The Light Fantastic
Terry Pratchett
285 pages
published in 1986
The Light Fantastic is of course the second Discworld novel and a direct sequel to The Colour of Magic starting in media res with Rincewind having fallen off the Disc. To his own amazement he does not actually fall to his death, but is saved by the Great Octavo Spell that had taken up residence in his head. It turns out that this hadn’t actually been an accident all those years ago that had gotten it in his head and all other magic spells afraid to stay near it, but had been in preparation for just this moment. The Discworld is heading towards a huge red star and unless the spell and its seven counterparts are said at exactly the right time, the world will be destroyed…
There’s three years between the publication of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic and it’s noticable in Pratchett’s writing, which has improved a lot between the two novels. It’s also much less parody orientated, but still nowhere near the Discworld we’ve gotten to know and love. We do get a first glimmer of some of the subjects that Pratchett would engage more fully in later novels, including his humanitarianism. For the moment however, the Discworld is still much closer to a standard fantasy world than to what it would later become.
This might be a good point to say something about Pratchett’s humanitarianism. Though he does have a cynical side, in his heart he does seem to believe in the essential goodness and deceny of people. His villains mostly are people who have stopped thinking of other people as people: treating people like things is the original sin in Prachett’s worldview. Against it he puts the essential emotional sloppiness of his heroes, who with all their flaws are to a person willing to take a punt on the needs of the many if it means sacrifising the few. The first time this is really visible is still a few novels away, in Sourcery, but from The Light Fantastic onwards you can already see hints of this worldview coming to the fore.
In this novel, it’s the star people, the fanatics who start organising pogroms against wizards and other magical folk as the red star comes closer to the Discworld and magic starts to fail. These are the archetypical Pratchett villains, thought hey only play a bit part here: organised, systemic evil and firmly set against all the good things in life. Against that he sets the everyday moral failings of his heroes: Rincewind is a coward and the first to admit it, the Luggage is not very nice in general and let’s not even mention Cohen the Barbarian, whose job it is to slaughter pre-eminent religious authorities just because they have a habit of tying up temple maidens as sacrifice for their pet demons…
The Light Fantastic is a better novel than The Colour of Magic, but not yet a good novel. There’s promise, but it’s not being fullfilled yet.