partly why I have such a fondness slash soft book for this book as well is because it's a what happens when thing happens book. Yeah, we do like this. And it's industrial revolution, which is always fun.

There's hints of steampunk lurking as they do, but we try not to think about them. So Helicopter and Loincloth watch. For Helicopter, we of course have Leonard of Querms flying machines that didn't go anywhere. Well done, Leonard. Well done, Leonard. For Loincloth, we have the kind of dress that Lutze is wearing. Yeah. Thank goodness that Ledlow got to Ridgely before he underestimated fatally a harmless old man who was smiling. Quotes! Shall I go first?

Yeah, go ahead. I've done a short one because I know I'm going to end up quoting massive passages of the text as we go through this episode. As he expected, the hubbub bubbled even more. Willful bubbled hatred, bubbled misunderstanding, bubbled spitefulness. Hubbub, it's a lovely onomatopoeia that I don't think we've mentioned in our conversations about onomatopoeia. Oh, it is great. Hubbub.

That low assaseration for effectiveness. Yes. Also, I challenge anyone not to say words like hubbub and bubbled more than once in a sentence without starting to sound a bit like Rowan Atkinson. Yes. Bob. Hubbub. Anyway. A favourite quote from you.

Mois knew about the Zeitgeist. He tasted it in the wind and sometimes it allowed him to play with it. He understood it and now it hinted at speed, escape, something wonderfully new, the very bones of the land awakening. And suddenly it seemed to cry out for motion, new horizons, far away places, anywhere that is not here. No doubt about it, the railway was going to turn coal into gold." I love that line. Yeah, just the bits like that, anywhere that is not here, that really reminds me of like when we were talking about panoramas and things and the Victorians being so into, oh, it's

not Victorians, earlier the Victorians being so into horizons suddenly. Yes. And of course that wonderful line about the horse in going post, we wanted to bite the Horizon. Bite the Horizon. What's the horse called? I've forgotten his name. I've forgotten his name. He's my favourite character. He's my favourite, but that doesn't mean I remember his name. I think he'd like it that way.

Who are you? Remind him only for his drive to bite the Horizon. Yes. Right, characters then. Should we start with our Dick, Dick Simnel? I'm trying so hard not to make Dick jokes, I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll accept the odds, nigger, and then... And then we'll move on. Dick Simnel. Dick Simnel. Son of Ned Simnel. Son of Ned, who I believe we've met before. That was who we met in Breeperman, who was working on the combination harvester. That darned machine.

That darned machine that thankfully didn't work and then sadly Ned disappeared in the cloud of furnace parts and flying metal enveloped in a pink steam. Is that what we'd have wanted to go? I feel so. I like Dixie Simnel. I love this character. I've not put in many quotes of his dialogue because I'm not going to do the accent but I do love the... It's perfect in my head but I can't read it aloud. I tried. Especially because you have the fun, like the contrast of things like the tan and the cosine and the sliding rule but what's clearly written to be I feel like Yorkshire-ish. Very

e-bar gum. Yes. Yeah, it's... I did see somebody say, Oh, I don't like the way he's kind of written down the York Drax and that's a bit heavy handed. That's the point. This is a trope. This is a massive parody. It's like Yorkshire lad done good. Yeah. But who is clearly very intelligent. He gets described when he's getting himself in to see Harry King as having the persistence of a wasp and the sharpness of a razor blade. persistence of a wasp and the sharpness of a razor blade. Sarah- Oh, yeah, that didn't endear me to immediately, but everything else I approve of. I like the

insistence on trusting Harry King despite being told not to. Like, no, no, you're trustworthy. Feifei- I like his little test for Harry King as well. He says, oh, I'll do whatever he thinks best and Harry King does the, no, don't be an idiot, bargain with me, bargain hard. He's like, okay, good. Yeah, well, you're clearly honest then and therefore I want to work with you. There's a nice moment as well Moist asks him about how something works and you get this, Dix smile, the expansive smile of someone who really wants to talk about his wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom. wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom. It's lovely. I love the bit about him discovering mathematics on his own as well. It reminds

me of, ooh, is it Fermat? Fermat's theorem? I think he was the one who was like, but maths was kept from him as a child because he was just going to get too into it and he found it and he was like, I love this. I'm never doing anything else ever again. It reminds me a little bit as well of the stories like Terry Pratchett tells about his childhood and going to a library for the first time and discovering this whole incredible world he didn't know about. But yeah, mathematics in this case. Great character. Moist. Sorry, I hear that. Sorry.

Oh no, we're collecting those names now. What Moist did? Slightly damped on lipstick. Sorry, I hear that. Sorry. Oh no, we're collecting the names now. What we're wasting here? Slightly damped on Lipfig. Mr. Slightly Damp, which Adora encourages the goblins to use for him to keep him a little bit humble. So Moisten and Adora have obviously done very well for themselves and they now have their nice place on Schoon Avenue with Crossley and Mrs. Crossley and Crisp, no other name, the gardener, just like Cher.

Does this mean that Vimes is Moist's neighbour? Oh, do they live on the same street? Yeah, they live on Scone Avenue. Interesting. I wonder if Moist benefits from Vimes' anti-assassin measures. I'm thinking more about if that means that the staff are friendly with each other or if there's some kind of rivalry between Willikens. This is all just me outrageously headcanoning.

I don't think Willikens would have any beef with Crisp. No. I think Willikens and Crisp could have an understanding, but I reckon Willikens could have a little bit of professional beef with Crossley. Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps. Good to think about. Fun to think about.

Anyway, sorry, what were you saying? I was wondering, what would we call Moist's encompassing job title at this point? Because he's got all these different job titles. What is he? Is he a progress salesman or he's the institutional imagination for the city? Fetnari just kind of winds him up and goes, look, an idea, get excited about that and make everyone else excited too. Like, what's a good title for that? I don't know. Yeah, Imagineer, which is a thing for Disney. Exactly. Listeners, answers on a scary mechanical contrivance or a gold top hat. But he's not an official government employee, of course. He's not exactly. But you know, consultants, I think, can have job titles too.

Yeah, true. Progress consultant. Gosh, that sounds awful, doesn't it? It does sound like- I think that's probably what hit me down on the books as nobody got too interested. I think that would be a good one. Harry describes him as the kind of man who'd follow you into a revolving door and still come out in front. Yeah, that's great.

