Discworld dinosaur (Strata - Terry Pratchett)

Member Name: calypte

Product:	Strata - Terry Pratchett
Date:	16/07/02 (1192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun story, lots of chuckles, well-written

Disadvantages: a little single-planed, a few 'scene' moments

It’s sometimes hard to imagine, but there was once a world without Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. No, really! And even more difficult to believe – Mr Pratchett was still writing books back then. For fans of that series though, here is where it gets REALLY interesting: Here we can see those first embryonic seeds of what was to become the ‘global phenomenon’ that is the Discworld series.

That’s not to say this is a Discworld novel in any sense – it’s just the basic idea that crops up, obviously sparking something in Terry Pratchett’s imagination to make him want to explore the idea further. But this is very much ‘Pratchett does sci-fi’, so don’t expect to find Vimes or Rincewind or Granny Weatherwax here, or even ‘early versions’ of them.

Who we do have as a main character (ouch to the grammar, sorry!) is Kin Arad. Kin is a 200+-year-old woman who works for the Company. The Company makes planets, you see, and it pays its workers in Days. Literally. Extend your life, stay young forever, and have some memory surgery done to keep the synapses fresh. And so for Kin Arad, “Twenty-one decades lie on her shoulders like temporal dandruff.” Mind you, she doesn’t have to worry about the real stuff – hair “seldom survived the first century”.


Right from the outset, Strata displays Pratchett’s quirky sense of humour down to a tee. The opening event is two workers getting a ticking off for trying to put a dinosaur fossil in the wrong strata of the planet they’re building, something that would undoubtedly give future palaeontologists something to puzzle over. Not so much as the “End nuclear testing” placard it’s holding, though! Somehow, can’t you just imagine Terry Pratchett being exactly the person to pull such a practical joke? As it turns out, so is Kin, who once tried to build a mountain
range in the shape of her initials :)


The actual mechanics of this strange universe aren’t really explored until much further through the book: why it’s so important to build planets and give them a ‘fake’ history with these layers of strata, for instance. Instead, we’re thrown into the story and left to pick up the details as we go through – which I’ll leave for you to do as you read the book.

What I will tell you is the general mood of these human beings. They have everything – immortality, security, no poverty or hunger. They also have those nifty sci-fi standard machines that can produce any food you desire immediately. Bliss! But such a utopia doesn’t come without some cost, and in this case it’s just a general sense of ennui, of watching the future reel out in front of you filled only with recycled experiences but nothing *new*.

Which explains why Kin ends up embarking upon the adventure in this book. We learn that most people end up taking increasingly silly risks – parachuting without the parachute, for instance – so when a mysterious and crazy man appears in Kin’s office and offers her access to ‘impossible’ technology, she has no chance of fighting her own curiosity. Most importantly, she has the chance to see a *flat* earth – which is very much something new.


Of course, I’m not going to spoil the plot, but suffice to say that Kin is teamed up with two unlikely alien companions with quirks of their own, and sets of to see this ‘impossible’ flat earth. To be honest, most of the action only starts when they reach the disc (but not Disc, you understand) with the preceding-ness a little rushed, a little forced, to get them where they’re going. Which is fine, really – this isn’t the place to come if you’re looking for deep and complex. Pratchett is great at producing very *simple*
stories, and this is no exception.

There are other obvious differences between Strata and the main Discworld series, however. I’ve read many reviews on this site, and it’s true that not everyone particularly likes Pratchett’s work. The main complaints I can actually agree with (although it’s never stopped me liking the books): over time, the Discworld has fallen victim to it’s own success and own excesses. There is too much of a pattern that has developed: take a real-life situation, replace the science with magic, and ham it up to the heavens.

All of that is completely absent here. The humour isn’t forced down your throat in the same way that later Discworld novels have started to do – as someone else said, it’d be funnier if Pratchett didn’t feel he needed to throw in a pun ever other line. And it really is – Strata is amusing in its toned down-ness.

The story itself held my interest, too. As I said, you shouldn’t come here looking for any revelations, but there are more than a few interesting points if you want to go looking for them – how do alien species get on, for example, and why are we pushed to do the things we do? And the story itself has questions to answer: who built this flat earth (for it is indeed, an ‘Earth’)? Why? And will our unlikely trio ever be able to leave?

That’s not to say this is perfect, and indeed, it’s not up to the ‘standard’ of the peak Discworld writing. For a start, it’s a fairly simplistic and one-dimensional story – rather ironic for a book called Strata to really only have one layer! Perhaps it should have been named ‘Stratum’? Actually, that’s being a touch unfair – the story does bounce along at a good pace with plenty to keep your attention. However, there were moments when I felt it was just moving between scenes: here is an Arabian Nights pastiche
, there’s a few dragons, and now a Viking moment. Of course, one could argue that taking just one of these elements and expanding it into the Discworld has made Pratchett very rich and very famous over the years. ;)


So who should try this book? People who desperately dislike Pratchett aren’t going to like this any better, but those who just weren’t keen on the ‘processed-ness’ of later Discworld novels might find this slightly more restrained. And of course, Pratchett nuts have probably read it already!


And so my rating… Well, this quite obviously isn’t classic literature and it’s not a perfect ‘pop’ novel, either. However, while I considered giving Strata just three stars, I found that my overall feeling was, well, I just enjoyed it immensely! I read it in two days – partly because it’s not a huge tome, but mainly due to Pratchett’s no-chapter format and easy, rolling style. Strata is silly, it’s fun, and it’s entirely interesting to see how much the concept for the Disc evolved from these first thoughts.



•¤• Technical stuff •¤•

Strata was first published in 1981, two years before The Colour of Magic kicked of the Discworld series.

Currently published by Corgi in Josh Kirby’s familiar style of cover, the RRP is £5.99. It is available online at lower prices, although I couldn’t find any that weren’t more expensive by the time you’d added in postage.

ISBN: 0-552-13325-6

Summary: