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Discworld

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Discworld is a huge collection of fantasy stories. These include novels, short stories, and graphic novels.

Discworld Reading Order Guide 3.0 (cropped)
Discworld Reading Order Guide 3.0 (cropped)

They were mostly created by the English author Terry Pratchett. The stories take place on a very unusual planet. This world is flat instead of being a sphere. It rests on the backs of four massive elephants. These elephants stand on the shell of a giant turtle. People love these books because they are funny and smart. They use magic to talk about real life issues like science and politics.

Many different groups of characters live on this flat world. You might read about the wizards of Unseen University. These wizards study magic like scientists study physics. Some stories follow the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. This group is a police force that grows from a small gang into a big team. Other books focus on witches who act as healers and wise women. They often use "headology," which is a way of using smart thinking instead of magic. Each group has its own special way of living and working.

Terry Pratchett began this journey a long time ago. He published the first book, The Colour of Magic, in 1983. He wrote forty-one novels in the main series. The final book was The Shepherd's Crown, published in 2015. Pratchett also wrote eleven short stories for this world. He worked with many other people to build Discworld. This included illustrators like Josh Kirby and Paul Kidby. He also worked with writers like Stephen Briggs and Ian Stewart. Even after his death, new books like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are published.

Discworld has become a massive success around the whole world. More than 80 million books have been sold so far. These books are available in 37 different languages. In the UK, Pratchett was the best-selling author during the 1990s. His books often sat at the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Some of his stories even won the Carnegie Medal and the Prometheus Award. The BBC's Big Read found that fourteen Discworld novels were in the top 200 books. This shows how much people enjoy his work.

These stories connect to many things you might already know. They often parody or make fun of famous fairy tales and myths. Some books act like detective stories or even movies. You might see characters that remind you of Shakespeare or old legends. The books also look at how technology changes a magical world. Some stories even use themes from rock music or football. Whether it is a brave hero or a funny wizard, there is always a new way to see our own world through the lens of fantasy.

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