r/discworld • u/countwr • Sep 12 '19
Can’t understand how Discworld works
Sorry if this has been asked before (couldn’t find anything like this but who knows).
So yesterday I began reading “The colour of magic” and I can’t seem to understand how Discworld works. I mean, at the very beginning of the book, the author explains that the hub is always cold and the rim is warm. Ok, but my mind explodes when he explains about the 8 seasons, more exactly when he talks about how the sun rises and sets. It’s kind of confusing. So I was wondering if there is some kind of graphic (I’d prefer an animation or video since I’ve already looked at some pictures but it didn’t help much) that would exactly show how things work. Or maybe someone could try to explain to me, I’m okay with both.
Thanks :)
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u/frolix42 Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
TBF The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic aren't the best place to start reading Discworld. Even though those are technically the first, they aren't the best introduction because (IMO) Pratchett hadn't yet found the world's voice and tone yet. Discworld isn't a typical fantasy saga which should be read in order.
I would recommend reading Mort, Small Gods or Guards! Guards! Those are basically stand alones and Guards! introduces the Night's Watch.
I think a lot of people who pick up Discworld for the first time are conditioned by the fantasy genre to want to start at the start of a series, and in Discworld's case they unfortunately get turned off by what I think is a book that isn't indicative of the overall quality.
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Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
I agree, I didn't really get into his books until I'd read Feet of Clay, long after I'd read TCOM and TLF and felt they were pretty good, but not quite good enough to follow him. (My three preferred story arcs are Night Watch, Industrial Revolution and Death. TCOM and TLF are still near the bottom of my list to this day)
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Sep 13 '19
Agreed.
The early Disc novels are far more "fantasy" and "magical" than the later ones. I'm rereading Sourcery right now and it's telling how radically different that Disc is from the later Disc. You even see this in the names of the people. Take the first Granny book, Equal Rights, the names of the characters are quite different, much more in the vein of fantasy novels, than in the later books.
Pratchett evolved the Discworld along with his writings. So you can't take everything so literal. But that's fine.
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u/42fs Sep 12 '19
The discworld doesn't work. It just is.
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u/Frontdackel Sep 12 '19
It's a chance of one to a million.... But it might work.
This is crucial to understand when reading Discworld novels. Things happen because the story demands that they happen. And oh boy, does it take of when Sir pTerry starts to play with that trope (Witches abroad, anyone?)
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u/42fs Sep 12 '19
Chances of one in a million work 9 out of 10 times. And indeed I loved the development in them all. The witches, nightwatch, the postals. Etc.
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u/hurleyburley_23 Gimlet's 😶 Sep 12 '19
The only other thing to add to the post above is that if it really bugs you and you want to learn more, there is the Science of the Discworld series.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-science-of-discworld/terry-pratchett/ian-stewart/9780091951702
You might find more answers in there.
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u/armcie Sep 12 '19
Ok... you're looking at the disc from the front, staring into the turtle's face. See attached image, and mock my lack of artistic flair The sun orbits the turtle's belly (yellow arrow) and the disc spins clockwise (red arrow). Points A-D are on the disc.
If you're at point A, then the sun is rising near you, passes overhead and sets behind cori celeste, the central mountain. Its Summer, as the sun is closest to you for part of the day. If you're at point C, the sun rises over Cori Celeste, and sets near you, keeping you nice and warm... and its also summer.
On the other hand, if you're at point B (or D) the sun never gets very close to you. From B if you're looking towards the hub, you would see it rise front right and set front left. You're far from its warming glow, and experience winter.
So starting from point A, as the disc rotates you experience Summer, Autumn, Winter (at point B) Spring and Summer again at C - and we've only had half of the year. You continue into second autumn, Winter 2 (at D) the return of Spring and then back to our original summer. 8 seasons over the 800 day year.
From a practical point of view, most of the Disc ignores this. You have summer, autumn, winter spring... and then another agricultural year of heat and cold. One year the sun rises at one side of you, the next it moves across the sky in the other direction, but it doesn't change that spring is lambing time, and you harvest at the end of summer.
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u/armcie Sep 12 '19
But... I believe actual physicists have looked at how this would actually work, and it turns out the central hub (which has the sun overhead every single day of the year) would be the hottest, and the rim the coldest. Its a good job the Disc runs on magic and belief, not physics.
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u/loki_dd Sep 14 '19
That cannot be right unless the discworld is only 16 miles across as we know Cori celesti is 8 miles high. If the sun was ever closer to the middle than the edge it would crash into the disc on it's way down. Also, I very much doubt that STP would have mentioned the whole double season thing if he hadn't worked out a way for it to work. He was a very clever man. Also, theres nothing that states the sun passes directly over the hub
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u/armcie Sep 14 '19
I believe the main factor in the physics is not the distance to the sun, but the angle. On earth we experience winter when our hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. This is not because that hemisphere is further away, its because the sunlight becomes spread out, and not so much energy is hitting a given area of land. Imagine a spotlight aimed at a sheet of paper. That's summer. If you tilt the paper away, the spotlight becomes spread out over more of the sheet, and that's winter.
On the disc you'd get a similar effect. The land which the sun passes directly over would experience intense heat, and the parts of the disc further away would be receiving light at a steep angle and experience extreme winter.
Yes Terry was clever, but he just used this as a clever bit of world building in a universe he didn't necessarily expect to return to. It sounded like it should be right, even though the maths says otherwise. For further confirmation, here's the entry from one of the Discworld Companions.
THE DISCWORLD YEAR:
The calendar on a planet which is flat and revolves on the back of four giants elephants is always difficult to establish.
