—Daily Telegraph (London)
“Pratchett is a comic genius.”
—Express (London)
“Pratchett is as funny as Wodehouse and as witty as Waugh.”
—Independent (London)
“Terry Pratchett does for fantasy what Douglas Adams did for science fiction.”
—Today (Great Britain)
“What makes Terry Pratchett’s fantasies so entertaining is that their humour depends on the characters first, on the plot second, rather than the other way around. The story isn’t there simply to lead from one slapstick pratfall to another pun. Its humour is genuine and unforced.”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Terry Pratchett ought to be locked in a padded cell. And forced to write a book a month.”
—Barbara Michaels
“Terry Pratchett is more than a magician. He is the kindest, most fascinating teacher you ever had.”
—Harlan Ellison
“It is his unexpected insights into human mortality that make the Discworld series stand out.”
—Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Quite probably the funniest living author, bar nobody.”
—Good Book Guide (England)
“Delightful…Logically illogical as only Terry Pratchett can write.”
—Anne McCaffrey
BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT
The Carpet People
The Dark Side of the Sun
Diggers · Wings
Only You Can Save Mankind
Johnny and the Dead · Johnny and the Bomb
The Unadulterated Cat (with Gray Jollife)
Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
THE DISCWORLD® SERIES:
Going Postal · Monstrous Regiment · Night Watch
The Last Hero · The Truth · Thief of Time
The Fifth Elephant · Carpe Jugulum
The Last Continent · Jingo
Hogfather · Feet of Clay · Maskerade
Interesting Times · Soul Music · Men at Arms
Lords and Ladies · Small Gods
Witches Abroad · Reaper Man
Moving Pictures · Eric (with Josh Kirby)
Guards! Guards! · Pyramids
Wyrd Sisters · Sourcery · Mort · Equal Rites
The Light Fantastic · The Color of Magic
The Art of Discworld (with Paul Kidby)
Mort: A Discworld Big Comic (with Graham Higgins)
The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (with Stephen Briggs)
The Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs)
The Pratchett Portfolio (with Paul Kidby)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC. Copyright © 2007 by Terry Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2007 ISBN 9780061801150
06 07 08 09 10
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*They won’t be described, since even the pretty ones looked like the offspring of an octopus and a bicycle. It is well known that things from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the buses and closer to the shops.
*A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.
*An interesting metaphor. To nocturnal trolls, of course, the dawn of time lies in the future.
*Not precisely, of course. Trees didn’t burst into flame, people didn’t suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn’t flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be “not like molten gold.”
* No one knows why, but all the most truly mysterious and magical items are bought from shops that appear and, after a trading life even briefer than a double-glazing company, vanish like smoke. There had been various attempts to explain this, all of which don’t fully account for the observed facts. These shops turn up anywhere in the universe, and their immediate nonexistence in any particular city can normally be deduced from crowds of people wandering the streets clutching defunct magical items, ornate guarantee cards, and looking very suspiciously at brick walls.