{"id":5092,"date":"2019-12-04T05:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5092"},"modified":"2019-12-01T18:11:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T02:11:26","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iv-prologue-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/12\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iv-prologue-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld IV&#8217;: Prologue \/ Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first chapter of <i>Judgment Day<\/i>, the wizards mess everything up. Because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what they do. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>The Science of Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It is very strange to me that the end of this is so near. This is it! This is the final of the <i>Science of Discworld<\/i> books, and the prologue to this was a wonderful trip down memory lane. I am glad that someone\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not quite sure who\u00e2\u20ac\u201demailed me and my assistant at the time to make sure that these books were put on the schedule. I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t normally read books like this for Mark Reads, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been part of the fun in reviewing them. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a challenge! I have to think about analysis and storytelling in a different way because this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t my normal style. Even if they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as popular in terms of comments or views as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153regular\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <i>Discworld<\/i> reviews, I still get a lot out of discussing them with all of you and LEARNING COMPLICATED SCIENCE THINGS.<\/p>\n<p>So, it is with that said that I begin a new journey, this time through a <i>Science<\/i> book that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s titled <i>Judgment Day<\/i>. The epigraph hints at themes of perception, imagination, and the clash between religion and science. Plus, the two quotes from <i>Small Gods<\/i> are immediately dealt with in the prologue, since the authors take us on a journey of creation, explaining how Roundworld was constructed with little to no sense. I commented this on video, but I loved the reversal of who is centered in this. The Disc is the logical world, constructed in a way so that no one falls off the bottom, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proper support, AND everything makes way more sense then our nonsensically designed world that has to spin? And tilt? And there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this weird magic glue that keeps us stuck to it so we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go flying off into space??? WHO DESIGNED THIS.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, right. The Dean. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kinda his fault, or at least The Dean turned it all on. And gods bless this line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There have been a few mishaps along the way, but the Roundworld universe has now been running fairly successfully for thirteen and a half billion years; all of it started by an old man with a beard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>GODDAMN IT, THIS JOKE IS TOO GOOD. Anyway, was anyone else thrown off (in a good way!) but what is now the first canonical mention of social media in a <i>Discworld<\/i> book??? I know that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tenuous connection to canon here, but still: Twitter! Twitter is mentioned in this book! Oh god, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, it makes me sad that we lost Pratchett so early; could you imagine if he got to write a book about social media coming to the <i>Discworld<\/i>??? Maybe something utilizing the clacks? FANFICTION PROMPT, please run off and let this inspire you, friends.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This whole introduction leads to the Great Big Thing, which every university <i>must<\/i> have, apparently? See, I thought the Roundworld experiment <i>was<\/i> their Great Big Thing. None of the other academic facilities have THAT, you know? A whole world! That has living organisms on it! That they can travel to if needed! (Which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m assuming will be a thing in this book, too. But what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be the impetus? Why is this called <i>Judgment Day<\/i>?) But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not good enough, and thus Ponder Stibbons begins working on the Challenger Project, which took SIX YEARS to complete, and what amounted from all that work?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It was, in fact, a rather amorphous blob that seemed to twist magical equations with arcane symbols and squiggles that clearly meant <i>something<\/i> to those who knew about such things.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something uniquely funny about the fact that Vetinari is involved in this book. Usually, we just stick to the wacky and chaotic world of the wizards at Unseen University, but now, the one person who hates chaos the MOST has been wrapped up in something terrible. I feel like the Challenger Project is a reference to the Large Hadron Collider, since there were many people who believed that once it was turned on, it would create a black hole and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d all die. (I believe that was the story? Please correct me if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wrong.) Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 might have happened? What did the wizards do? How mad is Vetinari going to be if he <i>actually<\/i> ended the world?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/kVbzjb-y7lg<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2019\/5\/7\/the-anger-is-a-gift-trade-paperback-is-out-today\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first chapter of Judgment Day, the wizards mess everything up. Because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what they do. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Science of Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,564],"class_list":["post-5092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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