But yeah, the way he immediately starts leaping on the potential for the railway, they're talking about going out to obviously where symbols like workshop and everything is based, so they can start bringing things over and that'll be the first place the track is laid to. And they're saying, oh, you know, who's in the sticks? And he's like, well, like, yeah, but it won't be the sticks. Because the areas that will have the railways are prosperous. They're the ones that can then bring this produce into the city sooner. You can get watercress. Yeah. A nexus. I know what a nexus is. Yes. Yes, he becomes a symbol in that moment, doesn't he? He gets the smile of somebody who wants to

explain the new project. Yes. And if you're just a page after that, you get Moise can see lots of opportunities in plenty of room for problems. And right in the middle of it's always Moise van Lippvig, it couldn't get better than this. Mercury personality coming out again with a skipping down the street, because he's talking past veterinary's concerns about hundreds of jobs being lost, which are very valid concerns. But he's like, for progress, it's a sort of dance, no one can stop you, but it's the world, the nutshell. Yeah, I think like, yeah, progress something is going to be his job, totally. driving force. This isn't the best pace of the Discworld books, but Moise is the driving force of the pace we've got. It does drive the railway forward. A future ambassador. That's what it is.

A future ambassador. I like that. Then Adora. I love the descriptions of her working alone on the Clark's Tower and reminding her of being a child who her mother would hang her cradle from the top of a tower while she was coding, leaving her daughter cheerfully making baby noises several hundred feet above the ground. I know. I like the inclusion of two very supportive mothers in this. They're children's genius, budding geniuses. Yes. And she sorted out the delicate little mechanisms and saved a world where she could

reach out and touch the sun, metaphorically at least. Yes. world where she could reach out and touch the sun, metaphorically at least. There's a nice similarity between her and Mois, this idea of pushing towards a horizon or being able to reach a horizon, finding themselves in the tall places and pushing towards the faraway places. It's nice that she's able to spend less time fighting for the Golems now that they've got... able to spend less time fighting for the golems now that they've got. Gina McAllister They seem to have found their place in society. Emma Watson She taught the claymen to fish, isn't it? Gina McAllister And then the fun, we like seeing characters

who haven't interacted before interacting, so seeing her interact with Angwa, although it's after one of the townhouses is attacked, that's a nice two women nodding in understanding. Wasn't it amazing how one of them managed to chew his own ear off? LW – Yes. Incredible. What was the name of the goblin? MG – Of the Twilight, the Darkness. LW – That's right. The other one I liked was the Shatter of Icicle or something like that. MG – Yeah. There's a great list of goblin names later in the book and I'm pretty sure

one of them was called Of the Sky the Rim, which is my favourite completely unsubtle little reference that Pranchett's thrown in a book. LH – Mmm, lovely. KM – And then of course, yeah, we've got Harry King. LH – We've got Harry King, who's not King of shit, not for long. KM – This is partly, again, why I'm a fan of this book is that it's a Harry King book and you and he's

one of my favourite side characters. I love him and the interactions we get with him. Now we get a full rounded character and his character has been really nicely built. We know he has these insecurities. We know his wife wants better. LX Yeah. He turns up in this and we know him already, even though he's only been a few pages throughout the whole disco. MG But we had the interaction with him and William in the truth about the toshirun and then the nice colour pictures of the bridesmaids' dresses. LESLE Yeah, yeah.

GER Obviously we have him. He even moisters these kind of kindred spirits who are very capable of working with each other right away because they're both sort of done good for themselves. LESLE Not crooks anymore, not exactly. And he's hoping to be the first railway baron and Mois sort of looks at him and goes, yeah, no, that's exactly he is as much as you know, I'm the one who can cross these. Yeah. And something that he can talk about in polite company and that Effie can be proud of. Yeah. It was kind of his thing with paper though, wasn't it as well?

Yeah, it was him doing something legit and something he could be proud of and be in the paper. But this is a much bigger- Yeah, because this is going to be his business, not a side bit of his business. Yeah. This is going to be him. And I love that Effie gets so enthusiastic about it that she gets involved. She comes to the office, she starts planning. The hygienic railway. She names the hygienic railway. He gives it a certain. He's a hygenic frail way. He gives it a certain. And the way he gets sort of poetic about it, daffodils are quite like them, but look at the sheen on the steel, the sweat on the men, the future being made, one hammerblower at a time. He's like, we need a better sort of poet

for this. But you know what I mean? Yeah, he's an industrialist. He's the kind of Yeah, he's an industrialist. He's the kind of person who really appreciates a dockland. Yes. Yeah, it's the real romance of the industrial revolution kind of summed up in Harry King somehow despite the fact he's Harry King. I think it's a really great character to give it to. We have Vettanari. Vettanari made me notice something as I as reading this because I was thinking about the book being written, like those passages from Rob's book. So at this point, because he, Fetunari

is very monologuery in this, both internal and external monologue, and he's been a bit more like that for the last couple of books. He was very monologuery in Snuff as well and on seen Academicals. And I was thinking about this because obviously at this point, Terry Pratchett, he was dictating and had been for quite a while, I think. That started fairly early on in his and Rob's working relationship. I think so, yeah. But he's no longer sitting down and doing the physical editing afterwards, which I think he did. Yeah. But I was thinking about this with Vesanari monologuing, and I'm wondering if there's

anything there like the Vesanari monologuing to Drumknot, if there's anything similar to Terry and Rob's working relationship of getting to stand there and pontificate, and maybe Terry Pratchett was enjoying doing that and getting to put these monologues together. There's a lot of moments, especially in the Vesanari stuff, where it feels like he's having fun writing the book and coming up with this as he goes along. Yeah. Very early on, we had that page of veterinary monologue that really went, oh, fuck, that's dark. I think he's getting less so, but I can definitely see that as just a progression of veterinary becoming less of a tyrant to the

point where he has to be reminded sometimes that he's a tyrant. I can't remember if it was in Rob's book or whether it was somewhere else, but we've read some of Praptit's ideas about what might happen next to Ang Moorpalk. Vettnari obviously couldn't be patrician forever. At some point he's going to change as a person. He would either retire or become non-vicious enough to be taken out. So it doesn't surprise me that he would be less waspy and razor-like. Yeah and that we get more insight into him as the books go along because if you have this character

that's clearly incredibly interesting under the surface for so long. I feel like the dam broke a bit with Nightwatch when we had young veterinary. And I think post Nightwatch then you start getting more of veterinary's internal machinations because now like you've played with the character as a youngster, you can play a lot more with what is going on behind the eyes. Yeah. And I think, you know, the fact that we have more drum knot in each book as well has helped with that because drum knot is somebody to bounce off because you don't really get much of veterinarians in a monologue until this one. No. And so drum knot's been very much the context. Yeah, you get a little bit with moisture, a little bit with vines, but yeah, drum knot is the bulk of it. Obviously we had like the wonderful otter speech recently. But yeah, the moments where it just feels like someone's having fun with the words as they're going along,

in this doleful mood, he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not-fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed here to stay. And then he wondered had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler? That's someone just having fun with a word. That is somebody who enjoys crosswords. That is someone who enjoys crosswords. Fangler, moist job title. Fangler. The new fangler.

