Cutting Comedy One Sermon at a Time
There is a scene in Reaper Man where Death, after having been fired by the Auditors, spends his now finite lifespan on a farm helping with the harvest. He's given a scythe and told to reap the grain. He does this, of course, one stalk at a time. The only way he will take any life; individually.
The notion of Death not being able to stop holding on to his old work ethic is funny. Hell, the idea of firing Death in and of itself is a comedic masterpiece. This is what Discworld used to be: a comedy series, where the comedy didn't need to be justified by anything underneath it, because it was precisely the point.
We lost that. Not all at once, not completely, and not without getting something in return. But the exchange wasn't worth it.
So when did it change? My instincts at first would've placed it around the Alzheimer's diagnosis. That would've made the most narrative sense, but real life never does. The shift is visible well before that, certainly in Monstrous Regiment (2003), but possibly even earlier in The Fifth Elephant (1999) and arguably even in Jingo (1997). What Discworld had been up to this point was comedic fantasy. And yeah, some of the books made a philosophical or moral point. However, these never overpowered what they were at their core: something you were meant to enjoy, something that could bring you up when you were feeling down.
It's hard to place a hard date on the change, because it seems to me to be an incremental shift rather than a clean break. And there doesn't seem to be a clear and obvious explanation for it. It could've been all kinds of things: the times generally changing, his increased readership, or even how this might have been his plan from the start. I genuinely don't know, but I do know that the shift is there, and what it cost.
What it became was a series with a point to make, which used comic fantasy structure to make it. The humor that used to be the mode became side elements in between the serious bits. A way to soften the message. And because of that, the books started feeling, slowly but surely, like attending a sermon instead of a comedy show.
And Discworld in its later years increasingly made you feel preached at. Not always to the same degree of severity, but enough that the feeling accumulates. And looking back, you notice what's gone.
The obvious response is that Discworld always had morals and real-life parallels in them. Small Gods is, at its core, about institutional religion and the corruption of faith. Feet of Clay is about autonomy and personhood. And plenty of the early books weren't making a point at all: Wyrd Sisters, Moving Pictures, Soul Music, Maskerade, they were all just Pratchett finding something to be funny about and being very funny about it. However, that was never my issue. It's about what comes first, and both of those books were comedic fantasy primarily. Sure, there was a message to be found in them, but the comedy wasn't there to deliver it.
In Small Gods, Brutha's literal-mindedness is funny. Om's frustration at being trapped in a tortoise is funny. The Epheban philosophers are funny. The humor pervades throughout the entire book, even the serious segments. Om speaks in biblical verses, including line numbers, when returned to his former glory.
Meanwhile in Monstrous Regiment, the humor has been demoted. It's still there, and when it does turn up it's excellent. However, its function has changed from first and foremost to punctuation between the more serious segments. It's no longer the point. The clearest illustration of this is the Duchess's appearance near the end. A supernatural visitation that stops the story entirely so the argument can be delivered in the imperative: "Fight Nuggan, because he is nothing now, nothing but the poisonous echo of all your ignorance and pettiness and malicious stupidity." The story stops. The humor doesn't come back until the argument is finished. And as the series goes on, it concedes more and more ground. By Snuff, the list of jokes has become awfully short, and they sure as hell don't show up in the context of anything the novel considers important.
Furthermore, we also lost some of our greatest friends.
Death. Cohen the Barbarian. Rincewind. Whatever their differences, they share one thing: they're funny, first and foremost. Death's growing fascination with humanity is funny. Cohen's geriatric heroism is funny. Rincewind's absolute commitment to running away is funny. Whatever else they were, comedy was at the center of their being.
You cannot put characters like that in a sermon. They won't stay still for it. Ridcully can't be made to care about the moral argument because he's too busy ignoring everyone around him. Nanny Ogg can't be conscripted into a serious message about institutional injustice because she'd make a filthy joke about it instead. These characters were built for a world where that joke was the point. When the work changed, they became an obstacle. Some disappeared entirely. Others lingered, increasingly decorative, turning up to remind you of what the series used to feel like before getting out of the way of the next serious bit.
What replaced them were characters who could carry the new mode. But even more destructive: the mode didn't just bring new characters. It reached back and changed existing ones to fit in. Vimes may always have been moral at his core, but he was drained of the comedy in the gap between his self-destructive tendencies and his moral core. He became sanctified to serve the message. Weatherwax's magnificent certainty that she was right about everything changed from a source of jokes to signifying her status as Pratchett's mouthpiece. Even Vetinari ends up in the Oblong Office solemnly explaining the power of a harp solo to a man who didn't ask.
Retirement would have been kinder.
And I understand why some readers prefer the later mode. They are still stories about Good winning over Evil, and people learning the difference between them. The writing was still excellent. However, I really don't see the point of preaching to the choir about these messages. Especially because of what it came at the expense of.
Discworld at its peak was offering something rare. It was a comedy series, sure, but how many other comedy fantasy series do you know? The shelves weren't stacked with these sorts of books to begin with. Pratchett had a talent for finding the right things to make fun of, even beyond fantasy tropes. He made his satire fit seamlessly into the world in a way that we haven't seen before or since.
We lost Death. We lost Cohen and Rincewind. We lost Nanny Ogg being inappropriate at exactly the wrong moment, and Ridcully not listening. But more importantly: we lost a Discworld that existed for the pure joy of comedy. And no sermon, no matter how expertly crafted, can help me deal with that loss.