Raising Steam: (Discworld novel 40) by Terry Pratchett (English) Hardcover Book

Description: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork – a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The Discworlds first train comes steaming into town and causes Moist von Lipwig all sorts of problems in this, the final, glorious adult novel in Terry Pratchetts legendary, multi-million-selling sequence.To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements- earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, its soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.Moist von Lipwig is not a man who enjoys hard work - as master of the Post Office, the Mint and the Royal Bank his input is, of course, vital . . . but largely dependent on words, which are fortunately not very heavy and dont always need greasing. However, he does enjoy being alive, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse . . .Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man wi tflat cap and sliding rule who has an interesting arrangement with the sine and cosine. Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs and some very angry dwarfs if hes going to stop it all going off the rails . . . Author Biography Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he was the author of over fifty bestselling books which have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any. Review Laugh-out-loud funny...A chuffing wonderful book. * SFX *Terry Pratchetts creation is still going strong after 30 years as Ankh-Morpork branches into the railway age…There are sly nods to the history of railways and a cheeky reference to The Railway Children. Most aficionados, however, will be on the look-out for in-jokes and references from previous novels – of which there is no shortage…It is at the level of the sentence that Pratchett wins his fans. * The Times *The genius of Pratchett is that he never goes for the straight allegory. . .he remains one of the most consistently funny writers around; a master of the stealth simile, the time-delay pun and the deflationary three-part list. . .I could tell which of my fellow tube passengers had downloaded it to their e-readers by the bouts of spontaneous laughter. -- Ben Aaronovitch * The Guardian * Promotional The Discworlds first train comes steaming into town and causes Moist von Lipwig all sorts of problems in this, the final, glorious adult novel in Terry Pratchetts legendary, multi-million-selling sequence. Review Text Laugh-out-loud funny...A chuffing wonderful book. Review Quote "Consistently funny, wise and clever. . . . Rewarding to both longtime readers and novices, filled with characters who leap off the page and metaphors that make you laugh out loud. . . . Pratchetts appeal isnt just his roller-coaster plots but the depth of his ideas." --Sam Thielman, Newsday "Salted among all the treacle miners and nascent trainspotters are some serious ideas about technology and the irrevocable changes it brings. . . . While exploring questions about the unintended consequences of technology, Pratchett also blasts fundamentalists who resist all progress. But mostly he seems to be having fun with words in the very British strain of absurdist humor that he has made his own. And 40 books in, why not?" --Sara Sklaroff, The Washington Post "A delightful fantasy send-up of politics, economics and finance, as the Discworld gets a railway and complications ensue. . . . A lovely homage to the courage at the core of technological advance. . . . Pratchett melds politics, finance and the occasional dark turn with his fantasy and humor, and as ever his footnotes are not to be missed. . . . How many writers are more fun to spend time with?" --Ken Armstrong, The Seattle Times "A spectacular novel, and a gift from a beloved writer to his millions of fans. . . . A tremendous synthesis of everything that makes Pratchett one of the worlds most delightful writers." --Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing "What began with a farcical satire of pseudomedieval fantasy has become a Dickensian mirror of contemporary western society. . . . Raising Steam is the latest transformation of a remarkable fictional world that has evolved and grown with its creator--and it shows how, in the way of many things invested with devotion on the Disc itself, the Discworld has taken on a life of its own." --Karin L. Kross, Tor.com "From the first, the novels demonstrated Pratchetts eye for telling detail and the absurdities of the human condition. . . . He remains one of the most consistently funny writers around; a master of the stealth simile, the time-delay pun and the deflationary three-part list. . . . I could tell which of my fellow tube passengers had downloaded it to their e-readers by the bouts of spontaneous laughter." --Ben Aaronovitch, The Guardian "Terry Pratchetts creation is still going strong after 30 years. . . . Most aficionados, however, will be on the look-out for in-jokes and references from previous novels--of which there is no shortage. Discworlds success, like that of Wodehouses Jeeves and Wooster stories, has never been driven by the plots. . . . It is at the level of the sentence that Pratchett wins his fans." --Andrew McKie, The Times (London) "A brash new invention brings social upheaval, deadly intrigues, and plenty of wry humor to the 40th installment of Pratchetts best-selling Discworld fantasy series. . . . As always, Pratchetts unforgettable characters and lively story mirror the best, the worst, and the oddest bits of our own world, entertaining readers while skewering social and political foibles in a melting pot of humanity, dwarfs, trolls, goblins, vampires, and a werewolf or two." