Category Archives: Discworld

Title: Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch
Author(s): Rhianna Pratchett, Gabrielle Kent
Release year: 2023
Publisher: Penguin Books

Why in Database: In this book, related to the Discworld series, there is one turtle fragment, quoted below:

Certainly a lot more than lightfoot, the tortoise Queen Magrat once had as a familiar. I saw one at a fair once and it looked as thought it wouldn’t strike fear into anything except lettuce.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Quiz Diary 2019
Author(s): Discworld Emporium
Release year: 2018
Publisher: Gollancz

Why in Database: Turtles appear in this book in two forms, as text and image. Image-wise, we have two pictures, A’Tuin seen from above and with the Discworld with a question mark – this graphic is used on the cover, at the beginning and at the end of the book. Inside we also have a graphic with Om from the Small Gods, which is used twice.

There are more text mentions, we list them all!

The first turtle mention is in question about the name of one of the elephants, in which A`Tuin is mentioned.

Your bonus for 3 points!
4. Along with Tubul, Great T’Phon and Berilia, what is the name of the fourth elephant still standing atop Great A’Tuin’s meteor-pocked shell?

Another turtle appears in an anagram question (the answer is “Golem Trust”).

Anagrams
Organisations
V) Turtle Smog

The next question concerns the form in which Om appeared in the Small Gods, to which the answer is of course the tortoise. In this question we also have one of the cases of using the above-described image of Om and Brutha.

77. In small Gods, in which manifestations is The Great God Om stuck?
A very pissed-off torotise

The next two pieces are from a set of questiobs in which we have to guess which book the quoted fragments come from, being the first two sentences in those books.

In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part … See … Great A’Tuin the turtle comes,

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.

The first fragment is The Color of Magic, the second is Small Gods.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: Discworld (Reformed) Vampyres’ Diary 2003
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Paul Kidby
Release year: 2002
Publisher: Gollancz

Why in Database: The turtle appears in this Discworld-related book only in the form of an image of A`Tuin, which is used in the advert section at the very end. This section is a mix of in-discworld style adverts and real ones, A`Tuin appears in one of these real ones.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: Discworld’s Unseen University Diary 1998
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Paul Kidby
Release year: 1997
Publisher: Gollancz

Why in Database: The turtle appears in this Discworld tie-in book very symbolically, only in the form of a picture with A`Tuin at the very end.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: The Discworld Almanak The Year of the Prawn
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, Bernard Pearson
Release year: 2004
Publisher: Doubleday

Why in Database: One of the books from the Discworld, there are many mentions of turtles, especially references to A’Tuin. There are also some turtles on the pictures.

Most unusually, this year will see the Great Turtle twice execute a full roll, a coincidence that has not occurred since the Great Comet of the Year of the Quick Sloth.
In times past, these events were a source of great awe and mystery to our rude forefathers, but they are now understood as a perfectly ordinary, nay, even inevitable and desirable con- dition of living in a world that ultimately rests upon the back of an enormous turtle.
One can speculate, as wizards have done, that there are worlds as spherical as the moon, although a little intuition will tell us that no intelligent life could survive long on them (because, for example, walking for any length of time in a straight line would bring you back to where you started, a circumstance likely to cause madness in all who experience it). But, more severely, without a turtle to snap them out of the sky, such a world would be prey to every mischievous comet or random rock.

On May 25 the comet Snape 32 would strike the rimward regions of Howandaland, and on August 7 the large rock named The Late Mrs Edith Barnfather, after the aunt of the discoverer, would land in the sea off Quirm; however, we can be assured that Great ATuin will account for both, with a simple roll in the case of Snape 32 and quite a complex three- dimensional roll-and-twist in the case of Edith Barnfather.

DO NOT BE AFEARED
(‘aveared’ being ar worse than being afraid!)
FOR THE TURTLE WILL PREVAIL

We expect on August 3 to witness a Turtle Eclipse of the Sun as one of the mighty flippers, beating the aether with extra force in order to begin the roll, briefly rises above the Rim, and people who tend towards vertigo or seasickness would be well advised to stay indoors at night time, particularly on August 6 when the stars will be moving quite strongly.

A rain of tortoises, which could occasion a broken pate or two, will beset those in Skund but there is good eating on them, so all is equal.

The Krullians have never fallen victim to the perennial heresy that the world is globular and it makes no kind of sense, because they’ve even mapped large parts of the Turtle’s head. When you’ve measured the albedo of an eye thirty miles across, it’s hard to be persuaded that it doesn’t exist.

