Terry Pratchett - The Science of Discworld I

It was some way from the water line, and squirming across the mud towards a pool of brackish water.

A kind man by nature, Rincewind picked it up gingerly and car­ried it back to the sea. It flopped around in the shallows for a while and then, to his amazement, inched its way back on to the mud.

He put it back again, in deeper water this time.

Thirty seconds kter, it was back on the beach.

Rincewind crouched down, as the thing wiggled determinedly onwards.

'Would it help to talk to someone?' he said. 'I mean, you've got a good life out there in the sea, no sense in throwing it all away, is there? There's always a silver lining if you know where to look. Okay, okay, life's a beach. And you're a pretty ugly fish. But, you know, beauty is only sk- scale deep, and...'

'What's happening?' said Ponder's voice in his ear.

'I was talking to this fish,' said Rincewind.

'Why?'

'It keeps coming out of the water. It seems to want to go for whatever is the opposite of a paddle.'

'Well?'

'You told me to keep a look out for anything interesting.'

'The consensus here is that fish aren't interesting,' said Ponder. 'Fish are dull.'

'I can see bigger fish in the shallows,' said Rincewind. Terhaps it's trying to keep away from them?'

'Rincewind, fish are designed for living in water That's why they're fish. Go and find some crabs. And put the poor freakish thing back in the sea, for goodness' sake.'

'Perhaps a rethink is in order here,' said Ridcully.

'About the newts,' said Ponder.

'Newts is going far too far,' said the Dean. 'I've seen more shapely things in the privy.'

'I want the person who put the newts on this continent to own up right now,' said Ridcully.

'No one could,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'No one's seen the Luggage since the last comet. We couldn't get anything in there.'

'I know, because I had a tank of thaumically treated whelks all ready to go,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'And what, pray, am I supposed to do with them?'

'Some sort of chowder would appear to be in order,' said the Dean.

'Evolution makes things better,' said Ridcully. 'It can't make them different. All right, some rather dull amphibians seem to have turned up. But, and this is important, those fish Rincewind reported are still around. Now, if they were going to turn into things with legs, why are they still here?'

'Tadpoles are fish,' said the Bursar.

'But a tadpole knows it's going to be a frog,' said Ridcully patiently. 'There's no narrativium on this world. That fish couldn't be saying to itself "Ah, a new life beckons on dry land, walking around on things I haven't yet got a name for."' No, either the planet is somehow generating new life, or we're back to the old "hidden gods" theory.'

'It's all gone wrong, you know,' said the Dean. 'It's the bloodi-mindium. Even gods couldn't control this place. Once there's life, there's complete and utter chaos. Remember that book the Librarian brought back? It's a complete fantasy! Nothing seems to happen like that at all! Everything just does what it likes!'

'Progress is being made,' said Ponder.

'Big amphibians?' sneered the Senior Wrangler. 'And things were going so well in the sea. Remember those jellyfish that made nets? And the crabs even had a flourishing land civilization! They had practically got a culture!'

'They ate captured enemies alive' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, patiently.

'Well... yes. But with a certain amount of etiquette, at least,' the Senior Wrangler admitted. 'And in front of their sand statue of the Great Big Crab. They were obviously attempting to control their world. And what good did it do them? A million tons of white hot ice smack between the eyestalks. It's so upsetting.'

Terhaps they should have eaten more enemies,' said the Dean.

Terhaps sooner or later the pknet will get the message,' said Ridcully.

'Time for the giant whelks, perhaps?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, hopefully.

'Big newts is what we've got right now,' said Ridcully. He glanced at the Dean and Senior Wrangler. Ridcully hadn't main­tained his position atop the boiling heap of UU wizardry without a little political savvy. 'And newts, gentlemen, might be the way to go. Amphibians? At home in the water and on land? The best of both worlds, I fancy.'

The two wizards exchanged sheepish glances.

'Well ... I suppose ...' said the Senior Wrangler.

'Could be,' the Dean said grudgingly. 'Could be.'

'There we are then,' said Ridcully happily. 'The future is newt.'

THERE'S NO NARRATIVIUM ON THIS WORLD.'

Let's take a step away from the unfolding ancestral tale of The Fish That Came Out From The Sea and look at a more philosophical issue.

The wizards are puzzled. On Discworld, things happen because narrative imperative makes them happen. There is no choice about ends, only about means. The Lecturer in Recent Runes is trying to make a sustainable lifeform happen. He thinks that the obstacle to sustainability is the fragility of life, so the only way he can see to achieve this is the two-mile limpet, proof against everything the sky can drop on it.

It never occurs to him that lifeforms might achieve sustainabil­ity by other, less direct methods, despite the evidence of his eyes that suggests that a dogged tenacity appears to allow life to arise in the most inhospitable environment, effectively re-creating itself over and over again. The wizards are torn between evidence that a planet is the last place you'd choose to create life, and evidence that life doesn't agree.

On Discworld, it is clearly recognized that million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten [44] Indeed, it is a fundamental part of story telling. If the hero did not overcome huge odds, what would be the point? . The reason is that every Discworld character lives out a story, and the demands of the story determine how their lives unfold. If a million to one chance is required to keep that story on track, then that's what will happen, appalling odds notwithstanding. On Discworld, abstractions gener­ally show up as things, so there is even a thing, narrativium, that ensures that everybody obeys the narrative imperative. Another personification of the abstract, Death, also makes sure that each individual's story comes to an end exactly when it's supposed to. Even if a character tries to behave contrary to the story in which they find themselves, narrativium makes sure that the end result is consistent with the story anyway.

What's puzzling the wizards is that our world isn't like that ...

Or is it?

After all, people live on our world too, and it's people that drive stories.

As case in point, a story about people who drive. The setting is Jerez Grand Prix circuit, last race of the 1997-98 Formula One motor racing season ... Ace driver Michael Schumacher is one Championship point ahead of arch-rival Jacques Villeneuve. Villeneuve's team-mate Heinz-Harold Frentzen may well play a crucial tactical role. The drivers are competing for 'pole position' on the starting grid, which goes to whoever produces the fastest lap in the qualifying sessions. So what happens? Unprecedentedly, Villeneuve, Schumacher, and Frentzen all lap in 1 minute 21.072 seconds, the same time to a thousandth of a second. An amazing coincidence.

Well: 'coincidence' it surely was, the lap times coincided. But was it truly amazing?

Questions like this arise in science, too, and they're important. How significant is a statistical cluster of leukaemia cases near a nuclear installation? Does a strong correlation between lung cancer and having a smoker in the family really indicate that secondary smoking is dangerous? Are sexually abnormal fish a sign of oestro­gen-like chemicals in our water supply?