Still, Mr. Pratchett^W^W Sir Terry has already made public references to
at least three more Discworld novels:

- I Shall Wear Midnight (Tiffany Aching)
- Raising Taxes (Moist von Lipwig)
- Scouting for Trolls

AIUI, I Shall Wear Midnight is already pretty far along; as for the
others, we'll have to see.

Quite frank personal opinion follows.

Last chance to not get annoyed by what I am about to say as its just under
here.

Coming in

5

4

3

2

1

Actually its good that you posted this as I was about to start my own thread
requesting that Terry really should stop writing now.
Its fairly clear from reading UA his heart isn't in it any more, actually
its unfair to say fairly clear when you could use the words painfully
obvious.

The book really dies after about 100 pages (I think I spent at least 150
pages wondering if he was ever going to get anywhere with any of the
characters or storylines) and to be honest the last 50 pages or so is just
filler, he's really just kicking the arse out of it (and quite frankly in my
opinion taking the piss and not even trying to hide the fact he's doing it
either - he actually shoves the fact that he's doing it and you can't stop
him in your face twice with practically blank pages making a joke you know
was coming anyway and that isn't funny when it does), its got a very poor
middle section, the part describing the one and only new football game in
the whole book isn't very well done at all.

The fact he starts reinventing a football ball that had clearly already
existed in 2 previous books can probably be blamed on his embuggerance but
with an assistant who isn't likewise hindered who has access to all the
books as well as the most up to date version of the DW Companion AND the
L-Space site that mistake should have been picked up and corrected before
ever reaching the presses.  Surely the proof readers who read this were the
same people reading Fifth Elephant & Jingo?  My memory isn't brilliant but I
remember Carrot using an inflatable football that he even calls a football
twice.

All it needed was 1 person with the courage to start a sentance with the
words "Excuse me Terry but the football already exists here" then show him
the relative pages in those books.  Is Terry that much of a tyrant to work
for that they are so afraid to contradict him about his work when he's so
clearly in error?  Or are they all The Colonal allowing Elvis to indulge in
a few more metaphorical hamburgers as long as he can still produce the goods
on stage?

The book fizzles out with not much of a resolution, its possibly one of the
weakest endings I've ever read from him.  Considering its a book about
football theres only 1 match (I'm not going to include the Street match as
it really doesn't count), realistically its a book about the Wizards with a
few minor characters.  Football gets a vague mention here and there, and
whoever drew the cover didn't read the book as his ball doesn't match the
description that Nutt & the Dwarf make.

Do yourself and us a favour Terry, stop writing now.  I thought you'd done a
bad job on Nation and couldn't get any worse but here you proved me wrong.
Even the annotations and hidden jokes in this book felt like you had your
references books right in front of you, it used to be your jokes felt like
they were off the cuff and out of left field.  In UA it got to the point
where I could predict them coming from several pages away and quite
frequently did.

Although your parody of Andrew Marvells "To His Coy Mistress" in Nutts poem
totally caught me off guard and was VERY funny.

UA on the other hand is a little more frivolous in subject matter
(apologies to football fans who take it seriously) but it was still a
reasonably enjoyable book and I will definitely enjoy reading it again.

My sincerest apologies that you've not been able to enjoy these last two
books.

IMO Raymond has expressed a perfectly valid opinion and I can see why he
has done so. I've read UA twice now and after the first time I felt
similarly, although not as strongly.

On re-reading I changed my mind. Although it is a bit formulaic in
places, the story hangs together better than it did on first reading -
there are the usual layers of meaning and humour, handled in masterful
fashion for the most part.

And now a spoiler ...

S
P
O
I
L
E
R

S
P
A
C
E

S
T
R
E
T
C
H
I
N
G

D
O
W
N

T
H
E

P
A
G
E

...

I'm sure the reinvention of the Football was decided deliberately as it
is so integral to the plot. (As I understand it Pterry's form of
Alzheimers doesn't seem to affect his memory so much as his spatial
awareness, although I could be wrong.) In any case my own view is that
Discworld timelines are subservient to the narrative imperative and if
push comes to shove we can blame the History Monks.

My other conclusion is that the Unseen Academicals that the book is
about are actually the below-stairs staff at UU, more so than the
football team itself. Nutt is a uber-academic in any case, and starts
the book as one who must remain unseen; and the main POV protagonist is
Glenda, the night cook. Unseen by the Faculty at first, but as much a
part of the University as they are. There are other Unseen Academicals
who also play a part of course: Braseneck College.

I think there is a plot fossil in UA though - the whole business about
playing a football match between Braseneck and UU for the right to wear
the Archchancellor's Hat is built up between Vetinari, Ridcully and The
Man Who Was The Dean ... and then ignored completely. I suspect it
belongs to an earlier version of the plot.

What's wrong with re-inventing football anyway?  It's been done loads of
times throughout the centuries, that's how we got a proper game called
Rugby and, unfortunately, the abomination known as American football.

