Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
This is one of the Discworld books that functions particularly well as a stand-alone. It’s main connection to the rest of the series is to dive deep into how gods in this world work and how the Omnians – implied to have quite a bloody history of forced conversions and witchhunting – ended up mainly just annoying people with pamphlets. Anyone reading this book (or, say, ‘Good Omens’) could probably guess that Pratchett was an atheist. But, interestingly, he seems to have had quite a lot of respect for genuine heartfelt faith, especially of the sort that moves people to be good to others. He saves his sharpest barbs for those whose belief is rigid and turned inward, leading to unwillingness to listen to anyone else, or who use other’s faith to control them.
This story follows Brutha – an earnest young Omnian novice who is probably dyslexic but who has a photographic memory – and his god Om. Who is currently in the form of a one-eyed tortoise after his attempt at incarnation went wrong.
“The tortoise continued to stare. Practically nothing can stare like a tortoise. Brutha felt obliged to do something… ‘How would you like a grape, little tortoise?’ ‘How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?’ said the tortoise. The crows, who had fled to the outer walls, took off again to a rendering of The Way Of The Infidel Is A Nest Of Thorns… The tortoise said, ‘I’m still here.’ Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn’t turn up looking like small old tortoises…when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.”
The trouble is that, gods in the Discworld (as in ‘American Gods’) feed on belief. Though Omnianism is a big religion, growing by conquest, the only one who actually still believes in Om, rather than in the symbols and the priests and the fear of the Quisition, is Brutha.
It occurred to me on this re-read that Pratchett’s books rarely have a strong individual villain. This is partly because they are all comedies. But even in the ones with a darker tone the real antagonist is usually a group or a system: imperialistic vampires who view humans as a resource, leaders war-mongering for their own profit, angels and demons willing to destroy the world to prove “whose gang is best”, etc. This book, though, has both. Omnianism is an amalgamation of the scarier tendencies of monotheistic religions, with structures set up to root out any hint of heresy with fire and sword. And out of that system you get Vorbis:
“The inquisitor, whose name was Deacon Cusp, had got where he was today…because he liked hurting people. It was a simple desire, and one that was satisfied in abundance within the Quisition. And he was one of those who were terrified in a very particular way by Vorbis…Vorbis hurt people because he’d decided that they should be hurt, without passion, even with a kind of hard love…Ordinary madness he could deal with…But Vorbis had passed right through that red barrier and had built some kind of logical structure on the other side.”
Vorbis takes Brutha (with Om in his backpack) to Ephebe, because the Deacon wants to make use of his incredible memory in conquering the city-state. It is here that Brutha gets his first look at intellectual disagreement, and meets the blind philosopher Didactylos (who wrote a book considered heretical in Omnia because it says the world isn’t round but flat and carried on the back of a turtle) and his proto-engineer nephew Urn. The more he learns, the more Brutha is convinced that the way things are done in Omnia isn’t right – indeed, that the whole way gods tend to interact with humans isn’t right. However, doing something about that when Omnia has an inquisition and the god who might support you can only conjure up a lightning bolt big enough to barely scorch an eyebrow, is a dangerous proposition!
This book still holds up really well after thirty years, thought there are a couple of things that are worth examining. The one that I think Pratchett might have changed if he could (given his later books) is the depiction of slavery. True, slavery in ancient Athens – the model for Ephebe – was quite different from the plantation slavery of the Americas. For instance, it wasn’t based on skin color or ethnicity, and it wasn’t necessarily permanent; as depicted here, a former slave might go on to own slaves of his own. However, any situation where one human legally belongs to another has major potential for abuse, even if there are laws governing how the owned can be treated, and that isn’t really explored here at all. Still, Pratchett IS correct that, given a choice, a lot of people would probably prefer to be Athenian/Ephebian slaves than “free” citizens of Omnia! The other two characters that might raise an eyebrow are Lu-Tze, the history monk, and the peddler “Cut-me-own-hand-off” Dhblah. Regarding the latter…there is a guy in the London-equivalent Ankh Morepork known as “Cut-my-own-throat” Dibbler, a purveyor of highly suspicious sausages who shows up whenever crowds gather. It is a running joke that every culture in the world generates a Dibbler! In this case, Dhblah sells yoghurt with exceedingly lively cultures and Klatchian delight that will glue your jaw shut. Lu-Tze is actually a fascinating character who gets much more development in ‘Night Watch’ and ‘Thief of Time’; his “foreigner pushing a broom who barely speaks the language” persona is a ruse that allows him to act while being ignored by the powerful (as we can already see here). So those two feel mostly OK to me, at least in the broader context of the Discworld universe!
And don’t worry - like all Discworld books, this one DOES have a happy ending. Though it may not be what you expect…
