Title: The Light Fantastic
Author(s): Terry Pratchett
Release year: 1986
Publisher: Colin Smythe
Why in Database: In the second Discworld book, we have even more fragments with A’Tuin that in first one! At the very beginning we have some info about A’Tuin:
Of course, no other world was carried through the starry infinity on the backs of four giant elephants, who were themselves perched on the shell of a giant turtle. His name—or Her name, according to another school of thought—was Great A’Tuin; he—or, as it might be, she—will not take a central role in what follows but it is vital to an understanding of the Disc that he—or she—is there, down below the mines and sea ooze and fake fossil bones put there by a Creator with nothing better to do than upset archaeologists and give them silly ideas.
Great A’Tuin the star turtle, shell frosted with frozen methane, pitted with meteor craters, and scoured with asteroidal dust. Great A’Tuin, with eyes like ancient seas and a brain the size of a continent through which thoughts moved like little glittering glaciers. Great A’Tuin of the great slow sad flippers and star-polished carapace, laboring through the galactic night under the weight of the Disc. As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.
Actually, the philosophers have got it all wrong. Great A’Tuin is in fact having a great time.
Great A’Tuin is the only creature in the entire universe that knows exactly where it is going.
Of course, philosophers have debated for years about where Great A’Tuin might be going, and have often said how worried they are that they might never find out.
They’re due to find out in about two months. And then they’re really going to worry…
Something else that has long worried the more imaginative philosopher on the Disc is the question of Great A’Tuin’s sex, and quite a lot of time and trouble has been spent in trying to establish it once and for all.
In fact, as the great dark shape drifts past like an endless tortoiseshell hairbrush, the results of the latest effort are just coming into view.
Later, Caroc cards appear in the text (this is one of two appearances of them in this book with mentioning of the turtle):
She turned up the Importance of Washing the Hands, the Eight of Octograms, the Dome of the Sky, the Pool of Night, the Four of Elephants, the Ace of Turtles, and—Rincewind had been expecting it—Death.
Luggage, one of the heroes of the book, was at some point compared to an ordinary (though dissatisfied) turtle:
As it twisted to snap at him he gritted his teeth and heaved, jerking the Luggage onto its curved lid where it rocked angrily like a maddened tortoise.
In another fragment, we learn about the “relationships” of people of discworld (mages) and A’Tuin:
“Couldn’t somebody tell Great A’Tuin to avoid it?” he said. “Sort of go around it?”
“That sort of thing has been tried before,” said Rincewind. “Wizards tried to tune in to Great A’Tuin’s mind.”
“It didn’t work?”
“Oh, it worked all right,” said Rincewind. “Only…”
Only there had been certain unforeseen risks in reading a mind as great as the World Turtle’s, he explained. The wizards had trained up on tortoises and giant sea turtles first, to get the hang of the chelonian frame of mind, but although they knew that Great A’Tuin’s mind would be big they hadn’t realized that it would be slow.
“There’s a bunch of wizards that have been reading it in shifts for thirty years,” said Rincewind. “All they’ve found out is that Great A’Tuin is looking forward to something.”
Another interesting fragment:
But this shape blotting out the sky like the footfall o God isn’t a planet.
It is a turtle, ten thousand miles long from its crater-pocked head to its armored tail.
And Great A’Tuin is huge.
Great flippers rise and fall ponderously, warping space into strange shapes. The Discworld slides across the sky like a royal barge. But evenGreat A’Tuin is struggling now as it leaves the free depths of space and must fight the tormenting pressures of the solar shallows. Magic is weaker here, on the littoral of light. Many more days of this and the Discworld will be stripped away by the pressures of reality.
Great A’Tuin knows this, but Great A’Tuin can recall doing all this before, many thousands of years ago.
The astrochelonian’s eyes, glowing red in the light of the dwarf star, are not focused on it but at a little patch of space nearby…
Fragment in which tiny turtles hatch, with elephants and tiny discs on them:
Down in the geological depths of Great A’Tuin’s huge brain new thoughts surged along neural pathways the size of arterial roads. It was impossible for a sky turtle to change its expression, but in some indefinable way its scaly, meteor-pocked face looked quite expectant.
It was staring fixedly at the eight spheres endlessly orbiting around the star, on the very beaches of space.
The spheres were cracking.
Huge segments of rock broke away and began the long spiral down to the star. The sky filled with glittering shards.
From the wreakage of one hollow shell a very small sky turtle paddled its way into the red light. It was barely bigger than an asteroid, its shell still shiny with molten yolk.
There were four small world-elephant calves on there, too. And on their backs was a Discworld, tiny as yet, covered in smoke and volcanoes.
Great A’Tuin waited until all eight baby turtles had freed themselves from their shells and were treading space and looking bewildered. Then, carefully, so as not to dislodge anything, the old turtle turned and with considerable relief set out on the long swim to the blessedly cool, bottomless depths of space.
The young turtles followed, orbiting their parent.
The last fragment quoted by us (there are more fragments in total, A’Tuin is extremely important for the plot) is about how the turtle’s mood radiates on the inhabitants of the disc:
It should be pointed out that currently Great A’Tuin was very pleased and contented, and feelings like that in a brain the size of several large cities are bound to radiate out. In fact most people on the Disc were currently in a state of mind normally achievable only by a lifetime of dedicated meditation or about thirty seconds of illegal herbage.
Author: XYuriTT