FORTUNATELY WE MOVE WITH THE TIMES BECAUSE, OWING TO THE TURTLE’S PROGRESS, WE DO, IN FACT, MOVE WITH THE TIMES. STARS APPEAR AHEAD AND FALL BEHIND, AND THUS NEW CONSTELLATIONS CAN BE DEVISED. OF COURSE, SOME ARE SUCH THAT THEY ARE READILY ‘PAINTED’ ON TO THE CHANGING SKY, AND SO WE ARE NEVER WITHOUT THE STRAIGHT LINE, THE SMALL BORING GROUP OF FAINT STARS,

The Seventh House
THE HOUSE OF THE STAR
31 THE FAINT STAR MAJOR
32 THE FAINT STAR MINOR
33 THE LITTLE TURTLE
34 THE FLAGON
35 KET’S KNIFE

33 THE LITTLE TURTLE Of the Seventh House.
Large but not too bright, being one star above two more, and then three. When viewed over still water, its reflection gives it its name, although you have to want to see the turtle, if you see what we mean. A useful constellation.

57 FORWARD
Of the Twelfth House.
This star, it has been determined, occupies that point in space to which the Turtle is heading, although it is in fact not a star at all but a tiny point of darkness against a wash of glowing gas. No doubt its nature will be revealed in due course. Those born under this star are always looking forward to tomorrow.
58 AFT
Of the Twelfth House.
A large red star, visited by the Turtle in recent astronomical history, where we were fortunate to witness the birth of a number of new sky turtles whose eggs had incubated in the warm glow as on a beach. Those born under this star are beginning to make their mark as historians and others of that sort who hanker after the past.

THE PITCHER and THE LITTLE TURTLE MEET UP AND ALIGN WITH THE STARFISH and OBJOCK

THE PLOUGH HANDLE ORJOCK, THE LITTLE TURTLE and THE BRIGHT CABBAGE, which is unusual even in a half-year ending.

*NOTE: It is of some scientific conjecture that this may be due to an increase and subsequent decrease in magical activity within the Moon. There may well be a correlation between this tidal ebb and flow of magical strength and some as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon (the heartbeat of Great A’Tuin itself has been put forward by some scholars). Ed.

Ephebian mythology tells us that the cabbage sprang from the fallen tears of a king who was about to be killed by one of the Gods for making water amongst His holy grove of turnips. As the King’s tears fell, the god felt compassion and turned him into a tortoise. He was eaten by an eagle five minutes later, but it’s the thought that counts.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: The Wyrdest Link
Author(s): David Langford
Release year: 2002
Publisher: Victor Gollancz

Why in Database: Book related to the Discworld series, continuation of The Unseen University Challenge.
We found turtle mentions in six questions, we quote them below, in the order “Name of the category”, “question” and “answer” – in the book itself, the answers are in a different part of the book than the questions, they are not adjacent.

Guild of Apothecaries
9. Chelonium, elephantigen and narrativium – believed by wizards to be necessary for what?
9. The building of proper worlds, like Discworld, seemed quite impossible without these necessary elements. (The Science of Discworld)

Guild of Engravers II
5. 13 Midden Lane, Pseudopolis, Sto Plains, The Discworld, On top of Great A’tuin, The Univers, Space. nr. More Space.
5. Eric – young Eric’s address, supposedly scrawled on the half-title page of a book originally called Faust.

Priests’, Sacerdotes’ and Occult Intermediaries’ Guild
2. Of which incarnated god was it frequently said, generally by his own supposed worshippers, ‘There’s good eating on one of those’?
2. Om of Omnia, while inadvertently manifesting as a tortoise through most of Small Gods.

Guild of Gamblers
6. ‘There was only one way to get to the Citadel now.’
6. Om’s plan, while still incarnated as a tortoise, to be carried by an eagle to the climactic scene of Small Gods.

Guild of Lawyers
6. To what does Ponder Stibbons’s Rule Three – ‘You get balls’ – apply?
6. Roundworld Project astrophysics in The Science of Discworld. There, large quantities of matter somehow collect into balls rather than more natural shapes like turtles. It is a mystery

Unseen University – The Last Order, or The Other Order
12. What is or was Psephophorus terrypratchetti?
12. A turtle. To be precise: a species of leatherback turtle, forty million years extinct, whose bones were found in New Zealand in 1995. Its discoverer Richard Köhler named it after a favourite author called, um, wossname, hang on there, it’s on the tip of my tongue …

Author: XYuriTT

Original title: The Discworld Mapp
Author(s): Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Stephen Player
Release year: 1995
Publisher: Corgi

Why in Database: Book related to the Discworld series, with one turtle reference in the text, and a huge image A’Tuina on the map itself and on the main cover and the cover of the text booklet.

Even so, I’m not sure that everythingon the Discworld would quite pass muster on Earth, but since the Earth has not travelled on the back of a turtle for at least a thousand years there are bound to be some loopholes big enough to drive na elephant through.

Author: XYuriTT

Title: The Streets of Ankh-Morpork
Author(s): Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett, Stephen Player
Release year: 1993
Publisher: Corgi

Why in Database: Book related to the Discworld series, with no mention of turtles in the text, only two pictures show a turtle which can be counted as A’Tuin. The first picture is in the booklet part, the second is a piece of the map of the title location. The book itself is primarily a map, the attached piece of text is rather pamphlet-like, not a book.

Author: XYuriTT