![]() ![]() He has been looking out for number one so long that looking for a way to get away with the loot is a reflex. On the other hand, the kind of character Pratchett wants at the center of this book is interesting: Moist van Lipwig is a con man, a thief, a reprobate. ![]() Pratchett wants a certain kind of character doing a particular thing with the postal service. The authorial hand is very visible in the beginning. The setup struck me as a deus ex Vetinari: using the powers and abilities of Ankh-Morpork’s ruling Patrician to set the story in motion, rather than having it emerge more naturally from the setting or from previously established characters. I started out skeptical about Going Postal. Looking at what other people have written, I see that I have a few more ahead of me in the eight books that remain after Going Postal. The clacks, a semaphore system that has effects a bit like the telegraph and the internet did in our world, was introduced in The Fifth Elephant, though it was not the main topic of the story. Going Postal features a revival of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mail. ![]() Moving Pictures was the first of these, back at the 10th book in the set, and they become more common later in the run. At different parts in the Discworld books, Terry Pratchett considers what might happen when something like a modern technology appears in the magical, quasi-medieval societies of the Disc. ![]()
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