Yes, the new fangler. Oh, for goodness sake. I had to look up the etymology after that bit. This is from a Reddit post, but it is sourced, so I'm going to say yes. So, newfangled, addicted to novelty, literally ready to grasp all new things from the adjective newfangled, fond of novelty, from new plus fangled, inclined to take, from photogametic fanglom to grasp, all of this very moist von Lippwig. Now you've got thing. Yeah, taking, grabbing, grasping. Okay, great. I'm glad we settled that. I still want your answers on Golden Hats, please listen. Yeah. We've blown this whole thing wide open. I also just want to quickly mention, because I

think it's a great line, Vesanari had articulated the termway in something like the voice of an elderly Duchess finding something unmentionable in her soup. LW Oh, and lastly, I very much enjoyed his smug delight about the crossword compiler stepping down. LW Oh, yeah, but like, oh, that poor woman. GW Poor woman who runs the pet food shop on Pellicle Steps. LW I know. I hope she's okay.

Well, she got a lovely box of chocolates from a secret admirer. I'm not sure I'd trust that. Anyway, speaking of Drumknot then. He's having a nice day. When his joyer on the train for the first time and getting to blow the whistle and then it stops and he's still pulling the whistle and then he caught their gaze carefully relinquished the chain climbed down from the footplate and almost tiptoed through the sizzling steam and occasional unexpected mechanical creak as the metal called. He walked gingerly over to Dick Semnol and said, Horsley, could we do that again, please?

I love him. I love it. I'm so happy for him. Oh, I'm so glad he's got something outdoors, without saying out in the fresh air, definitely not in the fresh air, but it's nice that he's, you know, He's going outside and doing something new. Especially as the only other time he's requested off work was to attend the Paperclip Stapler and Desktop desktop aid symposium. Now the desktop aids I'm interested in. Yeah, I want to know more about desktop aids. I could do with the desktop aid. Yeah, I'm thinking of these little toys, but I don't think he'd be into that, would it? It'd be like a desk mounted hole punch, you know?

We meet Mr. Thunderbolt, the new character. Can we find out later in the book why he's called Mr Thunderbolt? Clara – No, I wondered if it was sort of, perhaps he had like Thunderbolt Iron in the back of his mind or something because obviously we have all this iron and steel and everything. Niamh – Yeah, yeah. Because he's Diamond, doesn't he? And he can't be Mr Diamond because of anyone. Clara – But he's the nephew of the Diamond King of the Trolls, but that doesn't quite explain the depth of their relationship, which I quite like to the implication that the way trollish relationship works is very

complicated and deep. but there's something called a Vajra, which is a legendary and ritualistic tool that symbolises the properties of a diamond in destructibility and a thunderbolt irresistible force in, and it's like in Hinduism. I can't say it's that. I just googled diamond thunderbolt. The voice was the voice of a professor, but one who had chosen to speak in an echoing cave. That's a wonderful description. Yeah. And earlier in that fade, it's the voice like Lava. Yes. Very good. Love him. But I also like this idea of, you know, these trolls who have been

thought of simple and it's like, yes, no, simplicity is at our core, which means I'm not going to fuck you about with nonsense lawyer stuff, I'm going to do exactly what needs to be done to make everything work. Yeah. It's also nice to get another like very top lawyer that's not Mr. Slant introduced. Yes. It's nice to have another like very top lawyer that's not Mr. Slant introduced. Yes, it's nice to have more lawyers.

I think Harry King would end up permanently killing Mr. Slant somehow. Yeah. I think those two would get along. No, I can't see it. Plus, you know, Mr. Slant, not the most morally upright of the lawyers we've had. No, no, certainly not. Very to the letter of the law, which as we all know, is not always to everybody's moral compass.

Everyone's best interest. Yes. And then we meet Of the Twilight, the Darkness, the lovely little goblin who I adore. That was very patronising, lovely little goblin. Lovely little goblin. Well, we say dear little listeners. Yeah. Not great for the habit of a lifetime.

Of the Twilight, the Darkness will get a more starring role in the later sections, but I pretty much just mentioned him here because I wanted to mention the description of shrugging which the effect was rather like a parcel of snakes dancing. While we've got him let's mention Billy Slick as well. Yes! Returning Billy Slick. The sort of superior goblin who sees himself as in charge of all the other goblins on Harry King's compound because he's more integrated. He's less goblin, he's more rank more pork. We have the low king Reese and some of the other dwarfs as well. as I was reading Low King Rees's Bad Day, that sounds like a kid's book, but it came to me that how moist feels about hard work, the little monologue about how you never have to pick up a glass or whatever, is how I feel about leadership duties because oh my god, fuck that noise.

Trying to manage people. Oh. Yes. This is why I really, when I've worked any kind of management roles, second in command, sous chef. Perfect level of management for me. The buck does not stop with me, there's someone else above and someone else below, but I do get to tell people what to do and organize things and I love telling people what to do and organize things. I'd make a great secretary, Aaron, I could do that. Do that in a heartbeat. Now Adam's from third, isn't he? Yes.

Yes. And his, sorry, the other dwarf, the... Albert Albertson. Albert Albertson, it's nice to see him again too. Yeah, he's from the Fifth Elephant. Yeah. Yeah. He was the other potential king. The less progressive one. He's conservative, but not a twat. Yeah, I do like that they brought this in and immediately gone yet the conservative king who thinks differently to the the conservative would be king, who thinks

differently to the actual leader is not the problem here. Yeah, not the same as a like fundamentalist weirdo. And has also like potentially grown and changed quite a lot from when he was in the fifth elephant. Yeah, and it has maybe changed his perspective slightly. Oh and then lastly, we have Rick Cully and Luke Day. FF I like this moment between the two of them. I'm delighted to see characters interact that we have. But it's almost this little bit, reassures us what this book will not be about. Yes. Yeah. Don't worry, we're not going to have a train god and then everything can go weird if we don't pay enough attention to the train.

Yes. That's the equivalent of a veterinary asking, is this on a sacred ground? We all know what happened to Mr. Jong's three jolly luck to take away on Dagen Street. Yes. It's licking your finger, putting it in the air and not having sparks come off it. Yeah. So I like that. There's so much grease around that you do have to worry about the dimensions if that was all. Well, yeah. Because the air was always greasy before the dungeon dimension came through, wasn't it? Yeah, I feel like it's a different kind of grease though. I think it's less air grease and more...

Physical grease. Yeah. Physical grease. What a great. Yeah. Yeah. What a great band name. Sorry. Drag name. Hi, I'm Physical Grease. Hi. Also just completely foundation has had canon. Well, not completely foundationless. But obviously, how did these two meet? How do they? Did Vimes introduce them? When did Vimes meet Lutz?? Oh yeah, Night Watch. Night Watch. So I kind of like the idea of Vimes made a point of finding Lutze again after Night Watch just to make sure we're about tempera- and sort of went- okay, so that happened and it was above the university and we know things- I think possibly the guy who knows are not about temporal anomalies and the guy who knows a lot about magic should make sure they are in contact with each other.