I've never worked out why it should be called 'football' when the ball
is thrown over a wrestling match rather than kicked anywhere.  Does this
mean that the term is actually an oxymoron along the lines of 'military
intelligence'?  Does an American football player actually ever kick the
ball?

ITWSBT

Are there any USians in the audience who might explain?

"Nation" I'm still not sure about, it's odd.  It's technically good but
I just didn't get it.  Maybe that's my failure rather than the author

gary

1. The kickoff. At the beginning of a game (or after one team has
scored a goal) play is (re)started by both teams lining up near
opposite ends of the field and one team kicking the ball toward the
other team. In this instance, the football is set on a small stand
before being kicked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqFC6Sjy-So

2. The punt. A team that has the ball is given four chances to move it
forward at least ten yards. If a team doesn't think it has a chance of
making that ten yards, and if they are too close to the opponent's
goal line, they may choose to kick the ball down field, in hopes of
keeping the other team farther away from the goal line when they take
posession of the ball. In this version, the football is dropped and
kicked while it's falling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQKHOMHKT00

3. The field goal. This option involves kicking the football between
the uprights of the goal post at the end of the field to score extra
points. One player braces the football on the ground while another
player kicks it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih2wYN8eEl4
or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzVDDSfeeA

        -Chris Zakes
                Texas

They began to plan people's lives and libraries; they began to instruct and push
about the very people who had come to Mars to get away from being instructed
and ruled and pushed about.
And it was inevitable that some of those people pushed back...

Before
<http://www.sportsposterwarehouse.com/
detail_PEA0334__9__peanutsnever_htm.html>

Cognitive dissonance reminds me of a bar in a William Gibson book,
although I don't recall which one, in which there is a bar called
Cognitive Dissidents.  Sorry but I can't be arsed to look through them
to find out - might be "All Tomorrow's Parties".

gary

[1]Unless you happen to be JW in the last 30 seconds of the rugby world
cup.

--
"I really like this jacket
but the sleeves are much too long"

<snip>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ5tHgET4N4

I was actually sat in the pub with the rest of the Studio Theatre Club
preparing for the Matinee performance of Monstrous Regiment when this
happened.  We were quite noisy (but we turned in a damn good
performance...)

Thanks for trying to explain Chris, although I'm still not sure that I
understand:-)

gary

As others have said, that is your view.  However posting such comments
to alt.FAN.pratchett could be considered as an activity more suited to
those of a trollish persuasion.

Detritus would not be pleased.

I'm not sure how rugby is played, but in American football, things are
pretty structured. After the initial kickoff, a player from the other
team usually catches the ball and tries to run it past the goal line.
When he's tackled, everything stops, and a marker is put at the edge
of the field, marking where the ball was at the time of the tackle.  

At this point, the team with the ball has four chances to move the
ball ten yards. The players line up, the ball is hiked to the
quarterback who either runs with it, hands it off to another player to
run with it, or throws it to another player. Once the player with the
ball is tackled (or the pass is not caught--i.e. "incomplete")
everything stops, they line up where the ball was when tackled (or at
the initial position if it's an incomplete pass) and try again. If, at
the end of four tries, the ball has not been moved the requisite ten
yards, the other team takes posession and tries to move it ten yards
in the opposite direction. (If they *have* gone ten yards, things
reset at that point, and they try for another ten.)

So... if the ball is, say, twenty or thirty yards from the goal line
the opponent is trying to reach, it's generally considered sound
tactics to punt it, in hopes of getting it farther away from that goal
line.

        -Chris Zakes
                Texas

It's something that's actually a lot harder to achieve than it looks,
because of the tendency of the ball to bounce in odd ways. There's four
kinds of score in rugby:

(1) the "try" (5 points). Known to you in American football as a touchdown,
except that - unlike in American football - the ball must actually be
touched down over the line, by the player holding it: if he crosses the line
but is prevented from actually grounding the ball in hand, no score. Called
a "try" because, in the original game, it scored no points at all but gave
the scoring side a free shot at "goal" (see below.

(2) the "conversion" or "goal" (2 points). After a try is scored, the
scoring side gets a place-kick attempt (originally, the kicker would kick a
hole in the ground and set the ball up in it: nowadays you're far more
likely to see a kicking tee used, to stand the ball on its end), to put the
ball over the bar between the posts. Similar to that in gridiron after a
touchdown, except you don't have to pass it back to the kicker, or get
someone else to hold it, and the defending side aren't allowed to try and
charge it down - the ball gets put on the ground, directly backward from the
point where the try was scored (hence the fact that it's better to score a
try between the posts than in the corner, because the angle is much better.)
Technically the "goal" is the combination of the try and conversion.

(3) The "penalty goal" (3 points) A straight place-kick at goal, from the
point where a defined "major or deliberate offence" took place. Similar to
the attempt to convert a try: a simple teed-up placekick, opposition cannot
charge it down. (The side awarded the penalty, if they do not think the
kicker could score from that distance or that angle, has the option of
kicking to touch and taking the throw-in themselves: normally if one side
kicks the ball out, it's the other side that gets the throw-in. A third
option is to take a "scrum" - which is usually the penalty for "minor or
accidental" offences - this is usually done because the attacking side
thinks that they could score a try from it, and get 5 or 7 points rather
than the lesser 3 from a penalty.)

