I wonder if the underground and the fact it was built on an older city denotes a bit of Seattle?
The fact it was once the heart of an Empire and the founders were Twins raised by Animals* shows some influence from Rome.
The original incarnation of the City sounded like a generic parody of the Fantasy City with a Wizard’s tower in the middle. The guilds remind be of some of D&D’s source marerial from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Lieber and some of Moorcock’s works.
I get a slight sence of parody of Minas Tirith in the mix, but maybe that is just me. This is tied mostly to the Glorious Age of the old kings and the powers that a King would have in Folklore.
What am I missing?
What does everyone else think?
Jim (**Qadgop the Mercotan ** got me reading the entire series, I am 75% done)
If I remember correctly, according to Pratchett in the “Art of Discworld” it’s based on Tallinn (in Prague), 18th century London, 19th century Seattle and modern New York City.
Politically speaking, it seems to owe some inspiration to Venice too - a doge-eat-doge world, as you might say.
ETA - There are a couple of bit-part players in the very first section of CoM that plainly owe their inspiration to Fafhrd and the Mouser.
I have to admit to complete ignorance of Tallinn. In what ways does it resemble Anhk-Morpork?
Sorry, Telperien, I have been devouring them. **QtM ** was right about “Colour of Magic” being the worse book to start with. I read it when it was new and so I never understood the love of Pratchett. Now I am ripping through them, about 3 per week on average.
I’ve only got The Light Fantastic and Small Gods. Both were great. But I am too poor to buy them in such quantity as I like, and it is neither birthday nor Christmas time yet.
Try hitting up friends and the Library. I bought six, I borrowed 12 and I will try to get the rest from the Library.
I never knew that about Budapest*, I thought that London & NYC being split by a Rivers was enough. Especially with the old jokes** about walking across the Hudson on the trash.
Jim
*Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with the amalgamation on 17 November 1873 of right-bank (west) Buda (Ofen in German) and Óbuda (Old Buda or Alt-Ofen) together with Pest on the left (east) bank.
** This is from the 1970s, the Hudson is once again a beautiful river. Even the East River is better.
I plan on checking the library, but the nearest friend I have who owns any of the books is about four hundred miles away. She’d actually lend them to me by mail, but I’d be nervous that they would go astray.
Aside from the fact that it’s an early work, The Colour of Magic is the one that’s most blatantly a parody of older fantasy literature, so if you’re not familiar with Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, etc., you’re not going to fully appreciate it.
If you are familiar with Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Ankh-Morpork is going to remind you of Lankhmar.
Stephen Briggs says that he used a specific British city* when first attempting to draw the map of Ankh-Morpork, but he quickly realized that no existing city matched the descriptions, so he started from scratch.
*Name of said city withheld pending legal action from same.
You’re not entirely alone. I read a couple several years ago and didn’t have much time to read, so I let the series drop. Now I’ve got time and am reading 3-4 a week. I’ve got maybe 6 or 7 to go to be up to date.
Well, as I said, I read it when it first came out and I had already read all the source material. It just was not all that great of a parody. I am pretty sure I had read more of the books it was being a parody of then most of his readers back then.
You’ll still need to do “The Science of Discworld” books, “Art of Discworld”, the juvenile books on Tiffany Aching, and you may as well commit yourself to hunting down a copy of “Strata”, his pre-prototype of a discworld.
BTW, I never connected AM with Minas Tirith. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Really just the part where the citizens talk about all the things that the rightful king could do. This was in reference to Captain Carrot of course. Carrot appears to have some things in common but yet different from Aragorn.
Oh and the Dwarves appear to be a parody of the Khazad.
Ankh-Morpork appears to take bits from very many cities. Whatever pieces Mr. Pratchett feels like grabbing. He resembles Nobby a little in this respect.
<nitpick>
If you walk (or swim :eek: ) across the Hudson, you’ll wind up in New Jersey. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The East River isn’t a river, it’s an estuary.
</nitpick>
I always got a London feel from AM, the winding river, the junk on boh sides. But I see the contributions of other cities also.
I actually saw a rather interesting (and annoyingly unfinished) Ankh-Morpork reimagined as either Osgiliath or Minas Tirith a thousand or two years after Lord of the Rings. Osgiliath makes a little more sense since that was the city on the river; MT was a few hours away at least, wasn’t it?
There were several other changes to the world – to characters, in particular – that I usually have to quickly continue: “But somehow it all WORKED…”