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Brimming with Pratchetts trademark wit, a yarn with a serious point made with style and elegance." -- Kirkus Reviews "Leavened with Pratchetts usual puns, philosophical quips, and Discworld in-jokes, the story offers an amusing allegory of Earthly technologys many seductions." -- Booklist Praise for Terry Pratchett "Terry Pratchett may still be pegged as a comic novelist, but . . . hes a lot more. In his range of invented characters, his adroit storytelling, and his clear-eyed acceptance of humankinds foibles, he reminds me of no one in English literature as much as Geoffrey Chaucer. No kidding." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World "Given his prolificacy and breezy style, its easy to underestimate Pratchett. . . . Hes far more than a talented jokesmith, though. His books are almost always better than they have to be." --Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle "Nonstop wit. . . . Pratchett is a master of juggling multiple plotlines and multiplying punchlines." --Ken Barnes, USA Today Promotional "Headline" The Discworlds first train comes steaming into town and causes Moist von Lipwig all sorts of problems in this, the final, glorious adult novel in Terry Pratchetts legendary, multi-million-selling sequence. Excerpt from Book It is hard to understand nothing, but the multiverse is full of it. Nothing travels everywhere, always ahead of something, and in the great cloud of unknowing nothing yearns to become something, to break out, to move, to feel, to change, to dance and to experience--in short, to be something. And now it found its chance as it drifted in the ether. Nothing, of course, knew about something, but this something was different, oh yes, and so nothing slid silently into something and floated down with everything in mind and, fortunately, landed on the back of a turtle, a very large one, and hurried to become something even faster. It was elemental and nothing was better than that and suddenly the elemental was captured! The bait had worked. Anyone who has ever seen the River Ankh sliding along its bed of miscellaneous nastiness would understand why so much of the piscine food for the people of Ankh-Morpork has to be supplied by the fishing fleets of Quirm. In order to prevent terrible gastric trouble for the citizenry, Ankh-Morpork fishmongers have to ensure that their suppliers make their catches a long, long way from the city. For Bowden Jeffries, purveyor of the very best in seafood, the two hundred miles or more which lay between the fish docks at Quirm and the customers in Ankh-Morpork was a regrettably long distance throughout the winter, autumn, and spring and a sheer penance in the summertime, because the highway, such as it was, became a linear furnace all the way to the Big City. Once you had had to deal with a ton of overheated octopus, you never forgot it; the smell lasted for days, and followed you around and almost into your bedroom. You could never get it out of your clothes. People were so demanding, but the elite of Ankh-Morpork and, indeed, everyone else wanted their fish, even in the hottest part of the season. Even with an icehouse built by his own two hands and, by arrangement, a second icehouse halfway along the journey, it made you want to cry, it really did. And he said as much to his cousin, Relief Jeffries, a market gardener, who looked at his beer and said, "Its always the same. Nobody wants to help the small entrepreneur. Can you imagine how quickly strawberries turn into little balls of mush in the heat? Well, Ill tell you: no time at all. Blink and you miss em, just when everybody wants their strawberries. And you ask the watercress people how difficult it is to get the damn stuff to the city before its as limp as a second-day sermon. We should petition the government!" "No," said his cousin. "Ive had enough of this. Lets write to the newspapers! Thats the way to get things done. Everyones complaining about the fruit and vegetables and the seafood. Vetinari should be made to understand the plight of the small-time entrepreneur. After all, what do we occasionally pay our taxes for?" Dick Simnel was ten years old when, back at the family smithy in Sheepridge, his father simply disappeared in a cloud of furnace parts and flying metal, all enveloped in a pink steam. He was never found in the terrible haze of scorching dampness, but on that very day young Dick Simnel vowed to whatever was left of his father in that boiling steam that he would make steam his servant. His mother had other ideas. She was a midwife, and as she said to her neighbors, "Babbies are born everywhere. Ill never be without a customer." So, against her sons wishes, Elsie Simnel decided to take him away from what she now considered to be a haunted place. She packed up their belongings and together they returned to her family home near Sto Lat, where people didnt inexplicably disappear in a hot pink cloud. Soon after they arrived something important happened to her boy. One day while waiting for his mother to return from a difficult delivery, Dick walked into a building that looked interesting, and which turned out to be a library. At first he thought it was full of poncy stuff, all kings and poets and lovers and battles, but in one crucial book he found something called mathematics and the world of numbers. And that was why, one day some ten years later, he pulled together every fibre of his being and said, "Mother, you know last year when I said I were going iking in the mountains of Uberwald with me mates, well, it were kind of...sort of...a kind of lie, only very small, mind you." Dick blushed. "You