(4) The "drop-goal" (3 points). As described above, can be scored from
anywhere on the field, by anyone, with a drop-kick (the ball has to touch
the ground just before being kicked). Normally there's only one or two
players on the team who are any good at this, and it's not easy: very rarely
is it achieved more than once or sometimes twice in an international.
England's Jonny Wilkinson, I believe, holds the current record number for a
career, though the record in a match is 5 by J. De Beer of South Africa
(Wilkinson being, as far as I know, the only other player to score three in
one match.) Another England kicker, Rob Andrew, also used to make a habit of
scoring them. The most usual reason to attempt a drop-goal is (1) having had
a lot of possession near the opposition line but not really looking like
breaking through (even if the drop-goal attempt is missed, it may panic the
opposition into trying just that bit too hard to guard against the
possibility by charging down the kicker, either leaving gaps in their
defence elsewhere so the attacking side have a better chance of a try next
time, or encroaching offside and giving away a penalty), or (2) the scores
being very close in the last minute.

Of course, in original rugby parlance back in the 1800s, a goal was a goal
was a goal: a penalty counted the same as a dropgoal, counted the same as a
converted try (and there was no score for the try itself, only if it was
"converted" to an actual score.) Then someone decided that there ought to be
some points for the try at least... hence the fact that now every goal
counted 3 points, and an un-converted try counted as 1/3 of a goal (hence
the value of a conversion kick at 2.) Since then, the rules of rugby get
changed again and again, so does the scoring system, until now we have a
situation where you get as many as 5 points for even an unconverted "try"...

Rugby League - again a different set of rules but with similar principles -
still has 4 points for the try (which was the case in Rugby Union from the
1970s up till 1993), 2 for the conversion, but only 2 for a penalty and 1
for the drop-goal. And there are other rule differences too, and only 13
players a side, and a whole lot of other minor differences...

but the crucial thing about rugby, both league and union, is: you can pass
the ball any time, provided it does NOT go forwards from a pass from hand:
backwards, sideways or diagonally (backwards) is allowed, but if the ball
goes so much as 1 inch forwards over 20 yards sideways, it's a "forward
pass" and thus an offence (deemed to be accidental, therefore the punishment
is a scrum rather than a penalty). The ball can be *kicked* forwards, but
then only the kicker or people who were "behind" him are allowed to chase
the kick, unless the opposition get the ball and run at least 10 yeards with
it: anyone in front of the kicker is "offside" and not allowed to chase the
kick until they're put back "on-side" by the kicker running past them.

As for all the 'considering it's a game about football there's only
one match' comments you made, I'd have been more disappointed in a
formulaic, Mighty-Ducks-style blow-by-blow, team comes good plot line.
I think Terry may be making a point there about how little football
culture necessaruly has to do with the games being played, although I
could quite possibly be wrong.

I'm sorry if anyone is offended by the way I have expressed this -
it's been a long week and I've been away from afp and usenet for some
time. I just felt that I couldn't leave Mr. Daley's remarks
unresponded to.

Inside your own 22 yard line you may kick the ball cleanly over the side
line and the lineout will be where the touchjudge judges the ball to
have crossed the line.

Outside your own 22 kicking the ball straight into touch results in the
lineout being held on the closest side of the field at the point that
you kicked it from.

If, outside your own 22, you manage an accurate kick that results in the
ball landing on the field, but subsequently bouncing off the field, the
lineout will be held at that point.

There is also a restart after a failed try or a grounding (defensive
move where you ground the ball in your own area to prevent the
opposition getting to it) which is called a "22" which is basically a
drop kick from your own defensive area, the ball being required to touch
the ground before being kicked.

Oh, and you are allowed to 'chip' the ball over your opponents[1] but if
you happen to run into a loose ball and kick it ahead of yourself
that'll be a "Knock On"

I'll bet that USian teams dont even have blood substitutes...:-)

gary

[1]The famous "Up and Under".
--
"I really like this jacket
but the sleeves are much too long"

--
Regards

Nigel Stapley

www.thejudge.me.uk

(massage snippage)

What's a blood substitute? Plasma? Some kind of genetically modified
fluid? A direct relative of the player being substituted?

        -Chris Zakes
                Texas

*A common bumper sticker when I was in college was "Give blood--play
rugby."

I'm more assured by UA that 'I Shall Wear Midnight' will be worth
waiting for.

After that, I want to see how PTerry manages to say something new
about taxation without trespassing on Heinlein..

Some OP on the other group said that the name of the next (3rd) book
after would be 'Scouting for Trolls.' I have no idea if he was
having us on or not :-)

You are only allowed so many substitutes in a game of rugby.

You have the infamous Harlequins incident which led to 3 year ban for
their director of rugby.

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/club/6047832/Dean-Richard...>

Why do journalist add the word gate to every scandal these days.

Watergate was known as Watergate because that was the name of the place.