Yes. Yeah, I was gonna say like, it might have been a professional courtesy from Lutze to come in and go, by the way, this is why everything's fucky with the timeline. The other idea I had for how they meet is that it's sort of a responsibility of Lutze to keep an eye on who are the Archchancellors and pop in and maybe have regular meetings about what may break the fabric of the universe. But obviously Ridcully has kept the wizards under a much more sensible leash and now it's sort of just, well, let's just have a regular cuppa with a bit of brandy in it. No stuffed crocodile necessary. I also like the idea of Viomz who obviously knows Ridcully from Civic Functions and the like going,

make sure they know each other and then hopefully some other things can be taken out of my jurisdiction. Yes, yeah. Possibly the first meeting was presided over by Sybil for sanity reasons. Maybe Sybil thought to introduce them. Because she thought Linna had to have the rancid yak butter in stock when they did. Well yeah, she would definitely, wouldn't she? Sorry, I'm just happily thinking about Ridd Kelly. One character we might see more of later, I don't know, again I haven't read the end of the book yet.

Tapina, goddess of discord? No, I think she's just here to sort of say that okay and that's why it all works and the dungeon dimensions aren't breaking through. As far as I remember, she's not mentioned in the rest of the book. Have we seen her anywhere else? Is this our only Papina? I think this is our only Papina, but I do need to have a look and see if Paul Kibbeet's done an illustration of Papina holding the apple of discord. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I've just double checked and yeah, it looks like this is a

very brief one. But the wiki, Elsface, has noted that Pippina has a lot in common with the Greek goddess Eris, who had a golden apple inscribed calisti, which meant to the most beautiful and as a revenge for being excluded from a wedding reception, she threw said apple into a room full of her fellow goddesses knowing full well there'd be a cat fight and the male consorts would be forced to take sides." I disagree with the use of the word cat fight there, but I like the story. Yeah, I'm not sure we need to say cat fight. I think we can just say fight. Gendering violence, Jesus. Anyway. LH – Release the crickets! MG – Release the crickets. Locations. Aitmore Pork probably doesn't need crickets releasing. LH – No, that's just, I don't know what would happen, but it would probably be more than intended.

MG – Aitmore Pork, which is cleaning up its act, although it had been in a good act full of spices, plagues, floods and other entertainments. I love that. But yeah, the speculative real estate, obviously, is a funny bone of it. Especially with Dibbler's name coming up and Mois sort of looking at it and itching to pull a real estate scam because he knows he can do it really well. Yeah. Oh man, fucking real estate scam. Do you know what, I'm glad this is like a passing joke more than anything we go into more because although I'm sure Patrick would have made it very funny, my nerves can't take it. No, that's fair. I completely understand that.

The particular corporate nonsense I got out of. But also this idea of overspill, the city expanding outside of its corsets. Oh yeah, it's stone girdle. We love the metaphor. I love any corsetry metaphor around the edge of Ankh-Mor book, in certain streets where seamstresses ply their trade. But yeah, it fits really nicely with the Industrial Revolution theme, because obviously, this is something that was a big part of what happened in major cities like London, as you start getting more and more overspill and then transport and different kinds of transport become more

and more necessary. Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you what, I don't know really much about the that side of the Industrial Revolution. Like, obviously, I know a lot more properties will build. I don't really know anything apart from that. Must be quite interesting. Yeah, it's a rabbit hole I'd really like to dive into at some point when we have time. I'm thinking about this purely in the context of Discworld, not like an equivalent what would you do if it was say London, but if you were to try and reside in or near Aincmore Park, would you go

for outskirts and overspill areas or would you go try and find something central? Something central? I can't deal with the description of the traffic there. Oh, yeah, no, I'm with you on that. Yeah, no, it's got to be somewhere central or the countryside. I'm not doing suburbs, Vancmore Fork. That's fair. I respect that. Even though I'd like to see a desperate housewife spin off. Oh my god, I love that idea. Real housewives, Vancmore Fork.

No, stop now. Okay. No, I mean, it's great. I love it. You said stop and I can see the cogs turning in your head. Look, this is the history of espionage Wikipedia place. All right, apply the handbrake. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked.

What do you like, Francie? Well, one of the things I like is the goblin species development we've had. And like I know this is through the book. And just generally speaking, I like that the goblins really into tlax. I know we got a bit of a preview of that and snuff. But I think it suits them very well. I quite like the fact that they're very violent towards the doors that try and take them out. But yeah, the one that made me think of it is most human plaque spotters could separate about four or five, maybe even six colors on a good clear night. But who could have imagined that goblins fresh out of their caves would be uncannily able

even to identify pews as opposed to pink? Well, most humans didn't have a clue what a damn pews was if they saw it. Which I love the idea of, you know, we talked before about animals that can see more colors than us. That's cool. Fanta shrimp, hooray. Also, because later in this section, there's oh, gosh, I can't remember who it is now. But somebody returning to peice as their default color was a nice little bit. Harry King, probably. a nice little bit. Harry King probably? Quite possibly. Yeah, I love that. I'm not sure I could definitely identify a Puce. Puce, I believe, is a flea colour. I think that's it. I think it comes from like blood.

So yeah, it's a dark red or purple brown colour. And it means, yeah, the term comes from the French colour Puce, literally meaning flea colour. There we a useless until now bit of information I have. There's something new every day. I still don't want to work on the claxons kind of heights and depth I think it's becoming very apparent that I am a sea level only kind of person. Yeah I think that's best for you it'll keep you on the ground. I like heights I don't want to work on the clacks because it seems like it's hard work. Yeah, it does actually doesn't it? You have to concentrate, you can't be looking at your phone, tell you that.

Yeah, there's no procrastination when you're claxing and I do like to procrastinate a little bit. Right, first Trainspotter. Yay! At this moment delighted me. The small wide-eyed urchin who seemed to have miraculously appeared by the side of the track, Simil looked on gravely as the urchin took a very small notebook from his jacket pocket and meticulously wrote down the numeral one as if it were a command. That's a nice supernatural idea, isn't it?

Of course if you have trains, you have train spotting, as in the hobby, not the success of 90s cult classic movie starring Ewan McGregor. No, I wouldn't like that. I don't think that needs to turn up in Discworld. But so yeah, so of course this little urchin feels he must go and write down number one. And he's seen it. And he has. He's done it.

