SOURCE: Miller, Faren. “Terry Pratchett: The Soul of Wit.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism 197, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2004.

In the following essay, specially commissioned for Contemporary Literary Criticism, Miller observes that Pratchett's Discworld series presents the author as a satiric and ironic observer of twentieth-century social mores.

Since The Colour of Magic made its debut in 1983, Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasies have been arriving at the rate of one or more a year. 2004 raises the count of adult volumes in the series to thirty¹ with Going Postal (forthcoming), and children's books to three with A Hat Full of Sky. Hardly the output of a writer devoted to brevity! But Pratchett is no stereotypical epic fantasist incapable of telling a story in fewer than three volumes, or a dull artisan stamping out endless variations on the same scenario. Over the years he...