RWatson Lit. of Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi

            Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series serves as a major parody and love letter to heroic high fantasy fiction. In this way, the hero’s journey is expressed in most of the Discworld novel and poked fun at with every opportunity. In the very first book of the series, the Colour of Magic, our main protagonist, the wizard Rincewind, is beyond the reluctant hero. From the very start of his journey to almost the very end of the next book he vehemently refuses the call to adventure at every opportunity, only to be swept up in a journey he wanted no part in anyway.             Throughout his journey, Rincewind receives a variety of magical and supernatural aid. Many times he is aided by an indestructible treasure chest with an appetite for destruction, other times he is aided by the direct intervention of Gods, and at the end he retrieves and wields his metaphorical ‘sword...

Weird carries with it a variety of meanings that have been granted to it over the centuries. The most interesting contexts for it, however, are those it has been used for most recently, and the contrast between the Old Weird literature and the New Weird. The Weird of Weird Tales magazine published in the 1920’s was mostly concerned with new sorts of alien and existential horrors. They were less preoccupied with monsters of old and more interested in the idea of hidden societies. The true difference between the monsters in the likes of Count Dracula and Frankenstein, and the unknowable entities of the world of Lovecraft, is one of metaphor. Monsters of the Victorian era were representations of very human failings. Frankenstein is a fairly straightforward metaphor of the dangers of scientific progress without thought for the moral philosophy behind it, and a tale of a neglectful father/creator figure. The monsters that live in the pages of the Weird, however, are much more obscure t...