He's done it. I can only imagine the future rival club he sets up to Stanley Stamp or whatever. I do feel like that's one thing that I feel is sort of slightly missing from the book is Stanley not getting a chance to turn up and get really excited about something. Yes, although it's nice that it's a little etching, but yes, you're right. Yes. What else did you like? So I quite liked some of the callbacks to pervasive Discworld themes. The one that jumped out at me

was well, the short one that jumped out at me was the miners using their tools as weapons. Right, loves that. I don't know how I've lost of how many times we've seen that now. But yeah, the the dwarves who looked at one another in what is known as wild surmise. But we've got weapons too. And when you look at it the right way and ours are bigger. I clocked that moment too as one of those like little bits we have repeatedly. And then also the phrase the pillars of the world jumped out at me. So in this book, we've got the Graggs have once again broken a solemn accord and that drum knot batters the pillars of the world and not inconsiderably. And then a little later, all the time, the fanglers and artisphases were coming up with even more useful things that hadn't been foreseen and suddenly became essential. And the pillars of the world remained unshaken. And I was like, where did

I read that before? So I had a little search and well, a long time ago, as in small gods, these bumbling old men spent their time kicking away the pillars of the world, these bumbling old men being a few billion philosophers, and then nothing to replace them with, but uncertainty. And they were proud of this. And then, like really quite recently, which I'm guessing is why it was still in my head is in making money. So the pillars of the world's being the financial system of Angle Book basically. And so the first domino had been steadied. And this is after the financiers come in. The pillars of the world ceased to tremble. The credit bank would open in the morning and when it did so bills would be honoured, wages would

be paid, the city would be fed. So pillars of the world. Nice phrase. I like it. I guess it's not private only because when I was searching for it I kept finding all sorts of stuff. But it's also nice that it comes up as a regular motif on Discworld where the world is literally held up, admittedly by elephants, not pillars. LW – Yes, although there's some mythology that the world is held up by pillars and I think it's mentioned in folklore of Discworld. Yeah, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole right now. How about you? MG – Dwarf interludes.

LW – Dwarf interludes, we love an interlude. MG – We love an interlude. Well, yeah, kind of carrying on from that smokey room interlude idea I was talking about with Dodger. But in this case, it's much bigger than one smokey room. So we have a lot of these interludes. Our interlude that ends this section is of course the Rid, Cully and Lutze thing, which is, as I said when I mentioned that, it's a nice, here's what the book is not about, with the point where we'd usually get the, here's the sinister cabal working on the events of this book behind the scenes. Yeah, it's like an inward exposition. No, my camera. But because what this book is moving towards is much bigger, we have a lot of these interludes

just demonstrating the political unrest, because at the moment it's two disparate storylines, the political unrest and the train, and, we can see they're going to come together because- Much like two powerful machines colliding. Yeah, quite possibly. We should have worked on the signalling system a bit more. Yeah, we start with this young dwarf in the Schmaltzberg mines getting told off for being young and wearing things a certain way and rescued by Bashfelson. It's nice to see Bashfelson is still around and doing his thing.

Another callback character. We have this moment in the treacle mine at the pub where the old man is talking about the mining disaster. This is the weapons moment. I like the opportunity to have a little bit more detail about the treacle mines. Yes, but also about humans and dwarves really having to come together in that moment. Yeah. Against the foe of bureaucracy. Against the foe of bureaucracy. You've got to have a bureaucratic villain every now and then. And of course it gets darker because you have this pantygirdle wedding fight in Halamandos.

What a terrible town name for such a tragic event. But this is the pot boiling over. And after that, obviously, we then see Reese's council, we have Albrecht, as I said, being kind of more progressive and on Reese's side here. And then you go into the Copperhead mines. And I really like this conversation. This is Maylock Chury's son, the cobbler talking to his son. And he's trying to stop his son from getting caught into this political unrest,

which I felt was a really sharp moment because this is something we notice a lot, spending time on the internet now, of the younger generation being dragged into extreme political views. I thought having that moment written over 10 years ago now was really prescient almost, because it wasn't happening then as much as it happens now. But we also within that get like thud from another perspective from someone who was much smaller and boots on the ground. And he talks about, yeah, there was a hubbub over in the distance and then we got to go and see the king and everything. And I got to meet Commander Vines. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I still think really fondly of Smack the Troll, even though trying to find something we could drink together

was a terrible idea. Yeah. I will say that I think radicalization of young people is definitely happening 10 years ago. Oh, it definitely was. I'm thinking about like more specifically the issues we see with it happening online now. Yeah. But yeah, you're right. Yes, having the opposite side of it is great as well. And like having the voice of reason be the wife in one of the cases. Yeah, the last one. And saying, I've talked to the others. Yeah. Beddard, Bedson, who's been struggling with the Grags, but then goes and stops the attack on the Clacks. And it suddenly hits home for him really hard because he's got a, I think he says a niece who works on a Clacks tower somewhere else and says, you know, all this stuff you don't notice until your doorstep. And now I

think I've woken up. Yeah, yeah. It's not ideological. This will actually affect people. Yeah. Let's yeah. So yeah, I think these interludes are really well placed. I think it's very cleverly written to put these in and see this many perspectives of this conflict and there's many different, these different places that dwarfs are living and working and how they

are working together. Yeah, we've revisited some places we've already seen and he's quite efficiently shown us that some of the old problems are still there and worsening in some cases, but at the same time loads of people have taken on board the progressive message of Coon Valley part final. Yes. And this idea as well of just dwarf culture not being a monolith. No, that's very much a troll culture. And you mentioned earlier as well, when we were talking about the council thing, and there's a couple of very nice word uses. You have Albertson calling down a moraine upon those who are doing ridiculous things. And a moraine is in this context, a plague. He's calling down a plague upon them. This is a plague

upon your houses type thing. And it's etymology goes back to being derived from an oxen and Maury is in to die. Although a plague in a biblical sense is sort of a broad arcade term for illnesses affecting cattle and sheep. So where it's using the biblical sense, it's the plague that takes out all the livestock in that big run of plagues that they had that one time. They did have a big run of plagues that one time, yeah. They did have a big run of plagues. At least that one time.

Years of biblical study and that's what I remember. Look, most of what I remember about plagues and stuff in the Bible is from the incredible DreamWorks animated movie, The Prince of Egypt. Oh, I like that one song. Yeah. Actually, yeah. And

Reese is talking about sending people to the Genunga Gap. And that's I'm not saying it properly, quite possibly. It's from Norse mythology. It's the void that the world was made from. Yes. Elsewhere in the book somebody says, may the Gap take you, right? Yeah. Obviously tying dwarfs to Norse mythology makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of dwarfs in Norse mythology. Tolkien drew a lot of dwarfish stuff from Old Norse and the Poetic Edda. Yeah.

And yes, the Gununga Gap being this sort of not go to hell so much as go to obliteration to nothing. I love that as like a curse. Yeah, the word yawning void is used a lot in the North, which is a terrifying thing. Yes. What a horrifying void. Void personification, my favorite hobby. Love that. So what do we feel about maybe some talking points? Some bigger stuff.

As that was, I was trying to think of a train metaphor and I've lost it. Sorry. Please continue. Yeah, we've gone off the rails there. I was trying to think of a train metaphor and I've lost it. Sorry. Please continue. Now we've gone off the rails there. So there's two, speaking of rails, two big threads, I think, running through this book, two tracks, as it were.

As it were. As it were. No, there's two big sort of threads of joy running through this book. And I think there's another reason I'm defensive of it is again, I just feel like there's so much fun being had as this is being written. And one is this sort of joy at progress, this idea of anti stagnation. And then the other is a very almost childlike glee about trains. Have you ever been on a steam train, John?

