The Fifth Elephant
by Terry Pratchett · first published 1999
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Everyone knows that the world is flat, and supported on the backs of four elephants. But weren't there supposed to be five? Indeed there were. So where is it?...When duty calls. Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork constabulary answers. Even when he doesn't want to. He's been "invited" to attend a royal function as both detective and diplomat. The one role he relishes; the other requires, well, ruby tights. Of course where cops (even those clad in tights) go, alas, crime follows. An attempted assassination and a theft soon lead to a desperate chase from the low halls of Discworld royalty to the
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…sounds intriguing. Do you have a pointer to something I could read that might expand on what you're saying here? (Aside from the emacs source.) Amusing coincidence: the only Pratchet book I've read is The Fifth Elephant.
on “Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors” ↗…blurry - as an example a temple that has been completely reconstructed and doesn't include any of the original material, is still 2000 years old. I think Terry Pratchett has a similar passage in The Fifth Elephant - this axe, over time may need a replacement head, or the handle may need some work, but it will always be the same axe that my father gave to me [paraphrased]. I guess, applied here, it's a similar…
From the article: "This really reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Igor clan. I discovered this amiable race in The Fifth Elephant. Igors are a people inspired from the typical hunchbacked Igor archetype, but in Discworld, they are also self-modifiers. Their bodies consist of mixed and matched and patched and swapped body parts among…
on “Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors” ↗Perhaps I'm nerdly enough to go to the Terry Pratchett part of the story first. This really reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Igor clan. I discovered this amiable race in The Fifth Elephant. Igors are a people inspired from the typical hunchbacked Igor archetype, but in Discworld, they are also self-modifiers. Their bodies consist of mixed and matched and patched and swapped body parts among…
on “Emacs users are like Terry Pratchett’s Igors” ↗Everything I know about microservices stems from 2 quotes. One is an excerpt of _The Fifth Elephant_ by Terry Pratchett: "This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle,…
on “How APIs Work – An Analogy for Dummies” ↗…the ornamentation... but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good. Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant (Discworld, #24; City Watch, #5)
on “What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012)” ↗Terry Pratchett riffed on a very similar theme in The Fifth Elephant about a 900-year-old axe: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/217710-this-milord-is-my-fa...
on “The Notre Dame fire and the future of history” ↗…marks. Vimes had often fought in circumstances where being able to use the hands freely was a luxury, but it was amazing how a well-placed elbow could make a point, possibly assisted by a knee. -- The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett A footnote from an earlier reference explains that: > * The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler,…
on “The Physics of Karate (2021)” ↗…ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
on “In ‘The Book Against Death,’ Elias Canetti rants against mortality” ↗…where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as “bad.” — Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
on “Man 'Disappeared' by ICE Was on El Salvador Flight Manifest, Hacked Data Shows” ↗Or, as Terry Pratchett so eloquently put it in The Fifth Elephant: > “Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favor of unnatural things.” > Vetinari looked perplexed. “You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?”
on “You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)” ↗