Awesome / Discworld

Note, the entire Discworld series was essentially one decades long crowning moment of awesomeness for Terry Pratchett himself. The man had a rare form of Alzheimers and was still able to write books like the Discworld series. Upon being made a knight, the man made his own freaking sword, out of meteor metal, just because he wanted one. He even prepared for euthanasia in the most sensible way ever seen. The Discworld books ARE a crowning moment of awesome purely for having been written by this guy.

To expand: the first book was published in 1983, so he had been writing the Discworld series for thirty years. In this time he had written 37 Discworld books proper (including the four Younger Readers books), helped with the writing of twelve Other Books About the Discworld, four Discworld Map(p)s, ten or so other Non-Discworld books (this does not count those books written before the publication of The Colour of Magic, plus presumably helping with the games, the film and cartoon adaptations of books, the plays and every other thing to do with the Discworld series). So, that's sixty-three books/compendia, and everything else in only twenty-nine years. One man! (with occasional assists). Warning: unmarked spoilers may be present. Now reworked into folders so people who haven't read every book can look at this page without fear of spoilers.

This page has a Crowner.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels have have more Crowning Moments Of Awesome per book than some series do in their entirety. All of the main characters, most of the recurring minor characters, and a good number of the villains have at least one of these. Per book.

• The narration gets more than its share of moments that make you sit back and go "Mr. Pratchett, you were indeed a genius."

Now in convenient folders divided by book, so you don't have to read the entire series to read this page and not be spoiled! Please keep examples in the folder belonging to the relevant book.

Main Discworld novels

• The Colour of Magic
• The Light Fantastic
• Equal Rites
• Mort
• Sourcery
• Wyrd Sisters
• Pyramids
• Guards! Guards!
• Eric
• Moving Pictures
• Reaper Man
• Witches Abroad
• Small Gods
• Lords and Ladies
• Men at Arms
• Soul Music
• Interesting Times
• Maskerade
• Feet of Clay
• Hogfather
• Jingo
• The Last Continent
• Carpe Jugulum
• The Fifth Elephant
• The Truth
• Thief of Time
• Night Watch
• Monstrous Regiment
• Going Postal
• Thud!
• Making Money
• Unseen Academicals
• Snuff
• Raising Steam

Illustrated novels

• Eric
• The Last Hero

Young adult novels

• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
• The Wee Free Men
• A Hat Full of Sky
• Wintersmith
• I Shall Wear Midnight
• The Shepherd's Crown

Short stories

• In the short story, "Theatre of Cruelty," Carrot gets one while investigating a death to which there were no apparent witnesses. In search of a lead, he goes and waits with a terminally-ill old man until You Know Who shows up, and then goes: "Now I know you saw something, sir. You were there." When Death is reluctant to talk, Carrot tricks him into helping the police with their enquiries.
• Granny Weatherwax dealing with a busybody witch-in-name-only in "The Sea and Little Fishes" who is trying to turn Witchcraft into a hobby for bored socialites. By being perfectly, perfectly nice (as in, "old retired grandmotherly nice") and letting everyone who expected her to get revenge for a slight (being asked not to participate in a witch convention's competition) get progressively more paranoid, which more or less ruins the event because no one can properly participate. This includes Nanny Ogg, who was openly terrified. She even doesn't react when said witch-in-name-only slaps her in desperation, only to be hauled away by other witches for a long sit down. Why? Because said witch confirmed that Granny was powerful enough to completely dominate the entire event, effortlessly, despite there being literally dozens and dozens of witches there, complete with protective wards. Not to mention the witch-in-name-only ruined her reputation and pretty much killed the movement towards Witchcraft as a hobby.
  • She then, after giving a (out-of-character) grandmotherly speech about forgiveness and calming everyone down, sets fire to the bonfire with an effortless flick of her wrist. A simple fire spell.... which absolutely levels the entire convention grounds from the shockwave, can be seen for miles around, and ends with the fire animating, replaying famous battles, little fire elementals dancing in a ring, and...
    ... settled down, and was just a bonfire.
    "I never said nothin' about forgettin'," said Granny.

Other

• The Science of Discworld

Mentioned But Never Appearing Characters

• Bergholt Stutley ("Bloody Stupid") Johnson gets a few of these, too. He managed to create an explosive substance out of sand and water, a cul-de-sac of houses that appear to have inter-dimensional tunnels linking them, and a letter-sorter that sorts every letter that will ever be written in every time-stream in existence. For a guy who couldn't do anything right, he was awesome!
  • That's nothing. He set Pi equal to three. Successfully. And no, it wasn't an estimate or an approximation. He made a (circular) wheel with a circumference equal to exactly three times its diameter.
  • His pipe organs actually come out fairly close to spec (all the aforementioned moments of brilliance having been accidental), and he did one nice bathroom. Linking B to the closest A, however, was a mistake.
  • He drew a triangle with three right angles— on the Disc, which is noted for not being a sphere.
  • The hundred-and-fifty-feet-by-one-inch trout pond, which contained one trout, 'who was perfectly happy as long as it didn't try to turn around.'
  • On a related note, Lady Sybil's grandfather earns a minor one for shooting Johnson when he spotted him approaching the Ramkin estate. This Genre Savvy act is why it's only swamp dragons who explode on the Ramkin (now Vimes) property.
• General Tacticus earns one despite never actually appearing. He's the most successful general the Disc has ever known. The inscription on his statue? "I can see your house from here." This was both a boast and a THREAT.
  • Tacticus's journals are full of military wisdom. For instance, the section titled "What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not" begins with the words, ''Endeavour to be the one inside.'
    • Even better: 'Endeavor to see it stays there.' The perfect defensive ground can also be the perfect trap
  • Even more awesome when you consider he was brought in up in a city where prevailing military thinking is so bad that they considered his returning from his conquests with most of his men cheating.
  • He is later made the Duke of Genua after their royal family dies out. Upon assuming the throne he assesses the biggest threat to the country and, having determined this, declared war on the people that had, up until right that second, been his own countrymen. Unsurprisingly, he won handily.
    • A Shout-Out to Charles XIV John, a Frenchman elected Crown Prince and later King of Sweden following the infirmity of Charles XIII, whose first act as Regent was to link up into the War of the Sixth Coalition and leave his former boss Napoleon on Elba.

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