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Stories are important. People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way round. Stories... have evolved... The strongest have survived, and they have grown fat... Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow... A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother, a thousand princesses have been kissed... Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats.
— Terry Pratchett in Witches Abroad, describing the Theory Of Narrative Causality

This is Art, holding a mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way around.
Wyrd Sisters

A world, and a mirror of worlds.

The Discworld, a flat planet carried by four elephants standing on the back of a gigantic space-turtle, is the venue for Sir Terry Pratchett's long running fantasy series.

The first few books were a straightforward parody of Heroic Fantasy tropes, but later books have subverted, played with, and hung lampshades on practically every trope on this site, in every genre, and many not yet covered, as well as parodying (and in some cases, deconstructing) many well known films, books, and TV series. The humour ranges from simple wordplay to wry reflections on the absurdities of life.

While all of the Discworld books exist in the same continuity (and roughly in chronological order, with a few exceptions), many can be loosely grouped into series following some of Pratchett's recurring characters, including Rincewind the incompetent "wizzard", The Ankh-Morpork City Watch (which are usually mystery novels), the Lancre witches (which lend themselves well to Shakespeare) and Death. Some books follow one-off protagonists who may or may not appear in supporting roles in other books.

In addition to the main characters, there is a large cast of recurrers, including dodgy street trader Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler and benevolent tyrant Havelock Vetinari ('benevolent' in the sense that he's a much nicer tyrant than his predecessors). Villains have included sociopathic geniuses, eldritch abominations, and the Auditors of Reality, cosmic bureaucrats who consider life too untidy to be tolerated.

As of January, 2009, there are thirty-six books in the series, four of them young-adult, as well as several short stories. There are also Discworld calendars, diaries, maps, and compendia, each with additional background information about the Disc. All the books have been adapted for the stage, two have become animated series, and two (technically three, as The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic were filmed as a single story under the former title, but the second is a direct follow-on) have become live-action Made For TV Movies.

See also the character sheet for details on the more major of the series' Loads And Loads Of Characters, and the fan-run L-Space Web for quotes, annotations, and even a reading order guide for the uninitiated.

The main Discworld novels, in order of release. Brackets denote date of UK publication and main character(s) - standalone indicates that it is not currently part of a series.

The young adult Discworld novels:

Children's books:

Illustrated novels:

  • FaustEric (1990- Rincewind; also available in paperback novel format)
  • The Last Hero (2001- Rincewind, The City Watch; republished with more illustrations)

Other:


Discworld is the Trope Namer for:

Tropes that are not specific to one character (or group of characters) and appeared in three or more books (anything else should go in those pages, since otherwise half the tropes on this site would be listed):