Musings

by Gaz Hunter
It exists in the head of a child in Mumbai. it exists in the head of an old man in Anuppur.
In Nyíregyháza it is being constructed, the building blocks of words placed brick by brick on the foundations of a fertile imagination. In Evandale and Blagoveshchensk, Baltimore and Phuthaditjhaba its geography is firmly established in the minds and hearts of readers. Yet were you to ask your GPS, your TOMTOM or Garmin to take you there it would fail. No such place exists.

And yet...

 In 1983 a most extraordinary man with the power to turn sentences into space, words into worlds, paragraphs into people and places wrote *The Colour of Magic* . Just a book. Just an idea. Yet in 27 years the book, and its 36 sequels have reached across the world. Translated into numerous languages, made into audiobooks, films, radio plays, comics, they have actively touched the lives of millions, drawing them into a world-wide web of Discworld fandom. You are reading this now because a man with a hat and a love of carnivorous plants put down his fork 27 years ago and thought *Ooh, that's an idea!* In the hands of most writers the idea could have worked, it could have been a bit of a giggle, it may have sold quite well.

And yet...

I'm sure that when Rincewind and Twoflower caused the first insurance fraud that nearly wiped out Ankh Morpork Terry had no idea of the uniting influence his words would have. it was an amusing idea that might have legs.

And yet...

The Dysk. Sator Square. Biers, Ankh, Morpork. Not real. We all know them because of The Books. They exist in our heads, because we know the geography of this ridiculous place, The Discworld. A flat world, perched preposterously on Pachyderms, carried on  a chitinous Chelonian carapace. How on earth could this be real?

And yet...

People have drawn maps so we can identify and locate with absolute precision somewhere that cannot possibly occupy the same physical space as ourselves. Ankh Morpork is no more real than Utopia or Atlantis, yet because you are reading this you *know* that is is a citly bisected by a river that can, in the summer, be ploughed. You know that at its head is the One Man with One Vote. However, you also know, in your head, that these places, these names exist only between the pages of a book, and in the heads of millions of people. They have no physical presence. Nobody in their right mind would tell you otherwise.

And yet...

Yesterday I went to The Dysk. Really, I did! I visited Biers and The Pit. I carried boxes from Lancre Forge to The Odium. I poked my head into Harga's House of Ribs and peeped into Ankh Morpork. Because whilst Terry's mind made theses places in the imagination, the magic that his words wove, the joy that they brought and continue to bring has had the most amazing effect. It brought together like minded people from around the globe. It united us. The Colour of Magic is real. It consists of the Black of a hat, the silver of a beard, the sparkle of eyes and the smile of real pleasure. And it is this magic that has caused a Hotel in Birmingham to become, just briefly, the REAL Discworld.

And yet...

The power of the mind is incredible. But, we are many. We, the fans, created a real Discworld. In our hearts, in our heads, in a Hotel in Birmingham. Maybe, just maybe, we created Terry as well...