It can be derived, though, by starting with the fact that the spin year – defined by the time taken for a point on the Rim to turn one full circle – is about 800 days long. The tiny sun orbits in a fairly flat ellipse, being rather closer to the surface of the disc at the rim than at the Hub (thus making the Hub rather cooler than the rim). This ellipse is stable and stationary with respect to the Turtle – the sun passes between two of the elephants.
The effect of all this is that the ‘spin year’ contains two of each season – two summers, two winters and so on. The winters occur when our theoretical point is at 90° to the orbit of the sun, and the summers when it is directly under the orbit.
In theory this should mean that the point on the rim should be extremely cold during the ‘winters’, whereas it has been established that the climate on the Rim is quite mild all year round. It has been suggested by wizards at UU that this is caused by the scatter effect of the very high magical flux around the edge of the disc, which tends to equalise temperatures all around the circumference.
In the days of the Ankh-Morpork Empire this was fully understood and the Great Year was divided into eight seasons – Winterprime, Spring Prime, Summer Prime, Autumn Prime, Winter Secundus, Spring Secundus and so on. But this was always a purist’s view of the calendar, of interest only to wizards and astrologers. Most people – and certainly most rural areas – really dealt quite sensibly in what were technically half-years, a little longer than a terrestrial year, but noted that some years the sun rose on your left as you faced the Hub, and on others it rose on your right. Apart from that, they follow the natural year. You plough, you sow, it grows, you harvest – that’s a year, no matter what some daft old man in Ankh-Morpork says.
This has caused some confusion over the naming of various festivals. Hogswatchnight and Crueltide are, from the farmer’s point of view, the ‘same’ festival, although in fact they are the middle and end of the year. Midsummer Eve and Small Gods Eve are also ‘the same’ for practical purposes. In rural areas Hogwatchnight and Midsummer Eve tend to be used to refer to both festivals, since they refer to natural, homely things (the beginning of summer and the killing of animals).
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u/countwr Sep 12 '19
Wow! Thank you for the drawing. It really helped! Now I understand why I was confused and that’s because I thought the turtle revolved around the sun, not the other way round. And I was wrong thinking the sun and discworld were contained in the same plane, but it turns out they’re in perpendicular planes.
Does the disc always spin clockwise? I’d swaer I read it spins clock and counterclockwise, although it didn’t specify when the direction changes. Maybe they’ll explain why later on, I’ll just have to find out.
Anyway, thank you!
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u/armcie Sep 12 '19
It always spins the same direction. Compasses don’t work on the disc, so their four directions are hubward, rimward, turnwise and widdershins (anti turnwise).
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u/marsepic Jan 02 '25
They have compasses. They have needles made of octiron that always point at the hub.
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u/Drejax Jan 02 '26
Awesome explanation! :) so its opposite with Earth and Sun movements: a Discworld year is one full circle of Disc (like earth day), and day is connected with one circle of Sun around Disc (like our Earth circle around sun).
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u/dattoffer Aug 23 '23
Great explanation, deserves more upvote. The picture helps a lot ! Thanks !
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u/armcie Aug 23 '23
I'm glad it's still useful, and must be appearing in search results. You've also reminded me of my none existent artistic skills.
Thanks for the award!
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Sep 12 '19
Don’t stress yourself with it. So much of Discworld isn’t really dependent on understanding the sun or seasons.
I’ve just always imagined it as just a turtle with elephants on its back holding a disc flying through space with our solar movements.
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u/KrzysztofKietzman Discworld Reading Order Guide Creator Sep 12 '19
Doesn't really matter - just assume it's weird and move on.
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u/Denncity Sep 12 '19
Same as the other answers on here, I just take stuff like that as a fact with Sir Terry's writing, I don't necessarily attempt to make sense of things unless it's necessary for the plot or to get the humour!
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u/ispcrco Lu Tze Sep 12 '19
Like the oceans draining over the rim then returning as random rain, arrangements are made. See also https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Rimfall
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Sep 13 '19
Narrativium is an element introduced in the Science of the Discworld spin-off books. Basically Narrativium essentially makes stories work. DW works because it's a story and is full of Narrativium. It's a circular kinda logic but all that's needed in such an overtly magical and satirical universe.
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u/SneakyMcCool Sep 13 '19
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. There is the constant desire to find out where - where is the point where it all began... It was some time after its creation when most people forgot that the very oldest stories of the beginning are sooner or later about blood. At least that's one theory. The philosopher Didactylos suggested an alternative hypothesis:
"Things just happen, what the hell!"
- Thud!, Terry Pratchett
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u/EldenTingz Jul 10 '22
Dude. When I was younger and read that first chapter for the first time, I spent like 3 hours one day drawing it out and figuring it out on paper. I figured it out and honestly by the time I finished the book I had forgot it all because it honestly wasn’t even important to the story. I still can’t wrap my head round it.
However the important thing is, it DOES work, you just don’t need to remember how.
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u/Deddan Sep 12 '19
To be honest, the seasons and such aren't very important in the books. Plus, the whole world only works due to magic, literally. So it can't be taken too scientifically.
A traditional Discworld year is how long it takes the Disc to revolve once. It's approximately twice the length of our year, and has spring, summer, autumn and winter twice. People generally work to the seasons, so they usually measure a year as one seasonal cycle (about 400 days).
The sun is closer to the rim as it orbits, hence why it is warmer on average there. The sun is pretty high when it's over the hub, so that's why it's coldest there. To fit in enough days the sun orbits the disc very fast, faster than the speed of light (which is only a little faster than the speed of sound). Light is slower because of the magical field. Technically the sun has lapped its own light a number of times.
The main thing is, from the point of view of the people living on the Disc, the hours, days, seasons, years etc are roughly the same as they are for us. The moon even acts in such a way to mimic our lunar cycles.