see, I found tkeys to Dads old shed and, well, I went back to Sheepridge and did some experimenting and"--he looked at his mother anxiously "--I think I know what e were doing wrong." Dick was braced for stiff objections, but he hadnt reckoned on tears--so many tears--and as he tried to console her he added, "You, Mother, and Uncle Flavius got me an education, you got me the knowing of the numbers, including the arithmetic and weird stuff dreamed up by the philosophers in Ephebe where even camels can do logarithms on their toes. Dad didnt know this stuff. He had the right ideas but he didnt have the...tech-nol-ogy right." At this point, Dick allowed his mother to talk, and she said, "I know theres no stopping you, our Dick, youre just like your stubborn father were, pigheaded. Is that what youve been doin in the barn? Teck-ology?" She looked at him accusingly, then sighed. "I can see I cant tell you what to do, but you tell me: how can your logger-reasons stop you goin the way of your poor old dad?" She started sobbing again. Dick pulled out of his jacket something that looked like a small wand, which might have been made for a miniature wizard, and said, "Thisll keep me safe, Mother! Ive the knowing of the sliding rule! I can tell the sine what to do, and the cosine likewise and work out the tangent of tquaderatics! Come on, Mother, stop fretting and come wi me now to tbarn. You must see er!" Mrs. Simnel, reluctant, was dragged by her son to the great open barn he had kitted out like the workshop back at Sheepridge, hoping against hope that her son had accidentally found himself a girl. Inside the barn she looked helplessly at a large circle of metal which covered most of the floor. Something metallic whizzed round and round on the metal, sounding like a squirrel in a cage, giving off a smell much like camphor. "Here she is, Mother. Aint she champion?" Dick said happily. "I call her Iron Girder!" "But what is it, son?" He grinned hugely and said, "Its what they call a pro-to-type, Mother. Youve got to ave a pro-to-type if youre going to be an engineer." His mother smiled wanly but there was no stopping Dick. The words just tumbled out. "The thing is, Mother, before you attempt owt youve got to ave some idea of what it is you want to do. One of the books I found in the library was about being an architect. And in that book, the man who wrote it said before he built his next big ouse he always made quite tiny models to get an idea of how it would all work out. He said it sounds fiddly and stuff, but going slowly and being thorough is the only way forward. And so Im testing er out slowly, seeing what works and what doesnt. And actually, Im quite proud of mesen. In the beginning I made ttrack wooden, but I reckoned that the engine I wanted would be very eavy, so I chopped up twooden circle for firewood and went back to tforge." Mrs. Simnel looked at the little mechanism running round and round on the barn floor and said, in the voice of someone really trying to understand, "Eee, lad, but what does it do?" "Well, I remembered what Dad said about ttime he were watching tkettle boiling and noticed tlid going up and down with the pressure, and he told me that one day someone would build a bigger kettle that would lift more than a kettle lid. And I believe I have the knowing of the way to build a proper kettle, Mother." "And what good would that do, my boy?" said his mother sternly. And she watched the glow in her sons eyes as he said, "Everything, Mother. Everything." Still in a haze of slight misunderstanding, Mrs. Simnel watched him unroll a large and rather grubby piece of paper. "Its called a blueprint, Mother. Youve got to have a blueprint. It shows you how everything fits together." "Is this part of the pro-to-type?" The boy looked at his doting mothers face and realized that a little more exposition should be forthcoming. He took her by the hand and said, "Mother, I know theyre all lines and circles to you, but once you have the knowing of the circles and the lines and all, you know that this is a picture of an engine." Mrs. Simnel gripped his hand and said, "What do you think youre going to do with it, our Dick?" And young Simnel grinned and said happily, "Change things as needs changing, Mother." Mrs. Simnel gave her son a curious look for a moment or two, then appeared to reach a grudging conclusion and said, "Just you come with me, my lad." She led him back into the house, where they climbed up the ladder into the attic. She pointed out to her son a sturdy seamans chest covered in dust. "Your granddad gave me this to give to you, when I thought you needed it. Heres the key." She was gratified that he didnt grab it and indeed looked carefully at the trunk before opening it. As he pushed up the lid, suddenly the air was filled with the glimmer of gold. "Your granddad were slightly a bit of a pirate and then he got religion and were a bit afeared, and the last words he said to me on his deathbed wer Details ISBN0857526502 Pages 480 Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd Series Discworld Novels Year 2019 ISBN-10 0857526502 ISBN-13 9780857526502 Format Hardcover Publication Date 2019-11-14 Imprint Doubleday Subtitle (Discworld novel 40) Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 823.92 Short Title Raising Steam Language English UK Release Date 2019-11-14 AU Release Date 2019-11-14 NZ Release Date 2019-11-14 Illustrator Iruka Shiomiya Birth 1974 Affiliation Adriana Bravo Position Audiobook Narrator Qualifications Ph.D. Author Terry Pratchett Audience General Alternative 9781804990483 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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