By Terry Pratchett
From the rear cover -
Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed
And on Discworld that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater - how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities where there's never enough time.
But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone's problems.
Thief of Time comes complete witha full supporting cast of heroes and villains, yetis, martial artists and Ronnie the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (who left before they became famous).
'In a better world he would be acclaimed as a great writer rather than a merely successful one ... this is the best Pratchett I've read ... ought to be a strong contender for the Booker prize.'
Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph
Page 25 -
Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to be an interesting person and then see whether there were any courses available. He was puzzled that people seemed to think he was a boring conversationalist. Why he could talk about all kinds of clock ...
(May type more of this later - if I feel up 2 it :)
Page 56 -
Igor was puzzled. Igor had never worked for a sane person before. He had worked for a number of ... well, the world called them madmen, and he'd worked for several normal people, in that they only indulged in minor and socially acceptable insanities, but he couldn't recall ever working for a completely sane person.
Page 62 -
They stepped out of the brittle sunlight into the deep cold of the temple, and walked on through ancient halls and down stairways cut into the rock. The sound of distant chanting followed them. Lu-Tze who was not holy and therefore could think unholy thoughts, occasionally wondered whether the chanting monks were chanting anything, or were just going 'aahaaahaha'. You could never tell with all that echo.
Page 98 -
Lu-Tze listened to the senior monks while leaning on his broom. Listening was an art he had developed over the years, having learned that if you listened hard and long enough people would tell you more than they thought they knew.
Page 129 -
'Really?' Lu-Tze raised his eyebrows. 'When they have trekked thousands of miles seeking the truth?'
'But did not Wen say that if the truth is anywhere, it is everywhere?' said Lobsang
'Well done. I see you've learned something at least. But one day it seemed to me that everyone else had decided that wisdom can only be found a long way off. So I went to Ankh-Morpork. They were all coming here, so it seemed only fair.'
Page 188 -
'It was a long time ago ... ', said Lu-Tze. 'Exactly when doesn't matter, 'cos of what happened. In fact, asking exactly "when" doesn't make any sense any more. It depends where you are. In some places it was hundreds of years ago. Some other places ... well, maybe it hasn't happened yet. There was this man in Uberwald. Invented a clock. An amazing clock. It measured the tick of the universe. Know what that is?'
'No.'
'Me neither. The abbot's your man for that kind of stuff. Lemme see ... okay ... think of the smallest amount of time that you can. Really small. So tiny that a second would be like a billion years. Got that? Well, the cosmic quantum tick - that's what the abbot calls it - the cosmic quantum tick is much smaller than that. It's the time it takes to go from now to then. The time it takes an atom to think about wobbling. It's -'
'The time it takes for the smallest thing that's possible to happen to happen?' said Lobsang.
May type out more of this section later ...
Or ... you could go out & pick yourself up a copy - I highly recommend you do :)
Page 198 -
Building a human being was easy; the Auditors knew exactly how exactly how to move matter around. The trouble was that the result didn't do anything but lie there and, eventually, decompose. This was annoying, since human beings, without any special training or education, seemed to be able to make working replicas quite easily.
Page 210 -
In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly:
'Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?'
Wen considered this for some time and at last said: 'A fish!'
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
Page 244 -
Lady LeJean's body backed away automatically and, when she saw what was forming, she backed it away further. She had seen humans in all states of life and death, but seeing a body being spun out of raw matter was curiously disquietly when you were currently inhabiting a similar one. It was one of those times when the stomach did the thinking, and thought it wanted to throw up.
Page 309 -
And there you had it. Then a hero would have had to wonder what to do next. Eight-hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens stays happened. It might stay happened in a different set of dimensions, if you wanted to get technical, but you couldn't make it un-happen. The clock had struck, and time had stopped. Later, a solution would present itself. In the meantime, a cup of tea and conversation with his serendipitous rescuer might speed that time. After all, Ronnie was not your average milkman.
Page 320 -
Miss tangerine was getting even angrier because she couldn't work out why she was angry. One reason was probably that, when he gave her this task, Mr White had looked at her in a funny way. Being looked at was an unfamiliar experience for an Auditor in any case - no Auditor bothered to look at another Auditor very often because all Auditors looked the same - and neither were they used to the idea that you could say things with your face. Or even have a face. Or have a body that reacted in strange ways to the expression on another face belonging to, in this case, Mr White. When he looked at her like that she felt a terrible urge to claw his face off.
Page 360 -
Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He prided himself on an incredibly well-honed ability to talk his way in or out of anything, but that rather depended on a passably sane entity being involved at the other end of the dialogue.
Page 391 -
'Think like this,' he said at last. 'Think of everything. It's an everyday word. But "everything" means ... everything. It's a much bigger word than "universe". And everything contains all possible things that can happen at all possible times in all possible worlds. Don't look for complete solutions in any one of them. Sooner or later, everything causes everything else.'
Page 400 -
'Yes. Even trying to think in a mere four dimensions is a terrible effort. I'm sorry. Even to hold in my mind the concept of something called "now" is hard. You thought I was mostly human. I'm mostly not.' He sighed. 'If only I could tell you what everything looks like to me ... it's so beautiful.'
Page 408 -
'I found it most curious. How can words on a page have a power like that? There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime,' said Unity sadly.
Susan felt a stab of guilt. It wasn't Unity's fault, after all. People learn things as they grow up, things that never get written down. And unity had never grown up.
Note: You can read these excerpts on a computer screen but I highly recommend you buy the book - it is much nicer sitting in a comfy chair witha copy in your hot little hands. Judging by my reading so far it is well worth purchasing :)
Some links -
Reada whole lot of complimentary customer reviews
This one tempted me 2 buy the book :)
Pearls of wisdom from the book
Search 4 one of the main characters
Found this site while looking for a discworld forum
Also lists some interesting links
The book mentions slicing time
Search for more of the characters
More Discworld links down the bottom of this page