According to the figures in this biography of Terry Pratchett – written by his long-standing literary agent Colin Smythe – the writer has sold an astonishing 65m books since 1971. That's almost one copy for every blog and newspaper article written during the same time period lamenting the lack of talent and originality on our bestseller lists.
And, of course, nothing could provide a sterner rebuff to all those complaints. Here is a man who consistently churns out top 10 books that are beautifully written, effortlessly entertaining, stupendously popular and gleefully eccentric. Indeed, eccentric is putting it mildly.
We might all be convinced that the book world is manipulated by cynical marketing hacks intent on filling our brains with mindless dreck about worthless celebrities, but there's no way anyone could have planned for someone like Pratchett. Imagine trying to convince a publisher, prior to the appearance of The Colour Of Magic, that the bestselling books of the 1990s would have been about a university of daft wizards and their magic adventures in a world supported on the back of four elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle.
Even now, after 20 years of Pratchett chart dominance and the global phenomenon of the Harry Potter books he so clearly influenced, the Discworld seems a mighty odd place. How to transmit to the uninitiated the importance of a set of luggage that travels on its own (multiple) tiny feet? How to convey the warm pleasure occasioned every time Death appears on the scene and starts talking inside everyone's heads IN CAPITAL LETTERS? How to explain that the librarian at the wizards' Unseen University is an orangutan who manages to communicate impossibly complex concepts using only the word "ook"?
More easy to convey is the obvious appeal of these books. I hadn't read a Discworld novel for a long time before picking up Unseen Academicals, but it didn't take long for a sense of cosy familiarity to envelop me. Pratchett's world may make a point of defying all laws of physics and logic, but it adheres strictly to the rules of human nature. As in Blandings Castle, Nero Wolfe's Brownstone and other literary visions of Elysium, the Discworld is a place where pie is paramount. Pages after glorious pages are taken up with rapturous descriptions of meat and pastry products, not to mention the pleasures of blow-out feasting and determined over-indulgence in the bottle. Indeed, the book takes its entire premise from a threat to the wizard's belt-loosening lifestyle. The wonderfully weird plot catalyst is a decree stating that if the wizards don't take part in a game of football they will lose a considerable chunk of their food budget.
Football in the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork starts off as a violent street battle and Pratchett revels in descriptions of petty thuggery and grand insults relating to soft heads and hard axes. Even so, another attraction of Pratchett's storytelling is how safe it all seems. There's some risk of accident here (for instance, nobody inside the chaotic magical rooms of the university has "tidied up much and lived to tell the tale"), but there's no chance that the good guys will lose. No one gets properly hurt – except bullies, who are roundly and satisfyingly humiliated and outwitted by plucky little guys.
So, plotwise, Unseen Academicals is hardly radical. Just as the good guys are bound to win, the outcome of the football match is never in doubt and nor is that of a tacked-on love story. But that's all part of the easy pleasure too. It's unashamedly silly and straightforward, and it's the fun of the ride that keeps you going rather than any worry about where it is taking you. The fun and the humour – which provides the last and best explanation for Pratchett's popularity. Because he is damn funny – though many of the jokes consist of the you-have-to-be-there type that can't easily be conveyed in a blogpost. He's a master of the unexpected turnaround, the absurd outcome, the comical character and the slow-burning, long-running gag. A few one-liners should give a flavour though. A lingering kiss is compared to "a tennis ball being sucked through the strings of a racket". Dr Hix, the Head of the University Department of Post Mortem Communications, tries to spread "darkness and despondency throughout the world by the means of amateur dramatics". The local tyrant, whose presence makes nearly everyone quake with fear, has a cup on his desk bearing the legend: "To The World's Greatest Boss".
And even though he makes light of everything, Pratchett still has plenty of interesting things to say. He's defended fantasy in the past on the grounds that it: "isn't just about wizards and wands. It's about seeing the world from new directions". Certainly that rings true here. There are telling descriptions of the pleasures and pains of football fandom, for example – as well as sharp stabs at the corruption that makes so much of the modern game unpalatable. There are also effective send-ups of the absurdity of celebrity culture and provocative ideas about the failures of democracy.
Meanwhile, it's hard not to see reflections of Pratchett's well-publicised struggle with Alzheimer's in one character's struggle to open doors within his mind and unlock knowledge placed mysteriously outside his grasp. That the book should remain so joyous in spite of this dark strand is testament to Pratchett's unique talent. A talent which, on the evidence of Unseen Academicals and dozens of bestsellers before, we really shouldn't take for granted.
