r/discworld•
driftlake

Is Discworld a 'Fallen World'?

Hi all. First time posting a new topic on Reddit. Eek!

This question arose out of a project my friend and I have embarked upon, a podcast series in which we review/discuss our way through the novels of the Disc. It occurred to me during our discussion that it's quite a common trope of contemporary fantasy that the magical world is a 'fallen' or 'falling' one: that is, that magic is fading from the world and something (probably the mortal or non-magical realm) is rising to assume its (often destined) place. We see something like this, of course, in Tolkien, and in innumerable works thereafter.

But the Disc! It seems to me that we might have an intriguing exception with Discworld. A world in which magic dwindles but does not fade as technology rises--a world that is, in some sense more honest to the way that forces in the world rise and...flat-line, rather than fall. I don't know.

Is the Disc, as a whole, a world in which magic is dwindling from a heralded past? Do we see the common, inverse fantasy relationship between magic becoming less important and technology becoming more important? Or something else? Is there in fact a kind of magic in the technologies that arise, or a kind of technologies in the magic?

Inquiring minds, and all of that...

Posted Sep 16, 2015, 5:55 AM UTC

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