I have actually. I saw you put this in the thing and I had to Google and I've left the tab open just so I didn't forget the name of it. What was the steam train on? I've been on most recently, which was the Beurre Valley Railway. Oh, lovely. Which is a lovely little steam train journey you can take that takes you up to the Norfolk Broads. So you sort of hop on a train, you go up to the Broads and then you can go on a boat around the Broads if you want. It's a fun, it's a nice way to have a day out.

Yeah. We used to go on the Seben Valley Railway a lot when I was a kid. Oh, I love that. The smell of a steam train is very clear in my head. Yeah, dad used to take us on the steam train and we'd go as far as we could before me and Charlie became annoying and then we'd stop at whatever village it was and do whatever there was to do there. Marvellous, I love that. I find myself kind of romanticising the idea of train travel a bit and that's with the

caveat that, well, I do have to take trains a lot because I can't drive. I don't have to do a regular commute on a train. But yeah, so I like if I have to do a long journey going by train and maybe having a train picnic. A train journey to reach a new horizon is very different to a train journey to reach a meeting. Yes, very much so. Eatings don't have horizons, even if they do, they don't. Also, I can get more done on a train. I can knit, I can watch a bit of telly, I can eat snacks more comfortably.

Yeah, ponder the Industrial Revolution. And ponder the Industrial Revolution. Oh my god, I completely forgot. Someone in our Discord asked if we were going to talk about this and this delights me. So the closest local train system is Greater Anglia, obviously. Discussion of the merits of Anglia's bi-mode flirts. Apparently the trains that Greater Anglia runs are a class of bi-mode multiple unit passenger trains. trains that Greater Anglia runs are a class of bi-mode multiple unit passenger trains, part of the FLIRT, Fast Light Intercity and Regional Train modular train family. So just the trains that I'm taking on a very, very, very regular basis are bi-FLIRTS and I feel seeing a new kinship with the local train system. You're gonna back your eyelashes every time you get on the train now?

system. You're going to back your eyelashes every time you get on the train now? Yeah, I feel like I'm lost. Oh, you tritons. And now it's turning up latest charming. It's coy. No, it's still irritating. Especially when it's raining. But yeah, so this idea of progress first. I obviously really enjoy this particularly seeing like industrial revolution stuff in this book because as I've said before, one of my pet peeves about fantasy is this idea of fantasy stagnation of a society never really moving forward. There is a certain element of like, all right, you've been going for 3,000 years now, are you going to have an industrial revolution or are we just all dying of dysentery?

I do feel like that's quite earth centric. Well, yes, quite frankly, I am a little bit earth centric. I have biases. But yeah, we talked a long time ago about how the industrial revolution is generally painted in literature. And it seems so okay, so Tolkien is the obvious example of... Ah, there's the four shires. But you got all kinds of Narnia is the other one. Obviously Narnia and Middle Earth are never far from my mind. But there's all kinds like the Avatar thing, there's industrial revolutionizing going on in there. But I feel like it's painted differently here. Like it's there is more, more joy and less fear. I know there's some fear, but

and I wonder if it's because Ankh-Morpork is kind of more realistically grotty than almost any fantasy city. There's less ideal to start with which means it's less horrific when it gets smutty because Ankh-Morpork especially was already quite smutty. Yeah yeah. And you have that you know the person who is becoming the first railway baron this is something clean for him to get into compared to what he's been doing before. Better class of smut. Yeah.

This is fancy smut. There's a section in the erotica book style. But I think it's what's important and I think Pratchett handles as well is that it's not black and white. It's not all progress ever is definitely good and he doesn't shy away from some of the negatives on it. Obviously we have this because we had Ned Simenow in Reaper Man and he tried to make this mechanical device for taking in the harvest and it didn't work and the balance of the world was maintained because it wasn't combination harvester time when he made it. But now it is maybe steam engine time.

Yeah. And also because, you know, death was trying to play out a really strong metaphor there. Well, yeah. And yeah, yeah, you can't listen. If you're going to have the people as wheat, we can't be combine harvesting them. No, no, absolutely. Now he's gone home. We can maybe get on with some technology. Death, are you finished with your metaphor? Can we? Oh, thank you. Can we industrial revolutionize now? Thank you. Cheers, Death.

Yes, yes, the care of the Reaper man. Okay, but everyone's quite hungry. We kind of need some wheat now. We need to get some watercress into the city eh Sam? The strawberries are mushy there. I want fresh fish. Death comes for us, I know, but can it come for the strawberries after we've had some? And there was also, you know, the moment you brought up of Mois talking about, you know, this world does change, Bronze Age becomes Iron age, it's a sort of dance when no one dares stop because if you did you'd be left behind, that whole thing.

But Fesenari has a point, we consider the coachmen and the farriers and the people who would potentially lose out if, say, the majority of post office work moves to the trains. I don't think it's necessarily addressed deeply enough as the book goes on, but I'm glad it's there at least. I feel like it would have been a future book. And I think I've been thinking about it since last week when we talked about some of the things we'd want covered. Especially when you talked about unionization and how that would... Yeah, that's it. I think it would have maybe been the Industrial Revolution from that

perspective might have been best covered in one of the outposts like a smaller town, if not a village. So I'm thinking like, you know, the, the old lights kind of thing. And yeah, I think it would be easier to, to frame from a, from a smaller town perspective, which is why, you know, reaper man, I think worked better in, obviously, because it needed a farm, but also the little isolated. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And also, you know, the book is looking at what happens when people and different species kind of move out of their pre assigned niches. So you have this idea of golems not being as available for heavy lifting because they don't want to just do heavy lifting.

Adora Bell's hairstylist is a troll, golems are doing landscaping and that's what happens if all sapient species are equal and I think the book thinks about that a lot more as it goes on, what happens if these cultures start losing their culture. Yeah, absolutely. Which is something I was looking at with Billy Slick in Snuff, a goblin who doesn't want to be tied to goblin culture. Yeah, and his grandmother who does. Yes, and then you have these, the dwarfs obviously being more heels dug in, especially the drags. You can really dig your heels in with boots that heavy, I'll tell you. Yeah, can. There's a great sort of line, I think this is from Reese's internal monologue. Dwarfs have tried to modernize but to no avail apart from those not more book shame of it is that those determined to keep dwarf kind in the darkness of somehow in calculated their flocks into believing that change of any sort is a blasphemy no specific blasphemy just a blasphemy all by itself spinning through the cosmos as sour as an ocean of vinegar.

which is a line. But then we have it, of course, you know, when it comes to the trains and what the trains mean for progress and how exciting it is to have these new horizons. Your quote, moist, excited excitement about the zeitgeist, the new horizons far away places anything that's not here. And then you get the concerns. And that's very moist in his bones, isn't it? And then you get the concerns. And that's very moist in his bones, isn't it? That is moist in his bones. And then of course the times concerns, especially about immorality, which is a thing that happens, you know, new technology, something new happens. What if people get smutty about this? I know. I loved that headline though. Yes.

