Mr. William De Worde

One of Sir Terry Pratchett's characters of Discworld I am particularly enjoying is the proto-newspaperman, William De Worde. He was raised not to lie, but this makes him somewhat slippery about what he admits truthfully when answering questions or making statements. In a world of semaphore towers, called The Clacks (due to the sound they make), he's just invented the newspaper a couple centuries late compared to Earth.

Part of the reason the American Revolution was successful was due to the Press stirring people up. Had there been no press, there would have been no eager mobs to attack the redcoats and throw tea in the harbor and wave their torches, pitchforks, and squirrel rifles around. Squirrel rifles were only 30 caliber and would hit a squirrel if you aimed at one. This sounds unimpressive until you realize a soldier's musket would miss a human and the man next to him too, at 50 yards. Safest place to stand is where a musket is aiming. Strangely, armies carried muskets and wore bright red coats so you'd see them better. It was completely off to shoot them with rifles that would hit. And that's why America got its own flag and govt trying so hard to ban rifles. But I digress.

Pratchett fills his novels with snark, particularly snarky wisdom. Chock full of phrases people know to be true but rarely say that way because it always makes someone angry. In his novel "The Truth", which is about the invention of the first daily newspaper and how amazing moveable type is when information had to be paid for with actual money, in that peculiar transition period of the Age of Steam, we have the first newspaper of the city of Anhk-Morpork. Anhk-Morpork is the capitol of Discworld, which is flat, rests on the back of 4 elephants standing on the back of a giant sea turtle. What is the sea turtle standing on? "It's turtles all the way down," of course. Down to what? "Turtles all the way down." No further answer is required, and makes a good code to describe insanity. "What wrong with her? Why's she screaming?" "She's turtles all the way down." See?

Mr. De Worde is a minor character in Monstrous Regiment, which is about women in the military and how cultures and religions attempt and fail at stunting the achievements of women they're bound to oppress. That's the trouble with Oppression you see. Ambition is a gender-spanning problem. It leads to all sorts of social ills like women choosing not to marry or maybe have careers of their own.

Mr. De Worde also has a photographer who is a vampire whose flash tends to disintegrate him or make him scream in agony due to the light. Makes a great joke, since he keeps taking pictures. He IS a photographer, after all.

Being the first public news reporter makes an interesting story. Private news being gathered by private spies, you see, and subject to assassination, which has a Guild in Anhk-Morpork. Assassins have rules, you see. And a certain style.

Terry Pratchett wrote 50 novels and suffers from Alzheimers which is expected to kill him. Both he and his doctor are both surprised he remains alive at this point. He was knighted by his queen for his work promoting Great Britain and is the second most-read British author. Considering his stories are full of humor and can be read in short bursts, that makes perfectly good sense.

I hope he gets a chance to invent the railway train and possibly the steam powered car, since cars did so much for cleaning up all the horse excrement in cities, cut down on flies, and made is so common people didn't have horse poop all over their boots all the time. You may think horses are romantic, but horse crap isn't.