The little subheadings, so it is claimed. So it is claimed. And you know, the sort of result of the Rood, Cully and Lutz conversation, here is a steam engine. It is steam engine time. Yeah, that's very philosophical. It is very philosophical. So I think there's a lot of excitement and joy there. And then you have the joy about the trains themselves. And this is overly like being silly about gender to say like, oh, it's a little boy thing. But there is also something about little boys getting excited about trains. I saw someone share, it might have been in the Discord actually, it might have been on

Reddit, Terry Pratchett getting to videos and photos and stuff of Terry Pratchett going on to steam trains as a particular railway. He acknowledges at the end of the book is getting him to go and have a go and do research. It's just a picture of a man having the best time. Get to go on a train. It's just a picture of a man having the best time. He gets to go on a train. He gets to be a stoker. Pulling a whistle. This lovely rhythmic chuffing noise. The little boy is watching and wanting to become train drivers. Every little boy of any age followed it with eyes open wide, vowing there and then, that one day he would be the captain of the terrible nuptious engine, a prince of the steam, master of the sparks, a coachman of

the thunderbolts. Emma- Nice. I was watching some old British Pathé films of them. Obviously by the time British Pathé was a thing, we were kind of out of the age of steam, or getting out of it even by the earliest ones. But even so I feel like watching steam engines is best done in jerky black and white footage. So I went back and watched some of that again. I'll say what I did also was I've got that white noise app called My Noise and there's all different ones you can choose. I found a background noise called Industrial Revolution. And I was listening to that while I was reading this, it was all like a chopping steam engine in a... Oh, I love that. And yeah, you also get great moments. The crowd's watching Iron Gerda as she's being demonstrated.

And no one's disagreeing. This is from Mois' perspective. No one's disagreeing. No one's frightened. There's a beast from nowhere. A fiery dragon, all smoke and cinders has appeared among them. And they hold their children up to look at it, waving as it goes past. And I thought this is really interesting thinking about it in relation to God's gods and the actual dragon that becomes king. And the difference

between people waving at it and holding their children up as it goes fast, partly out of an underlying sense of fear, as opposed to here where there is no malicious intent to it. No, it is just something nice that we have built with brackets, residents of the disc. Yeah, and as brackets on early versus late stage discworld, I think that's a wonderful circle to go around to come to a version of a dragon. Much like a railway track, girdling Harry King's compound. CHARLEYY Yeah, yeah. MADDIE And yeah, just again, moist perspective on it,

especially I think he's our avatar, he's our entry point into the universe of potential of having fun, that this not being magic or brute strength, it was ingenuity and coal and metal and water and steam and smoke and glorious harmony. Yeah. And you get Moist von Lippig's because he's at heart a little bit of a cynic, you get the half step back. So although he is excited by the railway, he isn't drum-knots excited. And so you get to see him describe everyone else's excitement as someone who's not quite in it. as someone who's not quite in it, which is more illuminating. Yeah, very much so. Obviously, yeah, but then you have Drumknot's really simple just adoration. Oh my god, a train. I think that's what makes this book a really enjoyable read for me despite the problems it has is the fact that Terry Pratchett was clearly having fun writing it. There's a little

bit of me thinking, is it just he feels like now that Anglemore Pork's ready for industrial revolution or did a bit of him really want to go on a train? I think, yeah, it is definitely Sam Vimes getting to drive a boat vibes and therefore I feel like it was engineered slightly so this could happen. Which I don't judge if I was in that position and I was going to write a book and it meant I got to go and have a go on steam trains. Like, I'd 100% do that. I want to stoke. It's fucking universe, go for it. Anyway, what about you? Beautiful.

Speaking of trains. Yeah, speaking as we will be at length. Yeah, no, I thought I'd just have a look at some of the historical parallels as usual. I'm going to put more of these in the rabbit hole. Okay, I love reading about the history of steam trains. There are so many like delightful company and device names in the history of rail so with Yeah. And so the first passenger carrying public railway of 1807, which used horse drawn carriages on a tram line unlike an existing tram line. So it's a little bit for steam, but was opened by the Swansea and mumbles railway, which was a great place to start. which was a great place to start. Incredible. But yeah, so there was a chap called Richard Trevithick, or Dick Trevithick, I suppose could

be, but who Dick Simdall is, you know, there's definitely some of him in there. So he was a Cornwall lad rather than Yorkshire, but he did have a blacksmith's father, although for Richard's father, it was a slightly less tragic ending, a lot less tragic ending. He instead of disappearing into pink mist became a successful foundry founder, it was a slightly less tragic ending, a lot less tragic ending. He instead of disappearing into pink mist became a successful foundry founder, which was in his business was well famous for engines that pumped up water from mines, very important. He founded a foundry and became a foundry founder. He founded a foundry became a foundry foundry founder and was foundational in taking water out

of the bottom of mines. And he didn't flounder along the way. Didn't flounder. Well done. Anyway't flounder, well done. Thank you. Anyway, Richard... Sorry. Sorry, no, you're fine. Richard Trevithick was a rival of James Watt, lots of patent nastiness between them, I think. And James Watt invented the reciprocating engine.

We don't have time for him today. Richard Trevithick's like his first bit of career. Sorry, I've got to put this in. He became an engineer at Ding Dong Mines in Cornwall. Incredible. Absolutely. Isn't it? Everything has a wonderful name.

But his first full-size locomotive when he moved on to building these things was called the puffing devil. This was 1801. And I see this wasn't on track yet, but it was a steam train. Um, he had a bit of moist von Lipfig in him, I fancy, because he demonstrated it with passengers for the first time on Christmas Eve, taking them up to the lake to the nearest village.

And that's definitely a thing that you'd do if you had that spark of mercury in you. And then from the Wikipedia, during further tests, Trevor Thicke's locomotive broke down three days later after passing over a gully in the road. The vehicles left under some shelter with the fire still burning while the operators retired to a nearby public house

for a meal of roast goose and drinks. Meanwhile, the water boiled off the engine overheated and the machine burned, destroying it. Trefethek did not consider this a serious setback but rather operator error. Then 1802, the first rail locomotive was built for him and it was unnamed and there's little known about it. Because somebody died in its manufacture or its testing, I think, and therefore wasn't used. There was further tragedy in 1803, which killed four men and it led to the introduction of these lead plugs, as mentioned in this book. And then I want to mention one late one last later model from Richard Trevithick, because it was called Catch Me Who Can and it was built in Bridge North, which is where I used to live.

Oh, amazing. Yeah. Another fun name, we got the first commercially successful locomotive, which was called Salamanca. That was in 1812. When I say commercially successful, although Richard Travathick was very, very good at building these things, he was not very good at making money out of them. And so he went back to other engineering work eventually. John Dleckensop and Matthew Murray's Salamanca was commercially successful. I remember the name Dleckensop. I've obviously read something about this at some point in my life. It sticks in the brain, that one. That one does. It's a sticky name. Then you got the Stephensons. These two are the other two

real famous ones, I'd say. So you got George Stephenson, who was the father of railways known as that. And he was also the designer of one of the safety lamps that came about almost exactly at the same time as Davies. So we've probably talked about him at some point, and I've just forgotten it. But he designed locomotives from about 1814. His first one was called Blütsche, after a Prussian general. from about 1814. His first one was called Blütsche, after a Prussian general. He engineered and built the railways themselves. He worked out the best way to have rails that could take the weight of these mighty machines. He built the railways themselves, whatever you saw the building. They Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool and Manchester Railway. So I think calling him the

father of railways is absolutely fair. And he was also the father of Robert Stevenson, who expanded on his father's work to great success. And he was famous for Stevenson's rocket, which you will have heard of. That was the 1829 train, which became the template for locomotives for a good while. Despite that, I rather like the one immediately before that the year before called the Lancashire Witch. I know, I love the name and I'll just send you a photo of it quickly just because I think it's fun.

Obviously, looking at pictures of all trains is great fun. Oh my god, that's amazing. Isn't that great? It's a ridiculous train. Yeah, and then like the very next year came up the Stevenson's rocket, which actually looks like a train. So it's just so funny. We got like the Cambrian explosion of steam power happening over here. And then I've lost my notes because

I've got so many train pictures. It's a problem we all struggle with. Oh, yeah. And then like while we're talking about Simnel inspirations, we are going to have a special mention to Lambert Simnel, who has nothing to do with trains, but does have the name. And he was a pretender to the throne of England. He became the figurehead of Yorkish rebellion in 1487. And he was pardoned because of his tender years and was thereafter employed by the royal household as a scullion. That's fun. Fantastic. And why not? But yeah, the railway panics was the other thing I had a quick look at.

They were moral panics. They were moral panics. Of course they were moral panics. Love a moral panic. We love a moral panic. There was definitely the usual stuff about women, as in their freedom to travel, boo, the risk of being assaulted, or of them lying about assault. That was another big one. There was also some very dramatic stuff. They were very dramatic Victorians. So this is from Amy Milne Smith's excellent paper called Shattered Minds,

Mad Men on the Railways, 1860 to 80. In 1863, the London Review published a lengthy article on what it proclaimed was a dangerous new reality. Traveling express with madman is, unfortunately, not an improbable circumstance of real life, and if there be any tendency to mania, the excitement of the rapid transit through the air is the very thing to bring it on. This author not only warned that certified lunatics were getting untrained, he also cautioned that travelling by rail can make a seemingly sane man go mad. And then a little

later in the paper, I thought this is some that you'd find it I'll send you a copy of this. The Victorians had a complex relationship with their railways. It was simultaneously the ultimate symbols of progress and technological triumph and a focus for the anxiety and horrors of modern life. Wonderful. Of the Victorians. Ah, the Victorians. So yeah, we love the history of steam power, even though it's sometimes horrible. Even though it is sometimes horrible.

Lots of nice pictures of trains. We do like nice pictures of trains. Francine, do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me? I do have one of those, yes. Do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me? I do have one of those, yes. So the Lotus Eaters, we're talking about a Lotus Eater who had run out of Lotuses. And I believe it was talking about Willikans at that point. No, it was talking about Drum Knot.

Drum Knot, that's what I mean, sorry, not Willikans. We don't have any Willikans in this, try to clue. Anyway, a Lotus Eater who had run out of Lotuses. So I looked up Lotus Eaters. And in Greek mythology, lotus eaters were a race of people living on an island dominated by the lotus tree. And that doesn't seem to have much parallel to real life that we can find like botanically. But the lotus flowers, or fruits or whatever they were eating were like narcotics, some kind of opiate, probably. Right.

And so yeah, they, when they ran out of lotuses, they'd be like suddenly coming off of morphine, I guess, would be the slightly more dramatic than I was imagining. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you looked that up for me. Yeah, like figuratively in work videos. Oh, and there's our link to Trainspotting, the classic cult film. There we go. Thank you, Drumknot. Well done. Thank you, Drumknot, and your apparent drug. I'm now imagining that Drumknot's played by Ewan McGregor, but like Trainspotting era Ewan McGregor.

No. No, I'm not liking it, but it's there. No, if he's going to be Ewan McGregor, he's got to be Mulan Ruggiero, Ewan McGregor. Drumknot's not... Okay, yeah, no, I'll take it. If he's got to be Ewan McGregor, right? If he has to be you. If I have to be you. We made this casting choice, right? And we've, I'll take it. If he's got to be Ewan McGregor. If he has to be you. If I have to be you.

We made this casting choice right now and we've got to live with it. All right, fine. If I've got to be Ewan McGregor, I'm choosing Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor. Anyway. Ah, that bit. Anyway, sorry.

I think that's everything we're going to say about the first part of Raising Steam. Probably for the last. Because otherwise I'll just start talking about the various roles in which I find you and McGregor attractive, and I'm not sure we've got time for that today. If we've got the wrong kind of tangent on the line, we have to stop the train. We do. Sorry, I'm just making sure I know where we're ending next week. We will be back.

Thought I'd just let you finish the book. I'm just going to pick this up and start reading. No, we'll be back next week with part two, which ends, which starts where this one ended. We're not skipping anything and ends on page 319 in the Corgi paperback with the line, and that Mois knew was that as far as that conversation was concerned. A nice ending sentence. Excellent ending sentence. Until next week, dear listeners, you can join our Discord. There's a link down below.

You can follow us on Instagram at the Trueshare Makey Frat, on Twitter and BlueSky at MakeyFratPod, on Facebook at the Trueshare MakeyFrat. Join our subreddit r-slash-ttsmyf. Send us your thoughts, queries, castle snacks, and ideas for Moist's job title by emailing us at the truesharemakemakeefratpodatgmail.com. If you want to support us financially, you can go to patreon.com forward slash the true shell

make you feel. We send your hard earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. And of course, please do rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts because it helps us with the algorithms and we like positive reinforcement. And until next time, dear listeners, don't let us detain you. Don't let us detrain you. Choo choo. Oh, God, we are sad, sad people. I don't care. It's trained. It's fun. By the way, by the way, by the way, Lotus Eaters, if I scroll down all the way on this Wikipedia page, so see also Molly M-O-L-Y, which is another plant mentioned in the Odyssey. Molly brackets herb. Yeah, it's another interesting one. It's given to Odysseus to protect him from Circe's poison name, whatever. Yeah, but Molly is also the short name for Molly-der-num, Molly-bed-num, I don't know how you say that but it's mentioned in this book is the lubricant.

Oh cool. Accidental full circle. Wonderful. We'll take it.